As the #1 online platform for political cartoons and cartoon journalism, Cartoon Movement brings together professional cartoonists and fans of political satire. A robust new multi-domain platform now supports their important mission: promoting editorial cartooning, supporting their often brave creators and defending our freedom of speech.
Building the foundation
As is true for all self-employed people, the primary need of cartoonists is simply to earn a living. But with the ever-diminishing circulation of newspapers and magazines, the commissions and sales of their regular clients have also come under pressure. It's exactly why Cartoon Movement handled sales and licensing for its more than 500 member cartoonists.
When our partnership began in 2017, this was mostly done manually; a labor-intensive and error-prone process. Therefore, we began building a webshop that would promote both sales and efficiency.
Narrowing the scope, with future expansion in mind
To get maximum return on a limited budget, we decided to leave the existing website untouched for now. Instead, we developed a separate webshop in Drupal Commerce that could serve as a framework for future expansion.
To further the functionality, we did already develop a Rest API that automatically updates the offerings in the webshop when cartoonists make changes to their portfolio on the regular website. In addition, we automated the licensing model to allow as many as eight different license types without having to store duplicates on the server.
Migrating a library of independent thinking
With the resulting revenue growth, after two years Cartoon Movement was also able to make the much-needed investment in their 10-year-old website. The goal: integration with the webshop to provide a seamless, modern and activating user experience for both cartoonists and visitors with one platform.
With 58,000 cartoons, the 10-year-old database is the heart of the new platform; so our first concern was the secure migration to the new Amazon S3 environment.
From v1.0 to a V6
This left our hands free for the fun part: improving existing functionality and expanding it with new components. With the implementation of the Drupal CMS, the ease of content management was immediately increased, not only for Cartoon Movement but also for its affiliated cartoonists. Uploading, editing and responding, it all goes much more efficiently and effectively.
We packed in significant improvements in search, user management, social media sharing and cross-platform compatibility. The Collections (collections of cartoons around current topics) have also become much more user-friendly by adding an overview view.
A stage for engaged creativity
With a complete overhaul of the visual design, we ensured that the aesthetic does justice to the quality of the creative work. With an understated and modern look, the design further serves the cartoons and their message.
In this, a serif font forms a natural combination with the hand-drawn cartoon and promotes association with the authority of print publications.
Finally, we made the mobile "styling" consistent with the desktop version of the platform to radically improve the user experience on mobile devices as well.
For picture editors and audiences
Founder and editor-in-chief Tjeerd Royaards: "After 10 years of faithful service, our site was badly in need of an update. We are very happy with the clean, simplified design, in which the cartoons come into their own. We immediately received a lot of positive feedback about the clear navigation. In addition, the site now serves both picture editors looking for cartoons for their publication and people who like to see cartoons. Because the site is now also easily accessible on mobile devices, our audience will only continue to grow. All in all, we are very pleased with the result and it feels like a big step forward; ready for the future!"
Accelerating the movement
Together we have already mapped out that route. Think about further improving the presentation of the cartoons, a dashboard for participating cartoonists, the possibility of easy invoicing, possibly even automatic calculation and payment of royalties.
First, however, we are enjoying this success for a while: strengthening an important democratic voice, perhaps even contributing to freedom of expression.