From creative brief to final Portland distribution, a team of students from Collaborative Design MFA conceptualized, planned and produced a professional-grade annual magazine. Working as a collaborative publishing group, we engaged in research, community outreach and critical thinking in determining overall content and branding strategy. Over the course of the semester, we worked through traditional magazine-production phases and cycles, including launch planning and audience targeting, issue mapping, template design, editorial planning, assignments and writing, art direction, page design, final production, distribution and marketing.

Our Spring 2012 inaugural effort, “The Shelter Issue”, aimed to consider issues of homelessness through the lens of a high-end, glossy, arts-driven publication. We worked with community partners such as P:EAR, the Bud Clark Commons, and Sisters Of The Road. Editorial highlights include discussions on the co-opting of a “homeless chic” aesthetic to sell high-end fashion; a Dwell-like pictorial spread of an apartment in the Bud Clark Commons; stories of a case worker’s experience in working with homeless youths at Outside In; reviews of the meals and dining experience at two “feeds”; and an inside peek at what our houseless neighbor carries in his backpack.

Blight 2012 Team: Katie Mays, Joan Lundell, Emma Conley, Lauren Schaefer, Morgan O’Hara.

For our second issue, “The Fix”, we started exploring the addictions and obsessions that we all may have. (Spring 2013)

“We are not medical experts. Nor are we psychologists. We are designers, and we are artists. We take it upon ourselves to translate our perspectives of the world into a visual language and make the unseen, seen; the ignored, recognized. Our second issue of Blight: The Fix focuses on addictions and obsessions, both substance and behavioral, and sometimes a combination of the two. We’ll take you through the highs and lows, enable you and identify with you. This publication represents our varied interpretations, and we recognize that on some level we are all addicted to or obsessed with something.”

Blight 2013 Team: Sharon Dvora, Craig Higdon, Dave Laubenthal, Katie Mays, Joan Lundell, Jake Richardson, Emilie Skytta, Sean Tichnell, Tom Webb (2012 & 2013), Kristin Rogers-Brown (2012), Julianna Johnson (2013), MFA CD- Student Work, Blight Magazine