By Claudia Wong
Publishing a magazine from scratch is not simple at all but
I had the honour and pleasure to work with a team of five hardworking individuals
to execute it. With our food theme in mind, we named our magazine NOSH because
it is quirky and easy to remember. Like every new project, there are bound to
be obstacles that will require courage and perseverance to overcome – and so the
six of us did.
I am one of the two designers for NOSH. Besides that, I
contributed five articles that were featured on the final magazine product,
namely ‘Success at Wok’, ‘Is Gordon Ramsay A Gorilla Or Not?’, ‘Eating Right
For Sweet Slumber Nights, ‘Maki San’ review and last but not least, ‘Wanton Mee’.
Initially when I first joined writing lab, I had no idea
what was in store for me. I was clueless on how to embark on a magazine project
and where or how to start. With the guide of Ms Koh and Mr Victor Seow, my team
and I then took steps to progress further ahead. I could still recall there was
one period of time when we were all stuck in a rut on the story ideas for our
magazine. There seemed to be few or no interesting pieces that caught our eye,
and Ms Koh was not impressed with them too. After what seemed like an eternity,
our editor, Scott selected and organized our final story ideas to be put in the
magazine. Finally, we could move on to the next step which was to start writing
the articles each week following a deadline.
This was a long and tiresome journey because it was
difficult to get the right angles and perfect story that fits our overall
magazine. We had to be consistent in each of our writing, and at the same time
create our own voice for the magazine to stand out from the rest. Being
assigned to five articles sounds easy but it required a lot of time and effort
to accomplish and I have to say the experience was worthwhile after all as I felt
a great sense of achievement from it.
Amidst the writing, my other designer, Dewi and I had to
quickly get started on the designing and layout of the magazine. We came up
with layout sketches and agreed on the standard typography and set-up for the whole
magazine. As it was my first time being a graphic designer in all of my
projects thus far, I was nervous and sceptical of my own abilities. I was
clueless on how to use InDesign and I felt that I had not much past design
experience to back up. Nonetheless, with the encouragement of my team members
and lecturers, I pressed on and studied on InDesign tutorials and whatnot for
many late nights just to master the basics. As I gradually improved on my
InDesign skills, I was able to experiment and play with the different software
options to beautify the layouts.
The most challenging part of all these is the refining of
the layouts for the magazine. It required so much precision, consistency,
creativity and diligent effort to achieve the results we wanted. I must admit
that I was very lazy and almost gave up halfway but the rest of the team
cheered me on. Although it was very time-consuming to complete 12 layouts
within a few short weeks, the final outcome of the magazine was worth all the
blood, sweat and tears.
I am really glad that I had the opportunity to work with
these people, and of course the lecturers who took their time to advice and
give feedback on our performance along the way. I learnt so much from everyone - the writers who did an amazing job creating interesting stories, the photographer who snapped all the lovely photos for the magazine, the editors who made all of this work - it would not be the same without you. NOSH magazine would not have
materialized if not for these people and I truly had a blast being a part of this
magazine project. All the excitement would die down but the memories made from
this period will last all the way with me, deeply etched in my heart.
Thank you
for the wonderful journey, noshies!
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