Challenge:
Sonnets and Dirty Dishes was created to address a gap in editorial coverage for creative women, whose working lives and creative processes were underrepresented in general media. The challenge was to build a credible, visually coherent editorial platform that could publish thoughtful long-form content, grow an audience organically and remain consistent without the structure of an editorial team.
Solution:
As co-founder, I was responsible for the visual design and day-to-day content execution of the platform, working closely with my co-founder to shape editorial direction and maintain consistency across channels.
- Designed the website’s visual identity and layout, ensuring it supported long-form interviews and visual storytelling
- Edited and prepared all photographic content for publication and social channels
- Co-authored interview questions and conducted interviews with creative professionals across disciplines, from television and film to fashion and writing
- Planned and managed content calendars to maintain a regular publishing rhythm
- Managed Instagram content, adapting long-form editorial work into shorter, platform-appropriate formats
- Created and managed email newsletters using Mailchimp to support ongoing reader engagement
The work required balancing editorial quality with practical constraints around time, production and audience growth. Over time, this led to refinements in content pacing, social formats and newsletter structure to better support consistency and engagement.
Results:
- Built and maintained a visually cohesive editorial platform with a clear point of view
- Published in-depth interviews with a wide range of creative professionals, contributing to steady audience growth
- Attracted highly experienced creative interviewees from a director of Netflix shows to a fashion designer who worked with Lady Gaga
- Gathered a highly engaged audience organically
- Established repeat engagement through consistent editorial output and email communication
For the website home page, bold images of the interviewees with minimal text contrasts with the long form articles to maintain engagement .
I designed the layout of the articles to maintain readers interest o the very end, breaking long text sections with interesting quotes and images to encourage further reading.
For a newsletter at the start of spring, we wanted to have something bright and energetic, I used one of the creative’s images for its bold colours, we talked about what interviews were coming up and shared a poem that was not online with the permission of our poet interviewee. A little gift to readers .
Using Instagram was important as there was so much visual content from the articles written. We wanted to make it an easily digestible version of the website to bring in readers, so I made a mosaic of interesting and relatable quotations and images from the long form articles.
I created minimalist logos to maintain brand consistence across all touchpoints and demonstrate that our work was based on professionalism and high quality content .
Final Thoughts:
This project strengthened my editorial judgement, content planning and collaboration skills. It reinforced the importance of clear structure, consistency and audience awareness in content work and continues to inform how I approach editorial and content-related projects.