EDITORIAL PROJECT
The Departures Relaunch
Evolving the preeminent luxury travel and culture publication’s north star — from price tag to personal point of view.
In 2020 I was brought on to relaunch the preeminent luxury travel and culture publication Departures. While the over three year tenure would soon evolve into the daily rhythms of running a magazine (reporting overseas, writing, editing, etc), early stages contained ground-up brand building and creative strategy.
During this period, I developed foundational columns, video series, and language crystallizing the new Departures identity — a highly personal, textured, and soulful magazine that placed value not on a price tag, but a point of view.
Over the course of those three years, we kept our audience of 4 million U.S. American Express Platinum Card® and Centurion® Members highly engaged, with an average of 4 minutes on the website site and an average weekly open rate of 46.1% across our 4 million subscriber base. From 2022 to 2023, our revenue increase was 71%. In 2023 our average advertiser deal size was $141.9K.
I ran a series called Beyond Words, each week introducing one word from a particular language with no direct translation — its meaning speaking to some theme or philosophy reflective of its local culture. I developed our signature questionnaire, Impressions, a list of prompts probing at the intersection between travel and emotion.
As we entered our second phase of the relaunch — our print issues — I created and ran our signature chef questionnaire, Flavor Profile, spotlighting hyperlocal chefs like the Brooklyn’s Ayo Balogun and Mexico City’s Eleyna Reygadas, opening each conversation with the same intimate query, “How do you define delicious?”
