Nova Literary-Arts Magazine’s 2023-2024 edition was launched this past Wednesday, March 20th, in the Popp Martin Student Union art gallery. For this event, our staff dressed up in their finest attire and spent the evening building a balloon arch, chatting with attendees, eating pizza, snapping pictures, and gushing over volume #55. The night went swimmingly, as most of us walked away with an entire box of Domino’s pizza, and we felt so grateful for all of the students and non-students who showed up to support Nova and celebrate the issue.

It’s safe to say that this year has been a tumultuous one as far as production goes since Nova has started to stray away from the theme of our recent branding. This year, we wanted to create something unique, unlike anything Nova has ever created before. Our design and content teams collaborated to create a thematic concept representing the art and literary pieces involved in the magazine.

If you have a copy of the magazine and have had a chance to read the letter from the editor and flip through the booklets, you might have an understanding of our theme. Our concept this year was based on the “Soul” and we pulled inspiration from Plato’s tripartite division of the Soul to execute and organize this concept.

The creative process began with our one-word theme, “Soul.” Every year, Nova creates a theme based on one word that truly encapsulates the essence of the year’s issue. This year, I worked closely with the lead designer Landry Hutchens to develop and expand this idea. After a couple of weeks of researching the “Soul” and discovering Plato’s concept of the Soul, I presented it to the design team and we decided to create a three-part issue, divided into three booklets: Rational, Spiritual, and Appetitive.

The content team had to meet and ask each other; how can we bring this concept forth from a literary and artistic perspective? 

It took several meetings to mull over submissions, and definitions, and brainstorm what these parts of the soul truly meant to us as readers and viewers. How do art and literature reflect the inner parts of ourselves we don’t always show or see? How can these rich forms of expression represent our souls?

Not only did we decide what submissions would go in the magazine but we organized the accepted submissions equally across three booklets, divided by their respective parts of the “Soul.” Then, we had to create a fluid, cohesive order, blending the art and writing together so the pieces not only transition into each other well but present visually appealing spreads.

There were a few changes that occurred at Nova this year but the most important alteration was the removal of our Jury system. Our team had a lengthy discussion at the beginning of the year about the importance of the Jury and how it has affected our production process in the past. If you haven’t gotten a chance to read our Jury removal page in the newest issue or if you don’t know what the Jury is, Nova previously had a panel of professors who acted as outside experts to assist us in ranking the literary and art submissions.

We decided to remove the Jury this year, not only because it slowed our production process but because we had confidence that our content team was qualified enough to make all final decisions. We found this way to be beneficial in the long run, as the content team was able to go over the submissions several times. This year, the content team looked through all the submissions more times than any team had prior. We were able to thoroughly digest our contributor’s works. This also allowed us to become very familiar with the pieces, and sometimes we’d change our minds or shift our perspectives on the second, third, or fourth read/view.

Just as the content team had to take on the concept of “Soul” from a literary and artistic perspective, the design team had to articulate it through visuals. During our weekly design meetings, we discussed each part of the Soul and what it meant from a visual standpoint. There were mood boards, illustrations, sketches, references, and even physical description words/phrases brought to our brainstorming sessions until we’d grasped each concept.

This process was incredibly satisfying to watch from an editor’s perspective, as I was able to watch the designers take an idea and mold it into physical form. The design team went through a massive shift in style this year, as the issue began to take on a more illustrative approach, in contrast to our typically graphical style. Each cover was illustrated by Leader Designer Landry Hutchens and every table of contents was illustrated by Designer Ben Stadler.

Overall, the process was chaotic when we hit January, a mere few weeks away from our deadline. Many hours were spent in the office from both teams across multiple weekends, in which we lost all sense of time in the windowless Student Niner Media office. There were multiple cups of coffee brought in and out of the office, lots of hair-pulling, and many many arguments that took place, but it was all worth it.

I am beyond proud of the final product that is sitting in boxes in our closet. We have all worked so hard. We truly put all of our creative brains together to form this concept and execute it efficiently. We are also so grateful for the response we’ve received from supporters, professors, die-hard Nova fans, family, and friends.

We hope the readers who have picked up a copy of volume #55 have enjoyed looking through it. We hope it resonates with you. As for those who don’t have a free copy, stay tuned and keep up to date with our Instagram and newsletter for updates on tabling events. 

Also, feel free to stop by our office in the Student Niner Media basement located on the lower level of the Popp Martin Student Union to grab a copy from a staff member!