“Holmes hopes that Topic.com, her new project at First Look Media, will help rekindle her love for the web. The consumer-facing publication, published monthly, is designed to be the antithesis of the kinds of publications that induced her disillusionment: Rather than focus on text to tell stories, Topic.com is highly visual, and will be built around video, photography, and illustration. Furthermore, the necessarily extended development times of these visual projects means that Topic.com is, almost by nature, largely removed from the news cycle. As with magazines, this will give it time to breathe and produce longer, more considered work, Holmes said.
“It’s not that I don’t think there’s validity in following the news cycle, but it’s a very competitive space. I don’t think we’re interested in competing in it,” Holmes said. “We’re interested in creating an experience that’s reflective of the culture, but not reactive to it.”
