Roski Mag

roskimag.com // @roskimag

WHEN
August 2018

DURATION
2 years

ROLES
Managing Director, 
Design Lead

Starting from the Fall of 2018, I have been the Managing Director of Roski Mag, a student-run art publication at the University of Southern California. Our goal is to promote and foster the creative community on campus by showcasing student work in our print magazines and online blog, mediating multiple speaker series, and hosting live events. As the managing director, I work closely with my executive board to make sure that the design, writing, and operations teams are collaborating with each other to achieve our semester-long goals-- completing a print zine, maintaining an active online presence, and organizing a large-scale event for the USC community.

This is the last Roski Mag zine I will work on, and although I was a bit disappointed that we weren’t able to print and promote this issue on campus, the digital release was still extremely rewarding. Publishing a free magazine full of diverse artwork during these unforeseen circumstances has brought a sense of community and connection within the USC community and beyond. The full zine can be viewed here.

One of our goals this semester was to further involve the designers in the process of creating the zine, so we paired designers with writers to lay out their pieces. My co-team lead and I acted as Editors-in-Chief to ensure that the layouts followed our style guide, all the content was proofed, and the flow of the magazine felt right.

These are the first few pages of the most recently published Roski Mag zine. The design and writing team spent most of last semester creating and collecting content from USC peers.

We wanted to creatively package the zine, so the members doodled anything that would indicate the number “8,” along with Roski Mag’s iconic “MORE LUV” stamp.

The seventh issue of Roski Mag was the first zine I creative directed, alongside my design team lead, Bailey James. This mag had two different covers, and the cover shown above is actually a photo of me while I was on a photoshoot for the USC Bookstore’s summer campaign. Because of the cover variance, we packaged the magazines in an opaque, turqoise vinyl material to add an element of surprise for people who bought our zine. We also released a limited edition, issue VII t-shirt to celebrate the mag. 

To view the full magazine, please visit Roski Mag’s Archives.

During the same semester of the issue VII zine release, the operations team within Roski Mag was spearheading the planning for an art festival called Roski Mag: IRL. As the managing director, I was heavily involved in the logisitcs to make sure we had an easily accessible location for the event, enough artwork for the gallery space, and proper equipment for the musical performances. Although we bumped into quite a few bumps in the road, the event acheived what our goal was-- to connect creatives together and celebrate the art community at USC.

The design team created various graphics, advertisements, and social media assets to promote the event. As the team lead, I guided the conversation around the style guide and critique sessions with the designers.

The Roski Mag website is not completely up to date with the design changes, but my co-design lead (Zade), developer (Qianze), and I are working on implementing the new designs, especially the blog feature.

Blog Prototype

Our blog is currently hosted on Wordpress, but we want to create a native experience for our readers. Although Roski Mag’s focus is on a printed magazine, we want a place to showcase work that lives better in a digital space (video art, animation, music, etc) or is more time sensitive (events, shows, galleries).

Creative Happy Hour is a speaker series that Roski Mag hosts to connect student creatives at USC with the larger Los Angeles art community. We’ve had a wide range of people come in, ranging from a photographer (Clint Woodside), film producer (Mikey Alfred), creative director (Sarah Kissell), to an editor-in-chief of another zine (Crybaby Zine)!