Underwall

Underwall started as a question rather than a magazine: where do emerging fashion and art creatives put work that is too raw for a portfolio and too early for the industry to notice? The brief I set myself was to build a title that treated participation as the product, contributors credited by name, process shown alongside polish, rather than another platform trading exposure for free content.

I built the brand from first principles: a diagnosis of the magazine market (a declining mass segment against a growing niche-premium print category), a competitive map against titles from Vogue to Buffalo Zine, and two working personas, an emerging photographer seeking visibility, and a Paris-based curator scouting for unpolished talent. The creative territory, Artistic Imperfection, became the filter for every decision that followed: the paper stock, the typography, the choice to publish process alongside final work.

Pricing and production were modelled with the same rigour as the creative: a €30 cover price and €50 annual subscription against a real unit cost from the printer, giving a break-even at 351 of the 500 copies produced, a target designed to be comfortably achievable rather than aspirational.

The go-to-market spread deliberately across seven channels, direct sale, the launch event, subscriptions, the contributor network, press seeding, a small run of Paris and London stockists, and Instagram as the discovery layer, so no single channel carried the risk of the launch. A five-phase communication timeline (tease, reveal, convert, launch, sustain) tied paid media, contributor reposts and press outreach to a single 20 June 2026 launch event at Galerie Hoang Beli in Paris' Marais, staged closer to an exhibition than a party.

I delivered Issue 01 end-to-end: 150 pages across 14 editorial projects, printed as a 500-copy run with Rivet Presse Édition, coordinating contributors, suppliers and the printer relationship from brief to bound copy.

Underwall launched in June 2026 as planned, with Issue 01 delivered in full. The commercial model, 400–500 copies sold, break-even at 351, was built to validate the format before committing to a second issue, which is deliberately scheduled for June 2027 rather than rushed on Issue 01's momentum. It remains the clearest single proof of how I work: diagnosis, positioning, a costed commercial model, and creative execution carried through to a physical, distributed product.