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Writing + Brand
COPY, Editing, Strategy, Identity
My private freelance practice offers a total range of writing and brand consulting. From fresh ideas to final edits. Copy drawing from poetry and prose, the functional and fantastic. Brand curation and identity development based on business strategy and personal taste. All executed in a reliable, timely fashion by the only DC copywriter DIY-cast and agency-sharpened.
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ZAPATEO: Year One Forever
(2024)
Labor Day 2023, five hundred heads converge on a West Virgina summer camp with the lights, sound, and movement of electronic and hardcore. The gym is a rave. The lodge deck is a mosh pit. For four days Appalachia echoes with underground music blurring genre and defying definition. The festival is called ZAPATEO.
To commemorate the experience, I worked with the organizers and a small editorial team to capture a slice of the ephemera in a 40 page zine celebrating the festival’s inaugural year.
View the zine online.
ZAP outdoorz Brand Identity
(2022)
In the early days of ZAP outdoorz (formerly ZAPATEO), I also worked with the creative team to shape the fesitval brand.Honing into ZAP’s focus on celebrating city sounds and people in an outdoor setting, I helped craft the brand narrative, values, and voice, as well as contributed to visual and design decisions.
Dining All-Electric: Inside the Kitchens of the Future
with artemis ward (2023)
When you love gas cooking but you hate carbon emmisions, you have to find another way. Microsoft took on the challenge, opening a 10,000 sqft. all-electric food hall in Puget Sound in 2022. To push other orgs to follow, Microsoft published a report on creating an electric kitchen capable of world class cuisine at scale. As lead copywriter for the report, I interviewed the team behind the project, wrote all the copy from headlines and captions to graphics, and worked with designers to achieve a food-magazine style for the piece.
Read the full report.
The Square Food Market
with Artemis Ward (2023)
Vibrant flavors meet brutal concrete at The Square food market in downtown DC. Chefs Richie Brandenburg and Rubén García opened the project in Spring 2023, bringing together exotic cuisines from 10+ local vendors.
In my role as lead copywriter on The Square’s brand team, I helped craft The Square’s voice, messaging strategy, and visuals. Following that, my team built teaser and launch websites for the market then planned and executed an integrated out-of-home and digital launch campaign.
The Juliette Book
(2021)
In a sea of clinical, behind-the-times competitors, Juliette Cleaners brings excitement, fashion, and state-of-the-art tech to the dry-cleaning industry. In 2021, as part of a campaign to stoke a new round of investment in Juliette, I lead the production of a magazine-style brand book for the company.
At 80 pages, the book lays bare the stark reality of diversity in VC funding recipients and chronicles the obstacles overcome by female Filipino founder Rechelle Balanzat. Finally, it sets her future vision for Juliette: luxury clothing care that’s more than a service, it’s an extension of your style.
Learn more
Salt & Wonder
(2016-2020)
In Lisbon, Portugal, 2016, I met Anna Sarcletti. A photographer and designer, she shared with me her vision for Salt & Wonder,
a magazine documenting culinary startup culture in below-the-radar travel destinations.After writing a few articles for the mag, my role grew into Deputy Editor. I worked with writers from across Europe to hone their English and create a cohesive voice for the publication. I also wrote auxilary copy for the mag including captions, advertisements, letters from the editor, website, and Kickstarter.
Riding the success of our first volume, The New Old Lisbon, we went to publish two more: Rising Tides in Reykjavík and The Italian Food Renaissance. We also published a zine on specialty coffee: Inside the Bean.