Powerhouse couple Elliott Wilson and Danyel Smith have cornered the market as leaders in the journalism game in their various stints. Their latest venture, HRDCVR, is an ambitious magazine project that will cover art, music, politics and much more with an academic and artistic slant.
Wilson and Smith launched a Kickstarter campaign for HRDCVR, using the crowdfunding route to both raise the necessary capital for production of the “book-shaped magazine” but also fostering a true sense of community. As with most similar campaigns, varying levels of contributions come with respective perks. HRDCVR‘s aim might appear packed on paper, but that’s exactly the effect the creative team is hoping to craft. Although the HRDCVR‘s “Issue 1nce” has been tagged with the theme “The Fight,” the scope of the project is essentially omnidirectional.
From HRDCVR‘s Kickstarter page:
We’re still sorting it. But we want it all within the same HRDCVR, existing on papers of the highest quality, with illustration and photography from artists traditional and non-traditional. We believe one can adore DJ Snake and Cloud Nothings and Gerardo Ortiz and NIcki Minaj and still want to get deep into how things are moving at the protests in Venezuela, want to know who the humans are behind the net neutrality battles, want to prep for the 2016 elections. Danyel and Elliott believe, as they always have, that the only way to cover the New Everyone is with teams that reflect it.
Hip-Hop Wired caught up with Wilson to get deeper details on HRDCVR, and to find out what readers can expect from the veteran journalists.
“We want HRDCVR to have an impact. When someone picks up the book, and sees that some issues will have an actual hardcover, we want them to walk away impressed with that,” said Wilson.
Wilson added, “Picking up a magazine, it’s mostly ads and little content. We want HRDCVR to be something you want to collect, put on your coffee table, you want to get on Instagram and social media to show the world you have a copy of this great and fresh product. We’re trying to create a moment. Along with Danyel, we’ve created magazines and movements in the past that thankfully gave people that moment. That’s what we’re aiming for with HRDCVR.”
Wilson and Smith hope to raise $150,000 to fund the HRDCVR project. Smith, currently a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, has enlisted the assistance of her academic colleagues on the project as well.
Learn more about HRDCVR by following this link. Check out the video from the Kickstarter campaign below.
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Photo: Kickstarter
