We partnered with Seventh Wave to create a brand and website that reflects the creativity and humanity of their award-winning literary magazine.
/
Seventh Wave is reimagining what a magazine can be, and cultivating a vibrant creative community by and for emerging writers, artists, and activists from around the world.
We worked with Seventh Wave to create a visually stunning brand identity dedicated to their community of emerging writers and artists. Our co-created vision was further realized through the design and development of their renewed digital home: a place for writers and readers to come together.
As Seventh Wave grew into a global digital-first literary space for queer and BIPOC creatives, they needed a clearly delineated brand system that would scale with them. We co-created an identity that balanced creative expression with legibility, while building a toolkit flexible enough for editors, contributors, and readers alike.
Our custom-drawn wordmark – a blend of sharp serifs and flat terminals, invokes an editorial yet contemporary feel. Its strokes mimic the motion of a wave, lending energy and rhythm.
The wave stroke in the wordmark inspired a secondary mark, a stamp icon reminiscent of traditional publishing stamps often found on the spines of books. Waves extend into subtle backgrounds and graphic motifs throughout the system.
Deep eggplant, bright blue, and crisp white with soft green and warm red accents were chosen to form an expressive color story that can flex towards various use cases.
Tandem completely redesigned and developed Seventh Wave’s website – a digital home built to proudly showcase a decade of archival works and new publications, and its robust global contributor network. The result is a platform that merges sleek editorial finesse with modern usability.
Because the website functions as the most editorial brand touchpoint, we leaned into publishing conventions – rules, columns, and a sense of structure – while layering in color-coded sections that guide navigation without overwhelming the page. Each published piece found a new home within a system designed for discoverability, clarity, and longevity.
The new website has supported measurable organizational growth, recording over one hundred thousand active users post-launch in increased traffic to both archival and newly published content.
Our partnership has since expanded towards building out site architecture to host curriculum materials like resource packets and writing tips for their audiences in one accessible location.
Project Credits
Client
Seventh Wave
Sector
Literary Arts
Publishing
Nonprofit
Year
2024
Project Scope
Brand Guide
Brand Strategy
Documentation
Research & Discovery
Verbal Identity
Visual Identity
Website Design (UI/UX)
Website Development
Project Team
Maria Arenas
Jacob Bilich
Shelby Rashap
Malavika Srinivasan
Scott Starrett
Next Project
