Personal blog
After Instagram, I moved the blog to Daily Telefrag, a Russian-language community platform focused on video games and pop culture, and continued writing about games, pop culture and mental health. Over time, these subjects began to overlap: I started using characters, storylines and situations from games as a way to talk about psychology, lived experience and relationships.
The name The Daily Telefrag is a play on The Daily Telegraph and the gaming term “telefrag” — killing an opponent with a teleporter in an action game.
Task
Adapt the blog’s existing visual style to a different platform while keeping the posts recognisable among a large amount of user-generated content.
Solution
From the previous design, I kept one simple recurring element: a dotted line along the top and bottom edges of each cover. It could suggest a perforation, the edge of a postage stamp or a strip of film, while bringing very different images together into one visual system.
Reader comments showed that the system did work as a recognisable visual cue: over time, the dotted border became associated with my posts and with a familiar standard of writing. People could recognise who had written a post from the cover before opening it.
Result
The blog gained more than 800 followers in its first six months. Several posts won competitions organised by the community as well as contests supported by the platform’s editorial team.
Readers also told me that my posts about mental health helped them make better sense of their own experiences, look for support and find appropriate help — for example, information about starting psychotherapy or books about traumatic experiences.
In 2023, my involvement in the community led to an invitation to join the jury of a local virtual photography competition.
Selected articles:
The relationships between the protagonists of Vampyr as an example of profound love
Winner of a community contest with the largest cash prize in the site’s history as of 2023.
Read on Daily Telefrag
LocJAM: Taking part and winning
Article on Daily Telefrag ·
Portfolio case study
The Dark Mod localisation
Article on Daily Telefrag ·
Portfolio case study
My personal favourite games by year, 1994–2022
Winner of both editorial and community competitions.
Read on Daily Telefrag
My five weeks in a psychiatric hospital in Germany
A personal account of my experience in a psychiatric hospital.
Read on Daily Telefrag
SnowRunner screenshot contest: behind the scenes
A report on serving as a jury member for a virtual photography competition.
Read on Daily Telefrag
