︎

MOLE JOURNAL
FOUNDER & EDITOR OF ONLINE JOURNAL
_Feature writing,

social media and branding,
creative strategy 



Tools used:

○ Cargo
○ Canva
○ Otter.ai



mole journal is an online space to celebrate people doing things different. Relaunching it in 2020, I built the website from scratch, updated its visual identity, and refined its content strategy.

    Motivation

I founded mole to share stories behind creative lives and brands, in hopes to share new perspectives and inspire others to create even if it goes against the grain.



    Gained experience in:

        Branding

    ○ Why mole?
Like mole, the animal, we want to dig and discover. ︎︎︎



    ○ Design
As a subtle way of relating to featured brands and projects, the colours selected for each banner or post complement that of the featured. Also, to retain a cohesive branding across our website and social media platforms, I have used a similar colour palette, font, and rounded frames for our visual assets. This was a result of refining through multiple design iterations. ︎︎︎

On Instagram



On the website



        Website design

    ○ I designed the website on Cargo from scratch. I wanted to keep it navigatable and minimal, directing the focus onto the stories. ︎︎︎



        Research

The journal currently features:
    ○ Conversations
Interviews with creatives and entrepreneurs who do things differently.
    ○ Spotlight
Features on thought-provoking and pecular ideas and projects.

Every feature involves thorough desktop research on a profile or brand. I find joy in discovering new ideas and stories, and developing my resourcefulness and research skills. ︎︎︎



        Interview

    ○ Conducting interviews
Every experience counts. I am constantly learning how to improve conversation flow, phrase questions, and ask the right questions.

        Writing

    ○ Extracting key points 
Knowing what to let go of is important in the storytelling process, therefore I extract the essence of each conversation and translate them into an interview format for easy read.

    ○ Keeping an authentic voice  
I prefer for the features to encapsulate the characters of the profiles, thus I intentionally choose not to heavily reduce the conversation or alter the ways ideas were phrased. 

        Instagram

    ○ Strategy
Seeing that Instagram is more focused on visual communication, I have positioned the messaging slightly differently from the website. The instagram bio is “on new ways of seeing, creating, and interacting”.

    ○ Visual identity
As mole is industry and medium-agnostic, the posts of different mediums — such as illustration, painting, and photography — are able to reflect mole’s ethos and highlight the individuality of each feature.

Overall kept balanced between image and typography, the posts also tend to look cohesive and ‘on-brand’. ︎︎︎



    Lessons

I have learnt tremendously about building a brand and platform. I’ve also expanded myself creatively through doing and exposing myself to a global network of creative minds.
    On content strategy, I have learnt to frame and adapt content according to how people consume differently on various channels.
   Importantly, I’ve also discovered that people are willing to share their stories as long as you take the step to reach out and share your intent.
    Until now, I have yet to focus on virality as a metric, as I wanted to first solidify mole’s ethos and mid-term direction. Now that I have more clarity on that, I might shift my focus towards gaining traction. 


︎ Go to mole journal here.

Featured:
WindowSwap
Make Your Own Masters
Sarina Ho
Creative Lives in Progress
 Dense Discovery
The Challenger Project
The Pop Up Agency
Bread on Earth