The Nova Zine
Last week, we published a limited special edition of our magazine. Nova superfans know we publish our full issue annually, in the spring. This fall we wanted to do something special, something different from our full issue. Our designers were free to work beyond traditional Nova constraints, and our editors solicited submissions directly from our magazine’s alumni.
Each copy of the Zine was assembled by hand by the staff of Nova Literary-Arts Magazine, the oldest publication of Student Niner Media at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (save the newspaper). Inside are 14 pieces, contributed by alumni of Nova, our predecessor magazine Sanskrit, and of Student Niner Media at large.
We wanted to celebrate the long legacy of student media at UNC Charlotte, across all publications. At the same time, we are working at the cutting edge of form and design. You’ll have noticed this zine’s aggressively contemporary digital touches alongside more retro, physical flourishes. Alongside the pixels and bounding boxes is a distinctive serif’ed Nova logo that hearkens back to the very first Sanskrit logo.
This tension, between our past and future, informs every aspect of our work. As the pieces featured here show, art is not only for the young. It is a way of living. Please join us now for a behind the scenes look at the making of the zine.
Making the Nova Zine: A Behind The Scenes Peak
At Nova, production responsibilities are divided between two teams: our content editors and designers. Our editors are responsible for selecting submissions, copy-editing them, and arranging their layout. They also handle copyediting and the editorial style for an issue.
Editorial style is the overall ethos of a volume. What kind of statement are our words and images making? What kind of tone do we want? How do we want to be perceived?
Our editors are also responsible for copyediting and proofing the zine. Above, you can see a window into our process. When we have a rough, working version of our document, we print it out at double size. We pass the copy and a red sharpie around, one by one, to each editor. They make comments, critiques, and notes on the physical document.
These notes are then split into two lists: errors and critiques. Errors are simple typos, misaligned images, and easy corrections. For example, check out the image of the table of contents above. One of our astute content editors noticed that page numbers had been missed. Critiques are more fundamental problems– are we sure this margin is suitable? Does this graphic fit the overall aesthetic of the design?
These lists are brought back to the design team for revision, and these changes are incorporated into the next version of the design. This process repeats until the entire team has okayed the final version of the document.
Speaking of our designers: they are responsible for ideating, creating, and refining the ultimate look and feel of the zine. This process starts with extensive moodboarding and thumbnailing. Check out some of the team’s early moodboards below. Can you spot which one was used for the final product?
Once we had decided on a moodboard and general direction to pursue, our design team set about making thumbnail sized covers that showed how this aesthetic might look for a Nova issue. (As much as I’d like to show you these, they’re strictly confidential, and have to remain under wraps.)
Even though not all of our team members are experienced graphic designers, throughout this process, our designers bring their progress before the entire staff at our team meetings. Not all publications work this way, but we believe that everyone can contribute to the aesthetic process.
After adopting a thumbnail as a team, our designers work to adapt that specific vision to our table of contents, letter from the editor, credits, and content pages. It’s at this time our editors are making final choices on submission inclusion. As they make selections, those pieces are placed into the magazine composite. It’s here that we move to the copy-editing phase.
After completing our final draft, we still needed to print and hand-assemble the zine (we forwent a printer for this issue for cost-savings reasons, and to preserve the spirit of a zine). If you’re wondering what assembly looked like, may I direct your attention to this lovely Instagram Reel our staff put together?
Making this Zine was a labor of love for our staff. We traditionally publish once per year. However, we wanted to feature our alumni, our predecessors, and our supporters, and to design a beautiful issue to honor them.
The Nova zine is available now! Read it here.
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