Picture: Dani May Red in the tire swing. Photograph by John Tiscornia.
Most companies that build tools for creators ask a creator what she thinks after the thing ships. We'd rather have one at the table while we build it, in red sequins if she likes.
We're thrilled to announce that Dani May Red, founder and CEO of Daniland, has joined Soulcraft's Advisory Board as Creative Advisor. She brings two things no company can hire: a creative eye that turns a day's shoot into a magazine, and a plain, stubborn passion for leaving a place better than she found it. Her brief is simple to say and hard to do: keep the creator's side of every decision in the room.
Her goal: a safe, inclusive place where creators own their work and make a living
Dani did not come to Soulcraft to get a website. She came with a goal she had carried for years on other people's platforms: a place where models, influencers, designers and performers of every kind are safe, are welcome as they are, make real money from their work, and own every piece of it. Daniland is that goal, built: a network where each creator has a place of her own that she owns outright, with a studio, a magazine, a shop, a stage and a deals desk already in it, and her safety kept by the site rather than left to her.
Safe means her rules, kept for her: family-friendly by rule, a stranger's first message held until she allows it, one tap that keeps someone away everywhere. Inclusive means the door is open to anyone who makes things, from the girl next door to exotic, free to join, in her own look and under her own name, with no ranking deciding who gets seen. Making money means she is paid by the issue, the membership, the printed copy, the piece in her shop, the ticket to her stage and the brand that comes to her, with a flat five percent to the house and the rest landing in her own account. Owning her content means her pictures at full size forever, her pages, her readers' names and her Bluesky account on her own site, and the right to leave with all of it. Those four words are the whole of Daniland, and they are the brief she brings to our board.
Fourteen years in front of the camera, and behind the microphone
Dani has been a working model, screen performer and recording artist since 2012. Editorial and fashion, fitness and swim, runway, pinup, bodypaint, cosplay, and shoots with exotic animals, bears and big cats among them, which are exactly as hard as they sound. Film and commercial work, with screen credits to her name. A rock record, made the independent way. Her own profile sums up the range as "from the girl next door to exotic," and the 185 endorsements on it from photographers, stylists and fellow models say the rest: she comes prepared, she gives the whole day, and the set is better with her on it.
What the profile does not show is the maker. Dani directs her own shoots, builds her own issues page by page, and names her own worlds: Animals, Red Carpet, Runway. Seventy-three thousand people follow her on Instagram and Facebook, and as of this autumn they are the readers of a magazine she publishes herself.
And for years she has been the person newer models, dancers, singers and photographers message when nobody else will answer: what should this rate be, what should this release say, is this job real. She has been a mentor one message at a time, and she has never charged for it. That is the passion underneath everything else: she wants the place to be better for the next person in it, not just for her.
Why a working creator belongs at the table
Here's the simple version: Dani is the person we build Venue for, and she got here before we were finished.
Daniland is the first creator venue on Soulcraft and the first network of its kind, built for the thousands of models, designers and performers who make a living with a camera and a microphone and have never owned the place they are seen. Every part of it was built to answer a question Dani asked, usually from the field, usually that week: what was slow on her phone, what a reader could not find, what a brand wanted, what felt unsafe. She has been the first creator and the co-designer, and the hardest to satisfy, which is exactly the point.
Everything she asked for, built
A magazine of her own. Daniland's issues read the way a magazine is meant to be read: a cover, a masthead, a contents page, then the plates, turned page by page on a phone. A tap on a page can open her shop; a page can be a film; an issue is shared as its cover with a link home. The same issue is printed by a press and posted to the buyer, and every issue is also a coloring magazine and a coloring book, each photograph drawn into a line you can colour with a fingertip or on paper that takes crayon.
A studio and a stage. Hundreds of photographs and films come off her phone in one go, kept at full size forever. The Velvet Theater is a live theater on her own site, with tickets or a free door, a sponsor's name on the curtain, a recording kept afterwards and a members' room backstage, and a reading hour lets her open a new issue with her readers at a set time, with their questions on her desk.
One composer, every network. A picture and a line, posted once to her site and to The Street, Soulcraft's own feed of local businesses and the people who make things, and out to Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook and Threads as previews that send people home to her.
Brands come to her, and everything stays hers. Casting calls that fit her gathered every night; custom orders and brand deals as jobs with quotes, deposits and clear steps; her press page with her rates in her own words. Her address, her pages, her pictures and her readers' names live on her own site, in a store of its own, with her look on every page, no ads beside her work, and an agreement of five plain promises shown before anything else.
Then she did the thing that made this decision easy. She opened her world to other creators. The Daniland network gives the people she believes in their own site in her look, with their name on it, inside a day, free to join, with every customer, record and dollar staying theirs. Everything built for Dani is built once, in the engine every Soulcraft venue runs on, so a candle bar in Charlotte, a kitten rescue, a swimwear designer and a chef's table get the same magazine, stage, shop and safety the day it lands for her. That's our whole thesis, lived by someone with everything to lose if we get it wrong. We want that person telling us when we're wrong.
A kinder place to be seen
Dani has spent twelve years on social media, on platforms that count her: likes, comments, followers, a number under every picture and a comment box under every number. She asked us for something different, and this week it went live. On Daniland and on The Street there are no likes and no public comments. A reader can thank her, write her a note only she sees, sign the guestbook at the back of an issue, or send a page to a friend as a postcard. Nobody is ranked, nothing is counted in public, and a block is a block, everywhere, with one tap. She asked for it for every creator on the Street, not only for herself.
What an advisor with her personality changes
Dani does not do vague. She'll tell you a sheet has one tap too many, that a word sounds like a bank wrote it, that a feature is clever and nobody will use it. She also does not do grim. The fun is the point, for her and for the people who follow her, and she'll keep reminding us that a tool for creators should feel like a good shoot day: prepared, warm, and a little bit of a show.
She has been telling us what a creator needs since the first week of Daniland, and reminding us more than once that "tools with a soul" is a promise, not a tagline. Now she has a seat where that knowledge shapes what we build, not just what we fix.
I've spent my whole career on other people's platforms, and none of them were ever mine. Soulcraft is the first place where the people building it actually want the creator to own the thing: my pictures, my readers, my money, my rules. I'm here to keep it that way, to make it safe for the next girl who signs up, and to make sure it stays fun.
— Dani May Red, Founder and CEO, Daniland; Creative Advisor, Soulcraft
Every company says it listens to its users. We built Daniland with ours, and she pushed back on us every week until it was right. Dani knows what it costs to make a living with a camera and a microphone, and she knows the difference between a tool that helps and a tool that takes. A magazine instead of a feed, thanks instead of likes, a network where every creator keeps her own customers: those were her asks before they were our features. Now she has a seat where that knowledge shapes what we build, not just what we fix.
— David Snelling, CEO, Soulcraft
What comes next
As Creative Advisor, Dani will keep her eye on how Venue, Studio and The Street feel to the people who make things for a living, on the creator network as it grows beyond Daniland, on the magazine as more creators publish their own, and on the moments we'd be tempted to shave a corner off the creator's side of a deal. You'll see her hand in the parts that feel like they were made by someone who has stood on a set at 5 AM, and in the decisions you never see, which are the ones that keep a creator's work her own.
If you want to know who she is before she tells you what you got wrong, start with her magazine at danimayred.com.
Welcome to the board, Dani. Bring the sequins.
Soulcraft builds tools with a soul for people who make things: Venue, Workshop, Brainy and Anima. Meet the whole team at soulcraft.com/team.