A Spirit of Collaboration

Envision Magazine wins Associated Church Press awards

Diane Myers and Debbie Michel, faculty sponsors of Envision Magazine, attend a creative planning session for the upcoming issue of the student-led magazine. It is set to release this fall. (Photo by Brian Tagalog)

The Associated Church Press gave an Award of Excellence this year to Envision Magazine’s seventh issue as part of the annual awards banquet, which took place in St. Louis in April. The ACP takes the opportunity every year to give “Best of the Church Press” awards to a variety of Christian media in a number of different categories, such as “student publications,” which is the category in which Envision won this year.

Some of the reasons Envision was chosen for this award include what the ACP call its “relevance and salience to the student community,” as well as creativity and skill in writing, editing and design. In general, the ACP was impressed by the quality of this student-produced magazine.

Envision is no stranger to winning awards. This marks the third year that the magazine has won at least one Award of Excellence from the ACP. The ACP has also given Awards of Merit for reporting and writing as well as photos, and numerous honorable mentions. Additionally, the Society of Adventist Communicators has awarded Envision with Best Design Project, Best Photograph, Best Feature Writing and Best Magazine Cover, as well as several honorable mentions.

“It was fun writing for the magazine and working with classmates on the projects we were assigned,” says Emmanuel Leonard, feature editor for the 2015–16 school year. Leonard was not surprised to hear the magazine had won an award for excellence. “There's a lot of heart, intention and effort put into creating this great magazine every year,” he said.

Debbie Michel, editor-in-chief since the magazine’s creation in 2010, appreciates seeing her students’ hard effort validated by the ACP.

"It’s nice to be affirmed by this organization because quite often students do the work but they don’t know in terms of how they compare with others out there,” she commented. “It benefits the students to know that what they are doing is not only valuable, but is actually valued by others. For this particular issue, we did what we would normally do,” Michel added, “but each time we work on an issue, we collaborate closer with the whole team.”

One of the difficulties that Michel described with Envision is that multiple groups of students are attempting to work together to create an issue of a magazine.

“It’s tricky,” she admits. “You have three different classes. How do you get everyone together?” she said. “That spirit of collaboration is at a higher level. The writers are talking with designers, the designers with photographers. That’s what you’re always wanting to get.”

Envision’s eighth issue, which will be released this fall, is Michel’s final issue with the magazine as editor-in-chief; though she has served as a professor in the Department of Visual Art, Communication & Design since 2008, she has accepted a position at the Lake Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and began her new role in January.

“I’m very proud of our students and how they consistently raise the bar in the work they produce for Envision magazine,” said Diane Myers, assistant professor of graphic design and digital media, and design editor for the magazine. “It’s a lot of work to create a magazine in less than a semester, but very rewarding.”

As design editor, Myers assists design students in her editorial design class to create layouts for Envision issues. Myers’ students collaborate with those of Dave Sherwin, assistant professor of photography and photo editor for the magazine, to come up with the visuals for articles in the magazine.

Related Links:

• Browse past issues of Envision Magazine
• Read past article on Envision winning national awards
• Learn more about the Associated Church Press
• Learn more about the Society of Adventist Communicators