Volume 1: The Making-Of
by Denis Bozic and Nayeon Kim
Apr 2, 2025
On Apr 1, 2025, Denis Talks to Friends was named an Honoree at the Webby Awards, and on January 15, 2025, the magazine was named a triple-platinum winner at the AVA Digital Awards. To celebrate this outstanding recognition, we wanted to pull back the curtain and show how the first volume of the magazine came together. We talked about what inspired us, from photography and books to music and film, and how we found a common language at the intersection of our lifelong passions: writing, design, and production.
Denis: Nay, I want to go back to when we first started collaborating. When I initially approached you with the idea for the magazine, I knew how I wanted the magazine to feel aesthetically. I not only had no idea how to get there but I also didn’t know how to express what I was thinking. And then you came in, did your magic, took the vision and elevated it to a whole new level. It was impressive to watch you work and make a product out of an admittedly vague idea. How was that process for you? What was the first step in making sense of all this?
Nayeon: Actually, your input was very clear. I remember you coming to me with well-articulated thoughts on brands you found inspiring. I think you’re great at communicating, which made it easy for me to take the initial ideas and translate them into a cohesive design. That translation piece was exciting for me. I love to create structure.
Denis: Would you say that translation is a big part of your job—turning abstract concepts into something tangible that words alone can’t capture? The reason I ask is because it seemed to me you had this almost otherworldly intuition to anticipate what I would like, even when I was saying something that was not aligned to that direction.
Nayeon: Definitely. A big part of what I do is about identifying the potential—figuring out where an idea could go and then shaping it into something real. That said, it is easier when we have a strong foundation to build on. Between the two of us, we already chat a lot about creative and visual inspirations: graffiti on walls, streetwear, pop of color on a black-and-white image, fashion photography, the typography in Eytys’ early brand logo. That helped me anticipate what will resonate with you, and once we had that, it was all about our back-and-forth dialogue. Your decisiveness was also good. When I showed you options, you had strong preferences, which are helpful signals for identifying moments to explore deeper. Our moodboarding process, in particular, felt easy because you already had a sense of what you liked.
Visuals that inspired the art direction of the magazine’s first volume: graffiti (photo of Grace Jones on a graffitied wall in London’s Shoreditch neighborhood, also photo of a graffitied wall in Atlanta, Georgia); the brand Eytys’ logo; Elsworth Kelly’s paintings (two photos of his collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art); the black and white bars over characters’ eyes on the film cover of Parasite; Collage 029 made by Maria Tokar.
Denis: I distinctly remember some of these moments, like when you suggested we do the brush stroke over my eyes, and to have the brush strokes be in color on profile covers, and to have a grain effect in some of the photos. That was striking to me because I talked to you at different times before about the influences behind these ideas, like how I liked that Mason Gooding always crossed out his eyes in Instagram selfies, how I liked the black and white bars over characters’ eyes on the film cover of Parasite, how I liked the colors in Elsworth Kelly’s paintings, how I liked imperfect photography. But it was never in the context of the magazine, and yet you had the intuition to bring in those previous conversations and create the DNA of the brand.
Nayeon: Thank you! Yeah, that’s great to hear; it’s definitely how I feel about the work—every bit of context informs my decision. I’ve known you for a long time, so I get a sense of what might speak to you if I were, for instance, scrolling through Pinterest. So, even though we didn’t talk about those things in the beginning, I felt that they were worth suggesting because I knew at some point you had a connection to those visual elements. And that was ultimately the question I had to ask myself—how would Denis want to introduce himself to the readers? What is the feeling he wants to convey?
Denis: Another thing I noticed about your design when we were working together is that it’s very mathematical. You have a penchant for symmetric spacing, hierarchy, and structure. Even when we discussed typography for the magazine in the early days, you had precise suggestions on what should stand out versus what should fade into the background and how I needed to think about that relationship. It feels almost like an optimization model with which you’re balancing elements to create harmony. Is that your natural style? Maybe because you were a software engineer before?
Nayeon: I hear that a lot! I definitely lean toward structure. Working in tech has reinforced that because design in product development can be as much about function as much as it is about aesthetics. Unlike pure art, where messiness can be beautiful, product design is grounded in user behavior, data, and tested patterns. So when I approached creative direction for the magazine website, I wanted it to be visually appealing but also easy to navigate. Like, what was the most important takeaway Denis wanted readers to have? How do we guide them from one story to the next? It’s a similar challenge to product design. I love art and there is a place and time for it, but when it comes to design, it’s important to me that it’s not only beautiful but functional as well.
