19
Jun
2009
Middle school publications nostalgia
My “study abroad” in Rome has come to an end, and I am now back home in Detroit visiting friends and family for a couple weeks before I move to Brooklyn and start at Big Think. Being back here always makes me nostalgic because it’s like being thrown back into high school in a way. Not that that’s true of all places around here. Places like Royal Oak and Ferndale definitely make me think of my college years, since I drove through Royal Oak every day on the way to Vectorform. But yesterday I walked around looking at neighborhood garage sales with a friend and met a few familiar high school faces along the way. Bella and I started reminiscing on when we first became friends, working on our middle school yearbook. Then I remembered my first conflict as a practicing designer, and perhaps my most traumatic one to date.
I started on Yearbook in sixth grade. The advisor, Steve Koponen, was fantastic. I learned a lot about journalism, design, photography, and the publishing process from him. I learned how to use concrete details in my writing instead of broad generalizations. I learned to only take candid photos and how to crop the old-style way with a wax pencil. I won the award at the end of that year for “most dedicated.” It was a great experience and one of the few things that made middle school worthwhile. The next year I was the only seventh grader to have my own section.
Then in eighth grade Steve Koponen quit as advisor and we were left with a cycle of parents who quit as soon as they realized how difficult the job actually was with the standard of yearbook we were used to producing (impossible, actually, without a class period devoted to yearbook, hence why Steve had to step down). I don’t remember whether there was an editor-in-chief officially, but being the only eighth grader who had been there since sixth grade I was looked to as the leader. Bella and I did the cover. I had the largest section and was responsible for several staff members, but had no time to work because I was constantly running around helping people. I was trying desperately to hold on to the standard we had maintained in the past under Koponen. Far too much responsibility for an eighth grader to handle.
Then came the really difficult part. A new advisor started, who happened to be a particularly boisterous and empty-headed staff member’s dad. Now I had to deal with all kinds of political forces coming against me. The girl, jealous of the amount of influence and control I had, probably recruited her dad for the purpose of upstaging me. I was getting attacked for not paying the girl’s friend (my staff member) enough attention and for not being finished at deadline time. True, the book was finished on time, but I was desperately trying to throw together a book that resembled the past ones as much as possible. Clip art and uncaptioned, 45° rotated, posted photos ran rampant and I was attacked for condemning such practices. The stress was killing me. I wrote about it in my pseudo-blog. The advisor somehow found out about it and had apparently gone to the assistant principal complaining of my bad attitude. It was probably my first lesson in feeling the power of my words on the Internet.
Thinking back to that made me realize just how important it is to build a perception of authority as a designer. The Design Editor position on my high school newspaper came with its share of stressors, but I was far more successful because I had a position that gave me authority and a staff full of people that, for the most part, cared more about what they were making than their own ego. Though I’ve always been uncomfortable with the idea of putting myself on a pedastal, I know now that my success as a designer depends on exerting confidence and defending my decisions to clients.
One Comment
Leave oneUgh 45* rotated photos, no captions and clip art?? ::shudder:: gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it!
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