NYU AGSA:
Immortalizing the African Graduate Student Experience
Overview:
The African Graduate Student Association (AGSA) is the preeminent student-run platform for Africans at New York University (NYU). As a cornerstone community, the AGSA needed a publication to document student life, culture and the work being done by the organization’s members throughout the year.
Project Specs:
Timeline <4 Weeks
Format Print and Digital Magazine
50-60 pages
Platform Adobe Suite
InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop
Summary:
When discussing the goal for this project, the team from AGSA shared that they wanted the magazine to be a seamless blend of professionalism and creativity. This publication is the third annual student magazine from the organization, and the group emphasized how important it was to have a more dynamic and engaging layout than in years past.
One challenge that this project presented was ratio between the amount of textual content to the amount of visual content that the clients had to work with. Additionally, a large portion of the visual content provided was low-resolution, presenting issues for achieving the print size and quality desired. In order to overcome these challenges, I worked with the group to find additional visual content which would reflect the student’s experience at NYU. I asked the group to consider all the senses when reflecting upon the year: how did this year smell? what did it sound like? how did it feel? As a result, we decided to include sections with playlists full of songs played throughout the year and student art that embodied the feelings and challenges the group faced. This approach turned was was once a challenge, into a win that more accurately immortalized a moment in time for AGSA.
A second challenge that this project presented was content organization. When beginning this effort with AGSA, the content Editor shared that they were struggling to find an organization for magazine that felt balanced and well paced. Collaboratively, we decided to switch from three large and uneven sections, to 8 smaller sections. Each section is marked by a unique print, which is listed on the Table of Contents page, on several transition pages and subtly in the background of the section’s pages.