Photoshoots that inspired the photography in the magazine: Kirsten Owen for Zoo Magazine (photo by Laetitia Negre, styled by Benoit Bethume, makeup by Liz Daxauer, casting by Ben Grimes); Naomi Campbell and Kristen McMenamy for Vogue (photo by Steven Meisel, styled by Grace Coddington); Raquel Zimmerman for Vogue (photo by David Sims, styled by Grace Coddington); Mason Gooding for Men’s Health (photo by Andrew Stinson); Ibrahima Traoré and Mame Bineta Sane and Amadou Mbow for Dazed (photo by Matthew Tammaro, styled by Marcus Cuffie); Róisín Murphy for Harper’s Bazaar Serbia (photo by Ricardo Abrahao, styled by Marko Mrkaja, hair by Eamonn Hughes, makeup by Neil Young).
Denis: Interesting. I wonder then if you have a particular era of design or a particular design movement that you feel best represents how you think?
Nayeon: Maybe this sounds like a cop-out, but not really. I feel that empathy is my core strength as a designer. I always have a desire to click into the moment that is now, into the aesthetic or needs of the time we’re in, whatever they might be. I can totally look back at some movements, say Bauhaus, and appreciate why that made sense within the context of the time and place. But I think I am always trying to represent in my work what makes sense at this moment.
Denis: How do you do that? How do you keep your finger on the pulse of the world around you? Because you also paint and draw and do pottery, I imagine you have to be influenced by things that are not necessarily just functional and are not only within the domain of design?
Nayeon: Oh, for sure. I agree somewhat with the saying—I am paraphrasing it—that the best artists are great at stealing. I try to expose myself to as much creative input as possible and analyze the works of other artists and figure out what works for me. I think it's important for honing an instinct. And that goes for culture too; I want to know what’s happening now, and I want to see how other people are seeing the world. That’s how I think of you as well actually, as someone who likes to be at the forefront of culture—I feel like you are always interested in knowing why things are the way they are at this specific moment. That influenced how I saw the creative direction for the magazine. I wanted to bring that alertness I associate with you to the reader’s eyes.
Denis: It makes me realize that perhaps designers and writers share a trait. They’re both observers of the world maybe?
Nayeon: I think that’s spot on. Design and writing both feel deeply connected to understanding people. But writing always was challenging to me. That’s one part of what makes working on this magazine so fascinating for me. I see you produce great pieces over and over again. You seem to approach writing like a creative process—almost in the same way I approach design. So, maybe let’s flip the dialogue, and let me ask you about your process. What are the tools you relied on in the magazine? How did you know what the feel of the magazine should be like?
Denis: Well, it was helpful that I already had a format in mind when the idea for the magazine came. I was inspired by the arts-and-culture publications I have been reading over the past ten years, like Zoo Magazine, Dazed, AnOther, Dapper Dan, and i-D.
Nayeon: Those were the publications you showed me in the shop on Polk Street?
Denis: Yes, Smoke Signals Newsstand! I really like the feel of those magazines because they combine fashion photography and in-depth profile pieces. I knew I wanted the profiles to be more than just interviews—I wanted them to also have elements of creative nonfiction. I didn’t want the standard Q&A format, I wanted there to be a stylistic layer to it. There were specific magazine pieces that I thought were really well-done and that served as inspiration. The piece on Azealia Banks in Dazed that came out in 2023, the one that Time did on Robyn when her album Honey came out in 2018, the piece on Mads Mikkelsen in Zoo Magazine from 2015. Even this piece that Resident Advisor did on Tijana T, a DJ I like; it was a Q&A format but I loved the photography and that the questions were focused on the craft of DJing.
Nayeon: How did you decide that you wanted to focus on the people in your life for the profiles? Because those magazines focus usually on people in the public eye.
Denis: You know, I always keep thinking why I decided to flip that format on its head and apply the same level of glamor and focus to the people in my life. And really, I think it was about making a magazine that I wanted to read. I wanted it to be about the people I love and the people I find inspiring, with the type of photography I like, and the content I like. That is, for example, why music was such a big part of the magazine and why I wanted us to do dedicated content for the magazine soundtrack. Whenever I was reading other magazines, I kept thinking that it would be so great if each profile piece had an accompanying track because music has always been a medium through which I experience the world. So that’s really how it all came together. I kept having these ideas for an ideal magazine—ideal for me, that is—and then I thought that maybe it was time to stop daydreaming about it and just do it.
Nayeon: That makes a lot of sense. When you wrote my profile in the first issue, I was surprised by how much of you was in it. You didn’t just transcribe what I said—you wove in your own perspective, patterns you had noticed about me over time. That was really special to read. Was that always part of your approach?
