I’m Working For Fun: My Magazine Passion Project
A while back, I read a cool little magazine curated and created by some students at UC Berkeley that made me suddenly realize how much I miss writing and design. Not that I don’t do that for work already, but I want to be able to cozy up on a couch and work on a creative project that doesn’t have a stressful deadline looming over it or a potential grade hanging in the distance.
Call it a personal passion project.
I’ve had a few of these projects in my life. At the tender age of eight, I was on Neopets learning how to write HTML and do business on my virtual shop, creating ads and graphics to market my cute fictional products. This is where I got my start in design (as the Internet trolls would say, I was a complete “newb”).
Then in the eighth grade, I had the sudden notion that I could run a popular blog. I enlisted the help of six of my friends to create a Blogger site called “Acquired Minds” (the name was borrowed from a Paramore lyric). I ran the whole junction—I “designed” the blog and its graphics, I designated monthly topics to write about, and I reported on our online poll results as if anyone was actually reading it. The blog obviously never took off, but it was fun having an online baby to take care of and a space where my friends and I could practice our writing. In its two-year lifetime, we published a total of 207 articles.
Graphic design was not my strong suit... yet.
When high school hit, I received my very first copy of Photoshop. My life was never the same again. I became known as the graphics guy at my school, and I started working on my school newspaper. I wasn’t very excellent at design—I just happened to have one extra skill over the average person—but it carried me far enough that I started considering a career in journalism or design.
As an undergrad at UCLA, I got to explore my ethnic culture by working with the Vietnamese Student Union on an audio narrative project called "VSU Voices," modeled after the work of StoryCorps. During my breaks between classes, I met up with and interviewed a number of Vietnamese American students on campus to learn about their individual stories and life experiences. It was an incredibly transformational project—both personally and professionally.
Now I’m here, doing media and design for a living. I spent last summer at a major theme park creating internal digital communication tools, and now I'm working on a consumer products team at a leading film studio. What a step up from virtual pet shops! I love every minute of it, and most of all, I love being surrounded by people who get me the same way I get them (like using the words “typeface” and “vector” and being understood 100%).
But in the same way that school can suck the life out of reading for leisure, I sometimes worry that work will do the same to my hobbies.
Enter again the passion project. Recently, I began to brainstorm what might be my version of the brilliant "curated magazine" concept. Friends and community members can contribute their works of art or literature to be combined in a neat little package, not for profit or for gain—just pure love. Then I’ll get to edit and design the magazine in my spare time.
Not for profit or for gain—just pure love.
For now, I’m calling the magazine project “CUES.” The premise is that there are certain cues in our lives that push us to make particular decisions or take specific courses of action. When and where these cues take place is unique to everyone; my aim is to get a glimpse of these milestones. I’m starting off the project by looking for short stories, blog posts, journal articles, poems, lyrics, illustrations, graphic designs, or photograph submissions from anyone and everyone.
Want to be a part of my passion project? Check out the informational page here.
#StudentVoices
#MySideHustle
This post was edited by LinkedIn Campus Editor @Cheechee Lin.