At The Washington Post, The Lily hits its own chords

I am always asking my clients what new products they are contemplating to introduce.

The answer is not always positive. “New products?,” an editor asked me at a recent workshop. “We are having enough of a challenge updating the ones we already have!”.

Our industry is full of challenges these days, but the creation of new products should be seen as a fantastic opportunity to incorporate new thinking with projects that do not have to deal with the ghosts of the past.

For The Washington Post in the Jeff Bezos era, The Lily is an example of a successful new product that is attracting that coveted audience of millennial women.

Recently, during the WAN IFRA Digital Media North America 2017 Conference in New York City, I had an opportunity to listen to Amy King, editor-in-chief of The Lily, explain how the project came to be and what the goals are in terms of audience and content.

The inspiration for the name, and perhaps the spirit of The Lily, came from an old publication, dating to 1849, that tried to do just that. The original The Lily presented itself as the Monthly Journal of Temperance and Literature:

Obviously, another wonderful source of inspiration for the team of The Lily is the robust content, especially related to women, art and entertainment, that The Washington Post already publishes through its traditional sections:

Creating a Visual Language

Amy King was quick to point out that from the start of The Lily project, she and her team wanted to establish a visual language that would give The Lily its own personality. “It didn’t have to be totally related to The Washington Post and how it presents information visually. We wanted it to be different,” she said.

At the same time, Amy described how she and her team paid special attention to the way millennials communicate and that inspired them.

I find the visual language of The Lily to be fresh, spontaneous and likely to draw in readers of all ages, not just millenials.

The typography and the color palette