steelo magazine

giving the lo-down on urban dance styles and culture

Timeline: 10 weeks

Roles: Layout Design, Typography, Typesetting, Branding, Art Direction, Photo Editing, Research, Production

Skills: InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Procreate

Get in the groove

Urban and Hip Hop culture has become a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide with its music, fashion, and artistic style being documented and recognized in books, movies, documentaries, and magazines. But looking back, dancers brought these cultural phenomenons to the mainstream and are never given respect. This publication's goal is to record, preserve, and honor the stories of street and club-style dances and the black and brown communities they originated.

the challenge

The biggest challenge was branding and producing content that represents the diverse cultures and styles in the urban dance community—and curating relevant, accurate, and respectful content that would appeal to a wide variety of readers.

Process

Conducted interviews with dancers in the Seattle community to understand what they would be interested in seeing in a magazine and testing the viability of the concept. One of the magazine's goals is to be inclusive, so the interviews were purposely conducted from a very diverse pool. Dancers of varying experience: teachers, students, beginners, veterans, and professionals. Along with dancers from multiple styles and backgrounds, males, females, non-binary, and LGBTQ communities. These interviews influenced the content of the magazine and the visual tone of the Brand. With this information, I created the personas of the magazines three primary readers: the Subscription Buyer, First Time Buyer, and Occasional Buyer. I made the mood board, established the tonal territories and tagline.