Hex & Muse
Building an independent editorial brand across audio, digital, illustration and physical experiences.

Hex & Muse is an independent creative project I founded, exploring the places where witchcraft, folklore, art, history and contemporary culture meet. Beginning with a podcast, I’ve developed its identity and creative direction alongside researching, writing, hosting and producing the episodes.

My work brings together brand design, illustration, digital design and storytelling, with each part contributing to a recognisable world. As Hex & Muse grows, I’m exploring how that world can extend into publishing and physical objects while retaining the personality that connects everything.

Building the identity

The challenge was creating an identity that could accommodate the breadth of the subject matter. An episode exploring ancient mythology has a different atmosphere from one about horror cinema or seasonal rituals, but each still needs to feel at home within Hex & Muse.

I developed the visual language across the podcast artwork, website and social content, using typography, imagery, illustration and composition to bring consistency to different stories. The identity provides a framework for experimentation, allowing the subject to influence each piece while keeping the wider brand recognisable.

Giving the brand a voice

The writing is as much a part of Hex & Muse’s identity as the visual design. Research moves between folklore, art, literature, history and film, which I shape into scripts intended to feel engaging and conversational, with room for humour, curiosity and the occasional strange tangent.

Developing both the content and its presentation allows me to carry an idea through the whole experience, from the story and recording to its accompanying artwork and promotional copy. It’s an ongoing process of considering how something reads, looks and sounds, and how those elements support one another.

From listening to something you can hold

That thinking is now extending into Wild Ephemera, a snail-mail project in development that brings together personal letters, original artwork and printed keepsakes around monthly themes.

The January edition, The Art of Becoming, explores metamorphosis through butterflies, moths, mythology and the changing year. I’m developing the letter, painting and accompanying calendar card together, so the written and visual pieces share references without repeating one another. The calendar direction draws on ornamental printmaking, with tactile ink textures and imagery connected to the original painting.

The tone becomes more personal in this format. Each letter begins “Dearest you,” inviting the reader into a reflection, while the artwork and objects quietly carry its themes. Planning for both Southern and Northern Hemisphere seasons also means considering how the same creative project can feel relevant to people experiencing different times of year.

A brand with room to grow

Hex & Muse brings together the parts of my practice that I enjoy most: developing a concept, researching its possibilities, creating its visual language and working through the details that bring it to life.

As an ongoing independent project, it gives me space to build connections between disciplines and develop new work within a consistent creative direction. The podcast is its starting point, with illustration, writing and physical editions opening up further ways for people to spend time with the brand.

Role
Founder & Creative Director — Emily Esen

Scope
Brand Identity · Art Direction · Illustration · Website & Digital Design · Research & Writing · Podcast Hosting & Production · Editorial & Print Developmen