Best of Welcome Magazine 2025
Highlight interviews and articles from the last year
2025 was the biggest year yet for Welcome.jpeg’s editorial arm. We published over 100 pieces, from interviews to op-eds to cultural analysis. In February we launched a new editorial website. In December we centralized our written efforts on Substack, and debuted a newsletter.
As we embark on 2026, we have collected some of our best pieces from the last year. Many of these articles are usually paywalled, but we have temporarily unlocked them for all readers.
Enjoy, and look forward to the next 12 months, which are sure to exceed the last 12 in every way.
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The Return to Early Virtual Aesthetics
For at least the last three decades, hyperrealism has been a central goal of virtual visual development. Sharper resolution on screens yes, but also improved texture quality and anisotropic filtering for our games, anti-aliasing and higher frame rates for our cameras, more immersive home entertainment systems, a system of judging virtual images by repre…
The 1199 Interview
Widespread access to the past through digital images is a relatively new development, and all mediums are still trying to figure out exactly what it means. An unfortunate result is that nostalgia has become a blight, and memory laundering is rampant. But from the mass of superficial and opportunistic nods to the past, usually made to the ends of selling…
Martial Aesthetics
War has been ceremonial for as long as it has been. Mythologies, intentional design, and ritualized symbols are rarely far behind bullets, bombs, arrows.
What Modernism Can't Teach Us
We the modern subjects, among the products of our possession and buildings of our residence, in the built jungle of essential and aesthetic objects we call home, are not, on the whole, impressed with the way things look.
A$AP Rocky's Street Goth Era
A$AP Rocky’s style has had many chapters. One of his first was part of a more general trend known as ‘Street Goth.’ It began in the early 2010s with all black outfits, layering avant garde designer fashion with snapbacks and sneakers, combining obscure designers with bigger brands in a unique aesthetic that defined an era of streetwear. With 2010s fashi…
The Feng Interview
Something is happening in the UK underground. A new energy pushed by new faces, wide ranging in taste and look and sound, is producing a wave of music the feels exciting in a way not a lot else does right now. Artists like fakemink, EsDeekid, YT— and: 19 year old rapper Feng.
How Recessions Impact Art
The relationship between a society’s economic health and its art is complex, dynamic, and contradictory in outcome. There’s the old saying that hard times make strong people, who make good times, which make weak people, who make hard times. It’s tempting to read artistic production into this same pattern. But hardship also snuffs, and leisure can be gen…
A Hypebeast Retrospective
The early 2010s were a different time in fashion, and a pivotal era for the integration of various subcultures. Widespread interest in niche designers exploded, and releases were closely watched and highly meaningful. The lower volume of consistently hyped brands made it easier to predict what was going to be hot. Instagram started kicking into gear and…
The Indiana420 Interview
To the popular eye, the worlds of professional photography and videography can often feel stale and homogenous, industries full of fungible talents where one hire is as good as the next. There are, however, some unique artistic visions in these fields, image-makers whose style leaves an unmistakable mark.
Welcome To Chris Heyn Jr.
Some people do things visibly and loudly. One look and you know everything. Others never announce what it is exactly that they do, may remain of unknown occupation for months or years or entire careers, and even manage to build a following on this exact obscurity.
Quick Thoughts on the Death of Trends
The Trend is dead, has been. Micro-trends were its breakdown product and now apparently those have broken down too. Brands selling consumer products, the agencies selling the brands their insights, and anyone with a stake in the idea of their coolness want to know: What’s next?
What's Really Killing Art
Art’s imminent death is proclaimed every so often. Right now, it’s supposedly dying very frequently. These narratives vary in their reasoning but hang together in shape: AI or the economy or the Art Market or Instagram or politics, a blackclad executioner’s axe hovering over an otherwise healthy neck.
Our New Gothic Age
In recent years, Gothic aesthetics have permeated just about every artistic medium, underground and mainstream alike. And while this trend has been apparent for some time, it reached new peaks in 2025. Frankenstein is one of the season’s biggest movies, and Charli xcx is doing an album for a
The Slushy Noobz Interview
Martin and Hamzah are one of the internet’s best friendships. On their YouTube channel, Slushy Noobz, you can see them do many things (play video games, learn to DJ, go to Comic-Con on shrooms, box each other), but the reason to keep watching is to behold the simple beauty of two guys genuinely enjoying each other’s company.