Let’s Worm

Let’s Worm began in 2017 as a creative exchange between writer Dan Murphy and me. Dan had a Tumblr for his stories and would ask me to illustrate them. Over time, the collaboration loosened into a broader way of prompting one another: sometimes a story leads, sometimes an image does, and the work develops by worming around inside an idea until it becomes something neither of us would have made alone.

The name also carries a small piece of our history. After staying with Dan in Brooklyn while I was living in Chicago, I drew a group of worms spelling out “thank you.” The worm became both a mascot and a useful verb for the process.

We have made more than 100 stories, illustrations, and paired experiments together. The work moves between flash fiction, longer stories, drawing, painting, character studies, collage, and sequential images without forcing every piece into one house style.

Dan leads the writing and defined most of the collection's editorial categories. I create the illustrations and visual responses, occasionally edit or offer opinions on the writing, and help shape the collaboration as it evolves.

The original Tumblr gave the stories somewhere to live, but it never fully expressed the collaboration as its own project. I designed and built the current SvelteKit and Sanity site to give Let’s Worm a dedicated identity and editorial structure.

The public site is a curated selection from the larger archive—not a migration of all 100-plus works. Its logo, squiggles, paper-like surfaces, and proudly wormy details create continuity while leaving room for each story and image to set its own tone.

I created the illustrations and visual responses, designed the identity and interface for the current site, and built its frontend and content system. My role also includes the informal editorial conversation that has sustained the collaboration since 2017. Dan Murphy is the project's writer and primary architect of its written categories.