Deadwax · Sarah Peroni

01

Overview

about what is deadwax

issue 01 / about

A music ezine for artist discovery.

Deadwax is a music ezine and visual culture archive for artist discovery, playlists, and band-driven design. The project turns music coverage into a collectible visual system: digital issues, artist spotlights, playlist notes, posters, stickers, and printed ephemera.

The visual language pulls from indie magazines, Xerox zines, record-store flyers, and dense scrolling web layouts. Designed and copied like something passed around the back of a venue.

Deliverables

The system covers the digital page, the printed issue, and the artifacts that live between them.

Digital ezine Printable zine Shirts Cassette Social media campaign

02

Digital Ezine

issue 01 scrolling magazine spread

user submitted content

A scrolling magazine spread. Artist features, playlist notes, reviews, and visual references stack across the page in a loose editorial rhythm.

Deadwax is built around user submissions. Readers send in bands and artists they want featured, and each issue collects those submissions into a curated spread of new music.

The layout is intentionally dense, but each section follows a system: feature image, short text, metadata, track reference, and visual tag. Side rails carry issue numbers and category labels so the reader always knows what they are inside.

▸ deadwax.zine / issue-01 music ezine · scrolling

01 artist file

artist norsk rap · alt-pop oslo

Cezinando

Norwegian rap that scans more like art-pop. Cezinando writes long, shifting songs with horn-section detours and lyrics built like short stories. Plays loud, hits soft.

recommended track · "Sannheten"

international artist

new noiselisten firstnorsk

02 track notes

artist indie · experimental new jersey

MK.gee

Mike Gordon recording in a fog. Reverb, blur, half-spoken hooks, and guitar tones that feel like they were dragged through a tape machine. Two Star & The Dream Police sounds like a record made alone at four in the morning.

recommended track · "Are You Looking Up"

field recordingtaperecommended

03 feature

artist funk-pop · alt los angeles

Remi Wolf

Color-saturated funk-pop with a horn section, a yelp, and a sense of humor. Songs that feel like the kind of party you only get invited to once. Built loud, mixed loud, played louder.

recommended track · "Photo ID"

listen at volume.

03

Artist Features

artist file

new noise / panel system

A cut-and-paste zine system for artist coverage. Image, mark, title, metadata, short note.

Each card works as a quick entry point into an artist's sound and visual world. The treatment is high-contrast and intentionally rough. Duotone or halftone images, photocopy edges, marker scribbles, and small handwritten notes.

This is not a streaming profile. It is a music discovery artifact that feels collected, marked, copied, and passed around.

artist 01 listen first

Cezinando

norsk rap · alt-pop oslo 2015 →

Sannheten · 3:42

Long, shifting songs with horn-section detours and lyrics built like short stories. Plays loud, hits soft.

copied from the wall ✦

new noise play loud

MK.gee

indie · experimental new jersey

Are You Looking Up · 3:24

Reverb, blur, half-spoken hooks, and guitar tones dragged through a tape machine. Sounds like a record made alone at 4am.

artist 03 recommended

Remi Wolf

funk-pop · alt los angeles

Photo ID · 3:09

Color-saturated funk-pop with a horn section, a yelp, and a sense of humor. Built loud, mixed loud, played louder.

04

Deliverables

print · digital

copy it / pin it / pass it on

Deadwax extends from the digital ezine into printed pieces, social feeds, and issue merch.

Printed ezine, spotlight cards, social posts, and one piece of issue merch. The deliverables keep the project connected to flyers, record stores, zines, feeds, and bedroom walls. Tactile, slightly imperfect, high-contrast. Never luxury, never polished merch.

04.1 Printed Ezine

The printed issue is the same content, redrawn for paper. A bold flat-color cover with the masthead, then interior spreads that mix artist features, playlist notes, and visual references.

04.2 Social Media

The social media system extends the ezine onto Instagram and other feeds. Posts adapt the artist file format into single-image and carousel layouts so each new feature lands as a recognizable piece of the system.

04.3 T-shirt

One simple piece of issue merch per release. The t-shirt carries the masthead and the issue number, using the same hierarchy as the printed cover. Worn like a back-cover, not a logo drop.

04.4 Cassette Tape

Each issue ships with a limited cassette of the issue's tracklist. The tape carries the same masthead, issue number, and artist file system as the rest of the deliverables. Run small, dubbed at home, traded between readers.

05

Brand System

visual rules palette · type · grid

visual index / iss 01

Loud color fields, rough image treatment, handwritten marks, dense editorial grids, music-culture metadata.

The system is designed to feel collected and immediate, while still keeping artist features and playlists readable. Sections lean on flat color blocks, photocopy textures, issue numbers, and small tags so the content always feels like part of an issue.

Palette

An indie music zine palette · faded, printed, slightly sun-worn. Washed grass and newsprint cream are the base. Dusty sky and deep olive vary the section panels. Ink black holds the type and photocopy texture. Muted mustard and brick red live only in the annotations, stamps, and issue marks. No pink. No neon. The page reads as record-store flyer, not rave.

Washed
Grass#6F8F4E

Dusty
Sky#8FB7C9

Deep
Olive#4F5836

Newsprint
Cream#EFE6D2

Ink
Black#171717

Muted
Mustard#C5A23A

Brick
Red#A84236

Concrete
Gray#8D8A82

Type

Chunky display sans for mastheads, condensed bold for section heads, monospace for catalog metadata, body sans for readable copy, marker for handwritten accents only. Five voices, one issue.

Masthead · display

DEADWAX

Section · headline

artist file · issue 01

Catalog · mono

▸ track 01 · static garden · wide angle · 3:42

Body · sans

Tape loops, weather, half-finished hymns. Built from one room mic and a broken cassette deck.

Annotation · hand

copied from the wall ✦

Image rules

Images get treated like cutouts, photocopies, or zine panels. Use halftone, duotone, rough masks, repeated thumbnail systems, and sticker-like crops. Skip clean stock photography and influencer imagery.

cutout

halftone

duotone

xerox

mask

thumbnail