My overall journey into Editorial Writing has been an adventure. The journey has shared its variety of ups and downs. Becoming an Editorial Writer has really made me step out my comfort zone. Writing was often a subject that i would try to avoid due to being dyslexic and a visual learner. My knowledge on Editorial Writing was just to keep it formal and bland. But as I began to look into different Editorial Writing, I learned that they could be experimental and expressive too. As an Editorial Writer, I was placed into a group of six creatives and together we formed a magazine in which we called ‘Dvoid’, meaning freeform. Dvoid Magazine is a fashion magazine and is created by the aim of keeping readers aware of the sustainable future.
For my final pieces in the magazine, I created; ‘Molly Taylor. The journey to self’ an interview based on future queer identities. ‘Hypothetical Living’ a description of a gloomy future, affected by the rising sea levels. ‘1 item 4 ways’ a sustainable styling feature. ‘Is the Future Trippy?’ main article, discussing the effects of anti-depressants and microdosing mushrooms. And lastly a diary entry, discussing the future neglect of the treasured nature.
I was overall, very pleased with the final outcome of my writing despite how challenging at times it could be. My overall favourite piece to write was my main article titled ‘Is the Future Trippy?’, this article was challenging but very rewarding to write. Thinking about the tone and set up of this article, I found it challenging. I wanted to make it seem more relaxed then scientific articles that i’d see online based on mental health, but once I spoke with my sister about her mental health, that’s when i realised that I could turn this article into something more personal and treasured to me. I enjoyed reaching out and having discussions with the people surrounding me, by finding out about their thoughts on micro dosing. I also enjoyed creating a foreign atmosphere in my ‘hypothetical living’ description piece, experimenting with tone of words to create a different world was interesting but scary. Creating a video for the hypothetical living words felt very surreal and enjoyed creating something so suspenseful but natural.
At the start of this project, I briefly had an idea of all the content that I wanted to write about for the magazine but I found that as the magazine developed and the visual content changed from the future to a sustainable future, I found myself having to change my content to fit in with the magazine, such as creating a creating a diary entry based around a foraging photoshoot that the stylist had done and then creating an sustainable article.
The one article that I struggled the most with was the ‘1 item styled 4 ways’, the stylist had created 4 looks and photographed them for the magazine and then approached me to ask for me to write words about the 4 looks. Due to it being an independent photoshoot and not given a list of items that were used in the photoshoot for the looks, I struggled a lot with this article as I couldn’t identify the one item that was being used to style the 4 different looks, to avoid confusion I asked the stylist to confirm the item and the concept behind the piece to ensure the vision was conveyed successfully in the article. The artist then confirmed that the looks had been created to promote sustainable styling in which helped me out more, as i could then base the article more on sustainable styling rather then just different looks. By simply communicating to the stylist to understand her reason of styling defiantly helped, despite the confusion of the title ‘1 item styled 4 ways’. I found that the best way to understand what she was trying to achieve with these looks were by sending her the final article and by getting her to reread it, to receive her impact.
Some other challenges that I faced was the communication in our group, I think where we were used to independently working, they wouldn’t feel the need to tell anyone about changes that had happened. for example, in my micro dosing article, someone had happened to add in ‘if you were affected by the themes mentioned in this article, head to the website for additional links and advice’, this was not reported to the people doing the website and writing, and only found out about this closer to the hand in time, I would have created a post on the website full of links to help with mental health, if i had known about it sooner. But we overcame this by speaking about the issue. I also struggled with writing in general, there was a moment where I had felt so lost and unmotivated to create more work. The work that I was creating wasn’t being read and didn’t receive much feedback from the group about what I was creating, it felt more photography based, I felt very lost and not acknowledged. But after sitting in a workshop on editorial writing and speaking with a tutor, I learned so much and so did the group. After this session, I received so much help from the art director and it was nice to have someone around to help and support my writing, it made me seem a bit more hopeful about my writing.
To help my challenging time of writing, I found that taking a break every once and while with creating videos, illustrations and mood boards really helped me to imagine what i was going to write and how i visualised it. However, if I had to do this again, I would’ve liked to looked more into a wide range of authors such as trend board writers, story writers and different diary entries. I believe that my journey could have been a bit more smoother if I had discovered more inspiration and more research.
Through out this project, I have simply enjoyed coming out my comfort zone and researching into subjects that i wouldn’t know much on. I have gained a new love for foraging just through carrying out visual research and have even been brought closer to my family and friends when discussing about the future of living. Despite our ups and downs as a group, I enjoyed working with everyone as a creative group; getting to know everyone, travelling around to different locations together, going charity store shopping and sharing ideas and concepts. I believe that we all contributed well into this magazine. Dvoid captures a bit of everyone in this magazine and I don’t think Dvoid would be the same without everyones input. This is a project in which I will keep close to my heart forever.
Published by