The Writer's Coffee Shop (TWCS) started as a blog that transitioned into a fanfiction archive website and eventually became a small publishing house. Myself and a group of friends from the fanfiction community decided that fanfiction authors were talented enough to be published. We pooled our resources and talents and created The Writer's Coffee Shop Publishing House based out of Australia.
Our first year of publications included mainly fanfiction stories that are classified as pulled-to-publish. The biggest success from these pulled stories was Master of the Universe by Snowqueen's Icedragon, which everyone now knows the stories as Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James.
This project features branding including logo design and some promotional materials for TWCS Publishing House and The Library. All images below were created using Adobe Photoshop.
The Writer's Coffee Shop Fanfiction Site
This is some branding from our first website as The Writer's Coffee Shop. This site included weekly reviews of fanfiction stories, audio fanfiction recordings, and weekly story teasers. This is also the site where we first started publishing, before we had a retail site created.
LOGO
In 2010, The Writer's Coffee Shop website split into two separate entities, The Writer's Coffee Shop Publishing House and The Writer's Coffee Shop Library, the new home for the fanfiction archive. This new venture brought on the need for branding.
The TWCS logo started out as a coffee cup with the words The Writer's Coffee Shop Publishing House. The main logo had a teal cup with the words in black except for the P and H. Another log had the cup and "The Writer's Coffee Shop" in grey, and Publishing House was black with P and H teal. If the design background was dark, then the entire logo would be gray.
In 2012, TWCS went through a rebrand after selling the rights to the Fifty Shades trilogy to Random House. The main color changed from teal to red and we incorporated some TWCS imaging.
TWCS Promotions
TWCS put together a cohesive package to send bloggers for new release blog tours and cover real campaigns. The packages included images that had the same look and feel for both promotions.
Below are a few examples of imaging created to promote special sales and events and Facebook cover images.
The Library Fanfiction Archive
The TWCS Library went through a few changes. When the new fanfiction site started, there was an old Library feel to it. The branding used old parchment paper like in the first three images. The site used to-go coffee cups designed with logos to link to social media sites and our email. The logo was similar to the publishing house logo. The words were either gray or black with blue accent letters.
When the publishing house went through the rebrand to red, the Library changed as well. The new logo utilized the red coffee cup and incorporated TWCS into the design. A bookshelf was chosen to display the red cup in the logo.
When the publishing house went through the rebrand to red, the Library changed as well. The new logo utilized the red coffee cup and incorporated TWCS into the design. A bookshelf was chosen to display the red cup in the logo.
When the publishing house went out of business, The Library went through another rebranding. This time the brand needed to break way from TWCS. It was decided to keep the library theme, but we needed to move away from The Writer's Coffee Shop. The acronym STARS was derived from Story Tellers and Readers and the new name STARS Library was chosen. The books forming a star was chosen as the logo and incorporated into new web banners for the site. The coffee cup icons were replaced with star icons.
Writing Challenges and Competitions
The Library would often run writing challenges and competitions. Some of the competitions ended with a publishing contract. The grid below shows various imagery promoting the writing challenges, competitions, and winners.
Making of a MASTERpiece Erotica Writing Challenge
Lyrical Melodrama Story Contest
The Broken Record Holiday Contest
The Sport of Love Writing Challenge
Weekly Picture Prompt Writing Challenge
TWCS at The Texas Book Festival 2014
TWCS attended the 2014 Texas Book Festival in Austin, Texas. I created all of the posters, t-shirts that the authors are wearing, and floor stands. These files were created using Photoshop. The promotional video was created using iMovie.
