My last Mindwaves.

Last year, myself and then Medium Editor-in-Chief Ali Kasim resurrected the Professional Writing and Communication literary journal, Mindwaves after a two year hiatus. We transformed the publication from a magazine-sized, saddle stitched “book”, with paper that was way too thick and glossy, had no concept or sense of design and looked like it was designed in the mid-80s, to an elegant and simple, perfect bound, book-sized publication. In case you’re interested, you can see last year’s here.

I had the difficult task of out-doing myself this year—something which proved all too difficult for me. Instead of coming up with a new concept entirely, I decided to progress the concept I came up with last year a little further. Last year’s concept was all about paper: the cover had a hundred or so folded paper shapes—I called them Doritos—ten of them (there were 10 stories) had parts of a story printed on them. The cover turned into a wave of stories, a Mindwave if you will.

This year’s book uses paper again, but instead of a wave of stories, I decided on assembling, and constructing the stories—which is what the editors of Mindwaves did, they picked out stories from all of the submissions, rearranged them, edited them, and constructed them into this year’s publication. To do that, I printed one page from each story onto a piece of paper, then meticulously constructed one-inch by one-inch paper cubes—nine in total, one for each story. For the cover, I dropped the paper cubes a unsettling number of times hoping to photograph them in just the right place—as if they were floating. For the back cover, I assembled them into a grid, as if they were bricks, or building blocks.

I also decided to change the size from last year. It was a 5×7-ish book, that was very awkard to hold in your hands. Especially because the book was so thin—about 60 pages—the book had a strange feeling to it. It was too large to be that thin. This year, I shrunk it down to something comparable in size to a Penguin Great Ideas book. With the number of pages we would have, this sized book was perfect. I added a splash of colour—an electric green—to the spine to contrast the grey toned front and back cover. The inside is very simple as well. I decided to cut out illustrations from this year’s book. It was way too small for them, and I found them so distracting last year.

If you’re interested, check out the Mindwaves’ website for excerpts from each story.

And that marks my last Mindwaves. I learned alot. Probably more then I ever did in four years of design class. But I suppose that’s the way it usually is—sometimes you learn more outside of class then you ever would inside it. This year’s Medium Editor-in-Chief Alain Latour said it so well in his last editorial of the year.

I have no idea who will be taking the reins of Mindwaves next year, but I do know this year’s Editor-in-Chief and Medium Copy Editor Su Lyn Liew was a pleasure to work with. Our faculty advisor, Tracy Moniz, a Medium alumni, was also a huge help, giving us great feedback and insight.

I will without a doubt miss working on Mindwaves next year.