Feast Artbook Volume 2
ASTERISK ZINES
Feast: Volume 2 – One Piece Food Zine is an artbook project featuring over 60 creatives from around the world, including artists, writers, chefs, graphic designers, animators, and coordinators (Social media and Writing).
Together, we produced a perfect-bound book of 150+ pages of full-coloured content, alongside a new range of kitchen-themed merchandise like reusable shopping bags, potholders, fridge magnets, and more.
Celebrating the later journey of the One Piece characters, Feast: Volume 2 continues to explore food as a symbol of celebration, friendship, and multiculturalism.
This marks Asterisk Zines’ third major project, expanding on the foundation set by Feast: Volume 1 — with a larger team, bigger merchandise line, and a more ambitious campaign. Asterisk Zines is an e-commerce business specialising in artbooks and merchandise, co-founded in 2019 by the sisters behind Astri Studio.
Services:
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Refinement and rebranding
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Campaign strategy and execution
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Hosting community events and online engagement
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Social media growth and management
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Graphic and motion design
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EDM (Electronic Direct Mail) and mailing list
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Storefront configuration
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Strategic pricing, bundling and campaign planning
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Merchandise mass production, packaging and fulfillment
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Promotional campaign video DIrector
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Talent acquisition
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Project & production management
Challenges
Feast Volume 2 was Asterisk Zines’ third major campaign and our most ambitious to date. With increased scale came increased complexity. Key obstacles included:
Key obstacles included:
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Large-Scale Team Coordination:
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We grew from a team of around 40 creatives to over 60 artists, animators, writers, chefs, and designers worldwide. Managing communication, deadlines, and deliverables across different time zones and creative disciplines required much tighter project management and more structured leadership systems.
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Simultaneous Management of Two Full Campaigns
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Alongside Feast Volume 2, we reprinted Feast Volume 1 and its full merchandise line. This doubled the logistical workload — from manufacturing and marketing to order fulfilment and customer service — demanding a higher level of operational efficiency than ever before.
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Extended Gap Between Releases
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It had been two years since the original Feast Volume 1 launch. Rebuilding audience hype and maintaining community excitement after such a gap required careful re-engagement strategies, fresh content, and renewed storytelling.
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Production of New Specialised Merchandise
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We ventured into producing specialised kitchenware for the first time, including reusable shopping bags, potholders, and fridge magnets. This introduced new production challenges around sourcing, supplier negotiations, and quality control processes.
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Ensuring Quality Control Across All Deliverables
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Scaling up the team and merchandise line meant ensuring a consistently high quality standard across more deliverables — book content, merchandise design, marketing graphics, video production, and fulfilment.
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Feast Volume 2: Pre-Campaign
Volume 2 Short Teaser
Trailer for Feast Volume 2
Prior to the official announcement of Feast Volume 2, we released a Volume 2 Short Teaser (As shown on the right) to build hype. We then released an official announcement Trailer for Feast Volume 2 (As shown on the left), in connection with an Interest Check form. The Interest Check form, was an online survey for the public to help us gain an understanding of how many people were interested in this second volume, as well as what type of merchandise they'll like.
Creatives - Graphic Samples
The visual style and graphics were developed in collaboration with Graphic Designer May.
Below are samples of the creative assets used throughout the campaign. These include Merchandise highlights, countdown posts, mockups and samples of the Artbook.
Solution
To meet the demands of a larger, more complex project, we developed a comprehensive and strategic approach:
1. Expanding Our Core Team
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We onboarded a Social Media Manager to handle captions, copywriting, and posting across all platforms, using social media scheduling tools like Hootsuite to maintain a consistent online presence.
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We onboarded a Writing Coordinator to guide and manage the writers and chefs, ensuring cohesion across all narrative pieces and recipes.
2. Scaling Operations and Organisation
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Extensive spreadsheets, tracking documents, and asset management systems were created to streamline communication across different time zones and departments.
3. Community Building and Pre-Launch Hype
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We hosted multiple community engagement events including Halloween Week, a Polaroid Contest, and giveaways to sustain audience engagement over the production period of the artbook.
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A short but high-energy pre-launch teaser campaign was run to rebuild anticipation after the two-year gap.
4. Quality Assurance and Product Development
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We conducted multiple rounds of test copies and prototypes for both the book and new merchandise items like potholders and reusable bags.
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We carefully vetted and built relationships with reliable manufacturers to ensure all kitchenware and merchandise met our standards.
5. Creative Direction and Multimedia Strategy
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We collaborated with an animator and motion designer to create a polished promotional campaign video, planned and produced over the span of a month.
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To balance the growing demands of art direction, social media content, and book design, we onboarded three specialised graphic designers (Print, Web, and Motion) to ensure a consistent visual language across all touchpoints.
Halloween Campaign and Contest
To develop and engage our community, we hosted a OP Halloween Week, featuring a range of interactive activities like polls, gif games, fanart competitions and hashtag events! The week was a success, increasing both following through shareable posts and multiple entries in our contest.
Outcomes
Feast: Volume 2 was our most ambitious and expansive project to date — and our new strategies helped us meet and exceed many of our goals.
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1,300+ pre-orders during the campaign window
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9.1% store conversion rate
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Significantly above the industry average, reflecting the effectiveness of our marketing, bundling strategy, and streamlined checkout experience.
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Social Media Growth:
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Instagram: 4.1k followers
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Tumblr: 1k followers
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Twitter: 3.9k followers
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Production Achievements
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Successfully launched a more diversified merchandise range, introducing kitchenware and practical household items without sacrificing quality.
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Reprinted and fulfilled Feast Volume 1 alongside the launch of Feast Volume 2, coordinating dual product lines during fulfillment.
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Creative and Professional Development
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Built and led a 60+ person international team across multiple disciplines.
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Strengthened our pipeline for motion design, animation, and multimedia marketing, establishing new workflows for future projects.
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Result
Feast Volume 2 cemented Asterisk Zines' position in the artbook and fandom publishing space. By refining our internal systems, growing our team, and pushing our creative ambitions further than ever before, we delivered our most polished and community-driven project yet.
The campaign demonstrated our capacity to scale operations, strengthen brand presence, and consistently produce high-quality, collaborative work.
Creatives - Merch Samples
Below are samples of some of the merchandise we manufactured in collaboration with the merch artist and manufacturers we sourced.
Conclusion
This case study highlights the impact of strategic branding, production management, and digital marketing in scaling a fan-led creative project into a professional, large-scale campaign.
Our expertise in creative direction, audience engagement, and merchandising enabled Asterisk Zines to expand the Feast brand beyond its original scope, successfully coordinating a global team and delivering a high-quality artbook and merchandise line to an enthusiastic community. The success of Feast: Volume 2 demonstrates the power of clear systems, thoughtful collaboration, and community-driven design in the independent publishing space.