Denis: Absolutely. The works of nonfiction writers had a big impact on why I approached the magazine in this way. Joan Didion, I just love how perceptive and incisive she was in her writing. I enjoyed reading George Orwell’s essays, his writing was so clear. And David Foster Wallace’s nonfiction stuff, some of his essays were hilarious. It was eye-opening to me that these writers allowed themselves to be opinionated, curious, and unafraid to take a stance. It’s funny you brought up that quote about artists being great at stealing, that’s definitely how I feel about my writing as well. Most of the time, I feel like I am trying to imitate—and by that I mean, unsuccessfully trying to imitate— these authors because I fell in love with the way they structured their stories. So, yeah, sorry; that was a very long-winded way to say that I wanted the profile pieces to be unapologetically subjective.
Nayeon: No, no, that’s really fascinating to hear. Because this is why I think I get so uninspired every time I sit to write something, because I feel like I have to be objective, and then it feels I am just reciting facts that are so dry and boring. I think it’s because my entire life I have been immersed in technical writing. It sounds like maybe this was something you also felt?
Materials and tools used in the production process: handwritten notes, sketches and digital notes on Goodnotes, design in Figma.
Denis: Oh, yeah. About five years ago, I read Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg. That book really changed everything for me. In the book, he talks about the importance of paying attention to what you notice as you go about your day. That we’ve been taught, through our education system, that what we notice is not important. So, whenever we write, we’re always quoting and citing and quoting and citing, essentially being afraid to voice our observations about the world. I remember finishing that book and feeling that, for the first time, someone told me that it was okay to write about what I see and how I think. I remember then looking back at the stuff I wrote when we were in school and when you and I worked at The Tech. It’s so apparent to me now that my voice was invisible back then. The language was correct and factual but extremely detached. And I think that stemmed from us being immersed in a hyper-scientific environment, in which subjectivity was frowned upon. I mean, if you read any scientific paper today, everything is written in passive voice and is so clinically detached because that’s the impression you want to leave—that your discovery happened, not that you made it happen.
Nayeon: So, because you went for subjectivity, did you know the story and the angle you were going to take even before the interviews? I remember feeling like you had a strong plan and that you put a lot of thought into the setting—you wanted people to choose where the interview happened and the places you would go to.
Denis: I actually didn’t know. That was also something I was very clear about from the beginning, that for each interview I wanted to be fully present, to be in the moment. I wanted people to structure the day in a way that represented them and I also wanted to come somewhat unprepared into each conversation, almost as a blank slate. The Artist Is Present by Marina Abramović is a performance I thought a lot about for the magazine. She said something profound about the people who came to participate in the performance with her—that for many of them, having the moment with Marina was the first time someone gave them undivided attention, and how that brought up a flurry of emotions in them. I was really touched by that and I wanted to have that mentality in the interviews: to come not overly prepared and to force myself to listen and truly see the person I was speaking to, even if it was a friend I knew for more than a decade. Like you, for example.
Nayeon: Oh, interesting. So the story for each person developed after the interview?
Denis: For sure. And, to be precise, often much, much later. Because I don’t write about it immediately. After the interview, I immediately select and retouch the photos I like, then I upload the handwritten notes and save them on a drive that I can easily access from anywhere. Then, I don’t look at any of these assets for at least three weeks so that I can get some distance from the experience. When I start to write, I revisit the notes and the photos, which is when the story starts to take shape in my mind. But I rarely write in a linear way. It’s not that I start at the beginning of the piece and then work my way to the end. I usually have a strong sense of a particular moment—a compelling ending, an interesting middle section, or a strong opening—and then I build around that.
Nayeon: Really? I didn’t know that. Does that mean that you don’t incorporate everything into the piece? Do you cut things out? Do you shuffle the order of events? Or do you try to stay true to the time you spent with your subjects?
Denis: I definitely do not incorporate everything, and if I feel it is necessary, I alter the order of events. I wasn’t interested in pure objectivity and I didn’t want to recite facts about the people I was interviewing. I wanted the moments to be elevated and even slightly magical by bringing in my own emotions and my own perception of time. I appreciate the movement of authenticity that has taken over the internet in the last few years, but what I like to see is an element of something inspirational, maybe at times unattainable, in any type of content. So, yes, my goal was to make compelling profile pieces and that meant curating them in a way to elevate the story. I guess it’s similar to what you said about design—you wanted the design to be not only beautiful but also functional, and I wanted the story to be not only functional but also beautiful?
Nayeon: Oh, I love that. You’re right, definitely, it’s the same tension. And that’s the art of it, finding balance without overindexing in either direction.
Denis: I think so, yes. To be fair, I am still learning how to do it. I feel like I only recently realized that you can have both. Even now when I look back at the sentences I wrote within the context of the magazine profiles, I will think to myself, ‘Wow, that was a boring sentence.’ or ‘That was such a pretentious sentence, what was I thinking?’ Perhaps the beauty is in that process, always striving for that balance and never quite achieving it.