An independent magazine about the presence
Year:
2023
Timeframe:
Ongoimg
Role:
Creative Director
Industry:
Independent Publishing / Arts & Culture
Overview
Co-founding an independent magazine and building its entire visual world, print, social, and web, from the ground up.
DASEIN is an independent, Yerevan-based magazine dedicated to showcasing emerging artists, designers, and cultural voices from Armenia and the global Armenian diaspora. I co-founded DASEIN with Anna Vahrami and Ina Abrahamyan, and I've designed everything the reader sees: the print layout system, the editorial format issue to issue, the social visual language, and the website.
Problem
An independent magazine lives or dies by its design system as much as its writing. It has to look credible enough to sit next to institutional press coverage, flexible enough to hold everything from fashion editorials to field research, and consistent enough to read as one publication across print, Instagram, and the web, all without an in-house design team.
Solution
I built DASEIN's visual identity as one connected system rather than three separate outputs. The print layout carries a consistent grid and typographic hierarchy that scales from a single portrait to a full editorial spread, the same visual language extends into the social format so the feed reads as an extension of the issue rather than a separate channel, and the website translates that same editorial structure into a browsable digital archive. Since launch, DASEIN has worked with 150+ artists and contributors, published three print editions between 2023 and 2025 backed by Creative Armenia, AGBU, and the UNFPA Equity 2030 Alliance, and been featured in Forbes Austria as part of a report on Armenia's emerging creative industries.
