A hard-cover book of student art, photography, fiction and poetry.

The Sierra Journal is a yearly book of student art, curated and designed by volunteer students for Sierra College. In collaboration with faculty from the English department, we were responsible for every step of the creation process for the 2009-2010 journal.

Two of the most pressing concerns going into this project were the deadline and the budget. We had less than a semester to produce a final project, and because this was made by a group of student volunteers in association with the English department, we had a modest budget to work with. And because this journal had been neglected in years prior, we had a backlog of art and writing submissions to organize and jury.

We wasted no time in setting a direction for the journal, immediately creating a budget proposal with design mockups and developing a rubric to start a jury process for our student submissions. Because of our short timeframe, we moved forward with several aspects of the planning, design and publishing simultaneously.

As a lead designer, I was intimately involved in every phase of the project. I created mock-ups and page samples used to approve funding for the project. From there, I closely supervised the book design and philosophy with my peers. I was also an editor and curator for the submissions, and took responsibility for the design and delivering the files to print. I saw the details of the book through to the end; including working with a printer and binder to create the finished product.

My roles and responsibilities:

• Spearheaded the design pre-visualization that were essential to getting the journal approved and funded.
• Worked with college faculty to facilitate additional art and writing submissions.
• Developed a curation process and rubric to allow volunteer students to review and rate submitted work.
• Collaborated with peers to design the layout and master pages of the book.
• Personally finalized all design and copy before publishing.
• Researched to find a local printer and binder that worked with our budget.