About the Title and Project: Connection (Project intro)

The Beginning of Connection

Connection is a series of promotional material I created to represent underground queer raves and nightlife. It began as a school assignment where I had to create something I've never tried before, so I decided to design my first flyer and named it Connection. The design depicts a person sewing themself together along a Y-incision using an aux cord to signify how music keeps us alive and connected, hence the name, Connection.

My goal was to use the flyer as a proof of concept so I could pitch my artwork to event organizers, and it worked! Within a month I was part of the Roflcopter Party team working on their creepypasta themed party named "Partypasta" for Halloween.

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Bella Montagna. Connection Flyer 1 (2024)

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Second Flyer

The second installment in my Connection series examined how vintage queer nightlife flyers relied on coded, "show-not-tell" symbolism to discreetly signal queerness and protect their communities. I incorporated reclaimed queer symbols like the pink triangle, BDSM latex and leather culture, and a reference to a recent queer meme on twitter to link historic queer symbols with modern digital humor.

Visually, it used an old stencil-style font and was limited to grayscale with the exception of the color pink to mimic the printing techniques DIY queer shows were limited to due to budget constraints. You may notice some of the artists from that lineup appear again in this newest edition of Connection. This reflects the reality of the queer underground scene shows where the niche naturally leads to recurring lineups because the performer pool is small but deeply interconnected!


I argued that much of today’s queer event promotion has drifted away from those intentional strategies, often favoring surface-level pop-culture aesthetics instead of meaning. At first glance, creating an early internet-themed flyer might position me within the very trend I critique- but I see something different happening here.

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Bella Montagna. Connection Flyer 2 (2025)

While older flyers were queer-coded in the sense of being subtle, symbolic, and low-key for safety, this new piece is quite literally queer-coded: as a queer designer, I'm coding this webpage myself. For many Gen-Z queer creators, the chaotic, nostalgic aesthetics of early 2000s internet culture have become a new symbolic language– one that transforms randomness and "cringe" into a contemporary form of resistance.

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Third Flyer

My third piece for Connection features the character you see in the center of this website's home page, and clicking on it will give more information about my design process.
furries? emojiI also briefly explain the character design in the “furries?!” section, so make sure to check that out!

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Bella Montagna. Connection Flyer 3 (2025)

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Project Four

The fourth addition to Connection was a 3d art piece featuring my character posing on top of a Pioneer DJ CDJ2000NXS, a popular dj deck for nightclubs. I cannot explain just how intense this project was. I 3D modeled a low-poly (low polygon count) figurine of my character in the 3D program Blender, got it printed in resin, sanded, airbrushed, hand painted, and assembled the figurine.

For the base, I painstakingly calculated the exact dimensions of a CDJ2000NXS based on the only available image online that gave very few measurements and picked up a cardboard moving box from Home Depot and got to work. I’ll spare you the drama, but just know I am not known for my math skills, it was my second time using blender, first time 3D printing, first time airbrushing, things broke last second and I am a perfectionist.

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Bella Montagna. 3D Connection Project (2025)

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Fifth Flyer: This Webpage

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Following the frist flyer, I've worked for numerous events and musicians in the queer underground music scene, many of whom were my lifelong inspirations. As I've been working in the promotional design field, I've noticed a growing trend for events targeted at Gen Z LGBTQ ravers: Nostalgia.

Our generation has been reclaiming nostalgic internet history to create inclusive events reflecting the online communities that raised us – spaces born from creativity, survival, and belonging. This early 2000s inspired webpage continues the Connection series, expressing my love for the underground queer rave community and connecting others to the sounds, designs, and stories that keep us alive.

This is the story of not just this project, but my life and others in my community. As of writing this there is over 8,000 lines of code in totality on this website. I have spent the past 3 months researching, creating, and coding this project to express my love for the queer underground music scene and my community. To those of you who have read this far, thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoy the website! There is a lot of content and nearly everything is interactable, so explore!

awesome overload by mr stamp made with vs code ambitious my html sucks classic images