It has been one year since we officially released our very first print magazine, and this marks our third issue. In that time, we have grown into a global team working across different regions and disciplines. Our first magazine was created in good ole standard Canva. For the second issue, our Executive Editor, Lilli, a genius, used the tools offered by the platform we publish with. With this issue, we reached a major goal in bringing together a full team to work within more stable, professional and efficient graphic design programs.
Our graphic lead and head of our marketing team, Michelle, is an absolute wizard, I cannot thank her enough for all she’s done. What we’ve built together truly feels like a dream team, and throughout the creation of this issue, I’ve felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude for everyone involved.
For this issue, we wanted to honor our debut while continuing to lean into the avant-garde, punk, and grunge aesthetic that has always shaped Kailon. At the same time, we wanted to create space for each artist within the pages to fully be themselves, much like our debut runway show last September. I had the unexpected honor of interviewing our largest features, many being artists I have long admired from afar.
The cover art is especially meaningful. After Nikola Djukich submitted his work for our last print issue, ‘Queer Alchemy’, I was immediately captivated by his style. It felt exactly like what I had been searching for, for this issue. Nikola graciously agreed and created the collage that now defines our cover, a piece that carries a deeply powerful story.
In Nikola’s own words,
“For the Kailon cover art, the piece came from a very personal and transformative place. I started with an image of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, as a kind of structural and symbolic anchor. From there, I layered different images of my body and my friend Nika’s body—photographs we had taken over the years, fragments of ourselves. It was very much about the body as a site of experience, vulnerability, and identity.
The work emerged after a conversation with my friend about our experiences with anxiety and panic attacks. For months, I felt like I was going through it alone, but reconnecting with him and hearing his story made me feel seen, understood, and less isolated. That relief, that shared experience of struggle and survival, became central to the piece.
Through this layering—of flesh, of personal history, and of the goddess Nike—I wanted to capture a sense of transformation, acceptance, and victory. It’s about witnessing ourselves, acknowledging the challenges and the trauma, and still celebrating life and resilience. The threads of flesh, divinity, and self come together as a reflection of survival, friendship, and the reclaiming of personal power.”
Nikola’s full feature interview is incredibly powerful, but passages like these stayed with me. This past year was difficult, there were many moments where I felt alone, carrying everything in silence. It is through community, through reading and hearing shared experiences, that we begin to feel seen, understood, and less alone.
To quote Nikola once more,
“The piece represents a triumph over self-doubt, over isolation, and over the anxiety that had weighed heavily on us. It’s about two people witnessing each other’s survival and claiming that, despite the chaos, everything is going to be okay. That was the emotion and sense of triumph I wanted to capture.”
I believe it’s vital for people to know they are not alone. While Kailon has hit the ground running, we are still very new and my greatest hope is that this platform continues to uplift artists who remind readers that everything is going to be okay. That you are not alone in this human experience. That you are loved. That you have something beautiful to share with the world.
And we hope, deeply, to be a part of that.
