The Challenge
Grindr wanted to launch a digital magazine — a full editorial brand for the LGBTQ+ community — with no existing identity and a website that needed to launch alongside it. The ask was deceptively simple: create something that could speak to an entire community without flattening it. A logo for everyone.
The Objective
Build a brand identity from zero — logo, color system, digital presence — that could position INTO as the modern LGBTQ+ publication for a generation being underserved by legacy media. It needed to be instantly recognisable, live confidently on screen, and feel nothing like what already existed.
The Creative Approach
I hand-drew the INTO logo. In a category dominated by clean serifs and safe editorial typography, a hand-drawn mark was the right act of defiance — it carried human warmth into a digital context without performing it. For color, I chose high-contrast combinations built around dissonance: colors that technically don't belong together, because that tension was the heart of the idea. Communities that belong together despite everything. The system was designed to feel electric online and to own shelf space in any environment.
The team
I worked closely with the front-end developer responsible for building the INTO website — translating the visual system into a digital publication that could hold the identity at scale.
Production Highlights
Full brand identity delivered from scratch: hand-drawn logo, high-contrast color system, typography framework, and digital design guidelines — alongside the complete visual framework for INTOmore.com at launch. Produced in parallel with the site build to hit a simultaneous go-live.
The Impact
INTO launched to 2 million unique readers with its first issue and quickly ranked as the third most-read LGBTQ+ publication in the world. The brand identity — a hand-drawn logo and a deliberately dissonant color system — gave a new kind of queer media a visual authority that matched its editorial ambition. Coverage at launch spanned MediaPost, It's Nice That, and PRNewswire.
2M+
Unique readers with the first issue
3rd
Most-read LGBTQ+ publication globally
190+
Countries in Grindr's network at launch
3M
Grindr daily active users as distribution backbone
More Works
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