I’ve always been fascinated with magazines; they are a gorgeous collection of photos and stellar designs with good articles to read. I wanted to learn how to create and use those magazine design skills across every design I would later make.

I found an Editorial Design class at the School of Visual Arts (Continuing Education) in New York City. Until recently, that course was the most rigorous I ever taken. It demanded I improve every week to complete an actual magazine. When I didn’t know how to create a section, I had to find resources to learn, apply it and do it again next week with the next section. Another challenge was to have empathy for my readers. I needed to think about them and what they wanted to see, read, and learn; I had to stop thinking about my needs and focus on theirs. 

Understand, I needed only to focus on the magazine’s design with its details, colors, department, the page layouts, and other elements that make a magazine, all the content was not mine and found on the internet. 

I called my magazine, Toussaint, after the Haitian Revolution’s glorious leader and legend, Toussaint L’Overture. Toussaint was about the Pan-Black experience giving readers insight into art, culture, music, and ideas across the spectrum of Blackness.

In the beginning, I doubted how I was to create an entire magazine with all the trappings of an actual newsstand-worthy publication. Through the twelve weeks, I went from coloring a page black (never do that for editorial content)  to creating a one-hundred-page magazine. I also learned magazine industry terms and reasons why things looked a certain way. 

Below are a few pages of the features Black Face in American Advertising, Surf Arfika, a clothing line, an interview with a Black Woman photographer, Street Art in South Africa, and a photo essay on African tribal face paint.

I also created a twelve-part podcast talking about the process and progress in making Toussaint, listen to it here.