Litberation is an arts boutique and unique events curation service that I founded in 2024. The store currently offers handcrafted candles that release custom blended fragrances that are inspired by a dream meeting with 8 of my favorite authors.

The launch event was a Create Your Own Candle and Fragrance workshop, where participants handcrafted their own candle after blending a custom scent based on the image that the concept of freedom conjures for them.

The Challenge

My biggest challenge when I was designing this website was to balance an artistic and poetic experience and a technical and accurate presentation of the product manufacturing process. 

Uniqueness is a key characteristic of the Litberation project. More than an arts and crafts gifts and decor for book lovers, Litberation offers a feeling, a moment, an experience of freedom through deep creative expression and community connection. 

How do I translate this impression into branding elements, website copywriting, UI/UX design, product photography, and information architecture?

The Solution

To tackle the Litberation project challenges, I prioritized my research and literacy skills, creative writing expertise, technical writing experience, and visual design talents. My creative intuition powered my collaboration with other artists for the brand logo and product photography. 

Research 

Litberation is my own creation, borne out of my favorite hobbies and interests. The primary source of research for the website copy writing is the storytellers who inspired the candles themselves: locations where they lived, common setting threads throughout their books and interviews, places where they spent their last days, the main topics they discussed, and more. Dedicated to an audience of book lovers, I deeply understood that the magic was in the details.

The imagined meeting with Baldwin is set in Paris, Spring. Notes like Saffron, Sandalwood, Almond, Ylang Ylang, Roses, Violets, Smoke, Carnations, and more illustrate a picturesque afternoon sifting through street vendors’ book collections in the Latin Quarter. 

Baldwin lived in Paris from 1948-1957, where he published Giovanni’s Room. To write the product description, I leaned heavily into the romanticism he evoked in the novel. The discussion during the meeting travels through the topics of exile and migration and their impact on the writer, the limits in our understanding of gender and orientation, and the chaos of freedom, all major themes of his writings. 

Writing

I managed the balance between creative and technical writing by focusing on what feelings my audience wants to feel after reading each type of information. When it came to discussions of the manufacturing process, ingredients, candle care tips, and frequently asked questions, I leaned heavily on the technical writing aspect, to inspire confidence and reassurance in Litberation customers that I cross my t’s and dot my i’s at every step of the process. 

Tagline examples that you can find on the website: 

“What are you inhaling? Safety is our priority. We obsess about it, so you don’t have to.”

“Each component of our candles is carefully curated to make sure that we protect People, and Planet, over profit.” 

Design 

Litberation is hosted on Shopify. Given my extensive experience building websites on WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace, I leaned into my seasoned ability to transfer skills across contexts. This affinity is at the core of my decision to become a Technical Communicator, who can embed herself within any industry, field, or scenario.

First I selected my theme. I wanted something sleek, modern, reactive, and with elements that would emphasize the product photography. After selecting the theme, I familiarized myself with the various design elements offered by the theme designers. Then, I decided which ones would best serve each content objective. The main menu and other field titles follow a book related scheme (ex: Library as the title of the Products page). 

The website voice is direct, but poetic, varying between conciseness and details as needed. This is a boutique for book lovers from a book lover, and this is felt throughout the website. Videos of the launch event are included, demonstrating Litberation in action. 

The product descriptions are a highlight of the website, emphasizing the connection between scent and imagery, a study in teleportation through imagination. 

When you inhale Audre Lorde’s inspired scent, you’re taken to a beach house in St. Croix where she spent the final chapters of her life. The base notes of Sugar, Sandalwood, Vanilla, Cedar, and Amber match the contrasting depth and levity of Caribbean island living. The middle notes of Orange, Black Cherry, Peach, Plum, Camphor, and Sage accompany you both through your walk to the nearby beach.

You take in the tall tropical trees with slightly bruised fruits at their feet, the noisy birds whose chirps must be raving about the view from up there, and the waves, always the waves. The spirals that surround you catch your attention, and you point out how they reflect Audre Lorde’s own writing and philosophy. Beach merchants offer bright, colorful displays of fruits, herbs, and greens that create the top notes of this scent, Grapefruit, Mandarin, Lemon, Chamomile, and Lavender. 

As you sip a tall glass of tamarind guava limeade, you talk about the heavy freedom in queerness, the responsibility to embody all the parts of ourselves, the dangers of silence, and the uses of the erotic.

Audre Lorde’s Inspired Candle Product Description

Collaboration 

The product photography session was one of my favorite aspects of this project. It is after all one of the most important elements of any good shopping store. To bring the vision to life, I collaborated with Raianna from Janey Bee Photography.

All featured props are my own; some carefully selected for the shoot, such as beautiful crystallized rocks from the shores of the island of Ayiti, or a peacock feather pen and ink sourced from a local renaissance faire. Others, like my coffee table shaped like an antique travel case with a map of the world sketched on it offered one of the best product background elements. 

Working with an artist like Raianna was a transformative experience. It taught me website photography specifics such as prioritizing enough negative space for word and button placement. Therefore the design work was continuous, thinking through in real time where each shot would live on the website. 

Final Thoughts

How do you sell the sense of smell over the internet? Paint a picture. 

What this project taught me was to think deeper about the connections across scent, place, and poetry. Leaning into my target audience’s existing mental model, I pulled on the expansive imagination of book lovers to present Litberation’s offerings in a clear and relatable way, yet which honors the powerful intimate experience of literature. 

This project taught me to cross boundaries in a harmonious way in order to create something unique, while leaning on universally enjoyable experiences. I set out to create Litberation not just as a website, but a portal joining my imagination to that of my favorite storytellers and their evocations of freedom. 

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