A MAGAZINE LAUNCH

So, here we are. It's the beginning of February, and I think I'm finally over the stress and trauma that this project caused me so, what better way to celebrate than telling you all about it? Particularly if you follow me over on Instagram, I'm sure you'll know a bit about what this post is about. If not, to summarise, I study Journalism at university - I'm in my second year - and one of my modules during the first semester this year was, working in groups, to 'pitch, produce and publish a magazine'.

We worked in groups of six and my group chose to produce a literary magazine, entitled 'PAGE'. We were a group of book lovers and, when we really thought about it, there isn't exactly a magazine for our target audience - millennials - around, so here we set out to create a literary magazine for young people, by young people.

We split the team into different roles pretty much straight away and came up with a pretty solid list of articles and content ideas and divided them between each of us. I was the artistic director for the magazine - obviously writing my articles, too - and I thoroughly enjoyed the role. It was a step outside of my comfort zone because, like the rest of my group, I'm fairly unexperienced in Adobe InDesign and, although I have a slight bit of experience with Photoshop, I obviously have never designed an entire magazine before. So it was a learning experience, to say the least.

The first few weeks were pretty calm, for the group. Myself and Emily, who was the editor-in-chief of PAGE, set out to plan and create some basic spreads for the magazine, along with writing our own articles. I was pretty ahead of myself in terms of time management and, because I knew the design side of things would be quite hectic towards the end of the project, I got my four articles finished and finalised within the first three weeks or so, while everyone else was pretty relaxed about theirs. But, then again, they didn't have to think about designing the magazine, so it makes sense.

To say we had a lot of ups and downs throughout the project would be an understatement. It was a test of our patience - and that goes for every single member of the group, I think. During our first industry pitch, one of the panel said that our contents page was a 'disgrace' and that definitely knocked our confidence but, at the same time, gave us the push that we needed to really get ourselves into gear and figure out exactly what direction we wanted to go in and how we were going to make it happen. People missed deadlines, people didn't turn up to meetings, people changed what they were doing without consulting anyone else in the team, there were arguments, there were (brief) fall outs, people cried, I'm pretty sure I was on the verge of multiple breakdowns and there were a hell of a lot of hours spent in the library. But, ultimately, we pulled it off.

The project didn't only serve as a learning experience and a taste of what it's really like in the magazine industry, but it was an opportunity to get to know other people on the course and I made some of the best friends through working on PAGE. It was an experience that, despite all the drama and stress, I wouldn't have changed for the world. And I'm proud of what we produced - especially in terms of design. To say I barely knew anything design-wise in September, I've come a long way. I thoroughly enjoyed the project, and if anything, it's only made me want to go into magazine journalism even more. Although it would be nice to avoid these group projects at uni for a bit longer, thanks.