Discourse Blog
In March 2020, I co-founded the politics and culture site Discourse Blog with seven former coworkers and honed my skills for art direction, graphic design, branding and marketing to turn it into a full-fledged subscriber-based website and online community.
As head of design at Discourse Blog, not only have I collaborated with our four-person marketing team to define the site’s visual identity, but I’ve also cultivated that identity on my own, creating editorial art, branded graphics and full-blown marketing campaigns.
Discourse Blog’s starling icon and logo, which I’ve remixed and used in brand designs, was created by Angelica Alzona.
Brand Identity
Vibrant, loud and opinionated. This is the message of our mascot, the starling bird, that I’ve weaved through my art direction and design to expand our brand on our website and into Twitter, Instagram, Twitch and newsletters.
On our site, I’ve redesigned our About Us, Press, Our Subscription Tiers and Our Newsletters pages, using our commissioned logo to expand our branded assets.
Using Mailchimp, I art directed and designed the templates for our free and subscriber newsletters, titled Discourse Daily and What Now, creating two visually similar yet distinctive identities. I also designed art for series featured in the premium newsletter: The Group Chat, a reader mailbag, and Man, What The Hell?!, a weekly news roundup by Rafi Schwartz.
I also rebranded our Instagram, streamlining our templates to incorporate our new colors, fonts and logo after we launched our website in 2020. For Twitch, I designed standby pages to be displayed between guest appearances.
Marketing
Our four-person marketing team, including myself, Aleks Chan, Jack Mirkinson and Caitlin Schneider, has developed marketing plans to promote the blog, Twitch and Discord events, subscription discounts and newsletter ad campaigns.
I incorporate their feedback into branded promotional materials evoking seasonal themes and art design and execute graphics for our website, newsletter, Twitter, Instagram and Twitch.
Election 2020
Clashing political firebrands, unbridled chaos, and an uncertain future.
Through 2020 and 2021, Discourse Blog held a series of Twitch livestreams around the presidential and vice presidential debates, the election, the right-wing backlash to invalidate the election results, Biden’s inauguration and his joint address to Congress.
I art directed and executed social graphics across all platforms to promote the streams and their featured guests. I also designed graphics that we displayed within our Twitch streams to promote the blog and subscription deals.
Birthday Week
Vibrant colors, party decorations and air brushed birthday cake.
For Discourse Blog’s Birthday Week commemorating our first year as a full-fledged blog, I art directed and executed graphics used on our website header and within our “birthday week” blogs, as well as social graphics across all platforms.
