Jen Calleja

Our elegant and expressive redesign for the endlessly-gifted author, literary translator and publisher

Website
The homepage of Jen Calleja's website, viewed on a desktop screen. The background is white and the text is mostly black. Jen's name sits in the top-left corner in a chunky, characterful serif font. Alongside this, to the right is the site menu, split into four distinct sections by a use of different coloured bracketing lines. The first section contains 'About' and 'Contact, the second 'Writing' and 'Translation', the third 'Workshops and Mentoring' and the fourth 'Music'. Below this is an oversized paragraph of text where some of the key words (e.g., 'Author, 'Literary Translator', 'Publisher') are highlighted by use of font-weight, colour and text underlines.
The Writing page of Jen Calleja's website, viewed on a desktop screen. The background is white and the text is mostly black. Jen's name sits in the top-left corner in a chunky, characterful serif font. Below, in the main content of the page, is a photograph of a book standing upright on a grey surface. The book's cover is vertically split in two blocks, the top portion has a muted orange colour background with the text 'Vehicle' upon it, and the bottom is white with the text 'Jen Calleja'. Below the photograph, text reads 'Vehicle: a verse novel. Prototype, 2023'. Underneath, adjacent to a gold star icon, bold text reads 'LRB Bookshop Book of the Week and Bestseller'. A paragraph of text follows before it is truncated by a menu banner which sits at the bottom of the page, and contains links to 'About', 'Contact' and 'Work'.

Moving with the times

Whilst there was nothing wrong per se with the original site we built half a decade prior, Jen’s own growth as a writer, translator and musician called for a new approach to distilling to the world who she was and what she does, and funnelling a broader range of content into a diverse portfolio that would still feel cohesive and logical.

Visit Jen's site
The homepage of Jen Calleja's website, viewed on a desktop screen. The background is white and the text is mostly black. Jen's name sits in the top-left corner in a chunky, characterful serif font. Alongside this, to the right is the site menu, split into four distinct sections by a use of different coloured bracketing lines. The first section contains 'About' and 'Contact, the second 'Writing' and 'Translation', the third 'Workshops and Mentoring' and the fourth 'Music'. Below, in the main content of the page, are the words 'Featured Translation' in an uppercase, gold font. This is followed by a repetition of the bracket motif from the menu which designates and contains the area for both the text and image below, which relate to the book 'The Liquid Land' by Raphaela Edelba. The book's cover is a deep red colour, and features a combination of white and black text, a white patterned border around the edge and features an illustration depicting a woman and a man in period dress facing each other, and touching hands. The woman holds a torch in her other hand and the man a gun in his. Alongside the book cover is a quotation praising the book by Houman Barekat of The Guardian.

Bolder strokes

We worked with Jen to pare a dozen or so areas of her work into four distinct parts, using colour to accent this visually. Following a bolder aesthetic that still centred around the written word, we designed the landing page as an oversized text summary of Jen’s main achievements. Each subsequent page has the flexibility to present featured work within an expressive flow of projects, with a more uniform grid of archival work below.

This new approach swept aside the lack of hierarchy that had begun to muddle Jen’s previous site, and created an orderly yet cultured approach to a growing body of work.

🏆 The site was Typewolf’s ‘Site of the Day’ in March 2020.

The homepage of Jen Calleja's website, viewed on a smartphone screen. The background is white and the text is mostly black. Jen's name sits in the top-left corner in a chunky, characterful serif font. Below this is an oversized paragraph of text where some of the key words (e.g., 'Author, 'Literary Translator', 'Publisher') are highlighted by use of font-weight, colour and text underlines. At the very bottom of the page is a menu banner containing links to 'About', 'Contact' and 'Work'.
The Writing page of Jen Calleja's website, viewed on a desktop screen. The background is white and the text is mostly black. Jen's name sits in the top-left corner in a chunky, characterful serif font. Alongside this, to the right is the site menu, split into four distinct sections by a use of different coloured bracketing lines. The first section contains 'About' and 'Contact, the second 'Writing' and 'Translation', the third 'Workshops and Mentoring' and the fourth 'Music'. Below, in the main content of the page, is a large heading in a thick, gold serif font, that reads 'Writing', and below are several paragraphs of text in a much smaller black sans-serif font.