The Great Discontent connected and inspired the creative community with honest stories of beginnings, risk, failure, and the creative path.
Initially started as an online-only interview magazine in 2011, The Great Discontent grew to include 7 internationally distributed print editions, film projects, a podcast, and over 20 sold out live events in NYC. TGD was the first fully responsive long-form editorial site on the Internet, setting design and layout trends used by popular editorial sites across the web. Among the over 300 influential creatives featured are Leon Bridges, Paloma Lanna, Sharon Van Etten, Reggie Watts, Roxanne Gay, Michael Bierut, Stefan Sagmeister, Tavi Gevinson, Seth Godin, and Mara Hoffman.
It’s difficult to summarize over 9 years of work on an indie publication like TGD—it covered so much territory being primarily run by 2 people for it’s duration. I will say it was the both the hardest and most rewarding project I’ve ever worked on. From writing the first lines of code in 2010 to transitioning it to a new owner almost a decade later, I feel very honored to have had the privilege of creating a platform to tell the stories of so many artists and creatives.
NOTE: I sold TGD in November 2019 and have had no involvement with the project since.
Work shown to illustrate creative and art direction. While the design is mine, many of the photos are the work of the talented artists I commissioned while working on TGD.
—Ryan
Art Direction
Design
Photography
Video