The story of our chapter magazine begins about a year ago.
Once upon a time, I was sitting in the school’s radio station, doing my regularly scheduled show with two of my roommates Riley and Ellie. I’m not sure what month this was, but I think either March or April. Regardless, as we were chatting about clubs and upcoming events on the show, Ellie quickly said, “Woah, you guys should do a print magazine,”.
And so, a year later, (precisely three days ago) we launched our first-ever print edition of Her Campus at SBU.
Ellie made history in that radio station a year ago, but, of course, there was more work to be done after that day.
The first step was to check if this was permitted by Her Campus headquarters. You see, this has never been done before. Not at St. Bonaventure and not anywhere else to my knowledge. This is a brand new idea.
So, for legal reasons like copyright, we had to check if this could be allowed. On Monday, July 24, we were approved by headquarters to go ahead with the project.
Now, the true excitement began in the fall semester. We couldn’t have a magazine without articles! So, we spent August through December writing articles, honing our craft and testing out ideas that would work best in print.
At the same time, we also needed approval from our school to do this project. Our funding comes from our school of communication, not the student government, so we had to pitch our idea to the dean of the school.
At the beginning of December, almost as a final’s week treat, Dean Chimbel let us know by email that we had the clearance. This was probably the biggest relife of my life! After hours of researching different printing companies and pricings for the amount/style we were looking for, we found the perfect package.
When we came back in January, it became crunch time. All the writers in the group submitted articles to be featured, which then all had to be edited for grammar and style by me and Delaney Chase, my co-president.
Phew, the writing part was done, now it was time for the graphic design! Ooh, pretty colors!
We decided to use a Canva template for the magazine setup, especially since we had never done this before. It gave us some pretty simple spread ideas that we got to tweak to make it a bit more personal. In the spreads, you can see many hints of pink, the color of our headquarters logo!
Everyone had the freedom to design their own page. How many columns did they want? What photos or graphics did they want to include? That was all up to each individual author. The one thing they all have in common is the professional headshot. To use for the magazine and our Linkedin’s we all went to our school’s Career and Professional Readiness Center for free, on-demand headshots.
Then it became a waiting game. We waited for weeks for the local print shop to finish crafting our pages. This Monday, we finally got to hold the first physical copy.
This magazine has been a passion project of mine. It’s my baby. I work really hard to create a larger presence for Her Campus at St. Bonaventure, both online and through word-of-mouth, so I cannot wait to see the impact of our print issue.
There are a million thank yous that deserve to be given. To all of our writers, readers, professors and YOU. A special note of thank also goes to our adviser Dr. Walker and Dean Chimbel, without them this would not be possible.
This is what girls can do. We think outside of the box. We have grit. We deserve to be praised for our ambition and trailblazing.