Resting inside a newsstand at the core of downtown D.C. lies a pop-up shop with a little sprinkle of GW.
Fifteen graphic design students created publications to be sold and featured in Hometown Newsstand — a local newsstand inside the center — at a pop-up shop that began in December. The short-term store, named “Here & Now,” was a collaborative effort between the students in the Corcoran College of Arts & Design Publication Design course last fall, Assistant Professor Marc Choi and the newsstand’s owner Seda Nak.
Choi, who taught the class, said the collaboration came about after he walked past the newsstand one day last spring and was drawn to the displays of magazines, books and zines — a self-published work.
He said he began to have a conversation with a newsstand employee and told them that he would be teaching the graphic design class. The worker then gave Choi the owner’s contact information after he expressed interest in a possible collaboration.
“I reached out, and throughout the entire summer, we talked about what this could be, what the project could be, how the students could utilize the space, what sort of project structure I could set up, and so that’s really how it started,” Choi said.
Choi said students started the course learning about the fundamentals of publication design, including typography and layout, before going into more nontraditional and independent practices like zines and artists’ books. He said the pop-up shop was a part of the class’ final project, where the students showcased what they learned throughout the semester, with the understanding that their pieces would be seen outside the classroom.
“They were able to take all of those lessons and apply it to this book, or zine, or product that they had to produce multiples of for sale for public consumption,” Choi said. “It wasn’t necessarily just like a hypothetical project for class. It really was like a, ‘How do I think about this as something that there is an audience for?’”
Choi said he and Nak settled on the “idea of place” for the prompt, digging into what it means to a person and how it defines someone’s identity. He added that while he loved all the publications, one that stuck out to him was a coloring book titled “Black Girl Joy” by London Skye Roberson, a senior majoring in graphic design.
“I wanted Black women and Black girls to know that they are seen in a world where we are often overlooked,” Roberson said in an email. “I wanted to create something that showed how beautiful, positive, and lively Black women and Black girls are.”
On the right pages of Roberson’s book are illustrations of Black women and girls doing normal activities like dancing, doing each other’s hair and hugging each other. The book’s left pages feature quotes related to the illustration and a small citation of its source.
Roberson said she searched online for images of Black women doing things like cooking, laughing and overall “just having fun.” Once she gathered the illustrations, she traced them with Procreate, a graphic design software.
Roberson said she created her own backgrounds, some like a basic living room and others with spiral patterns of hearts and dots. Roberson said she used a “loopy illustration style” to define the natural hair on the subjects while also leaving room for consumers to color inside them. She added that the book was important to her because it was a way for her to “bring positivity” to her community.
Roberson said it took her about four weeks to complete the 15 page book, and the yarn binding took about four hours across 35 copies.
“I aspire to be a children’s book illustrator in the future,” Roberson said. “Creating this coloring book taught me a lot about publication design. I plan to make another coloring book that includes illustrations of my friends and family as part of my graphic design thesis this semester.”
Meimei Lu, a junior majoring in graphic design, said she chose to make her zine centered around San Francisco because she fell in love with the city due to its diversity, rich history and beautiful landscape after being placed there on her mission trip in the Bay Area.
Lu said her zine revolves around a fictitious battle in the city during the 1970s through the perspectives of two main narrators and soldiers, Steve Rogers and James Barnes, based on Marvel movies “Captain America: The First Avenger” and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” The zine’s cover consists of layered illustrations associated with both San Francisco and wartime, with the title “The Battle of San Francisco” on the upper third bordering a smoke illustration stretching to the top of the cover.
Lu’s zine also includes sheet music and lyrics to the song “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” by John Phillips, which she said she heard while watching “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” a few days before learning where she would be placed for her mission trip.
“That one was super personal to me because I didn’t know where I was going to be stationed for my mission trip,” Lu said. “But the day that I got my letter that said I was going to San Francisco before I knew it, I woke up that morning singing that song.”
Nak, the owner of the newsstand, said it was her first collaboration with any local school and that she’s open to future partnerships. She added that she was excited to see what the students would create and the publications exceeded her initial forecast of how the pieces would turn out.
“I wouldn’t even say that I had low expectations,” Nak said. “It was more of just the sense of how creative everybody was.”
The pop-up will remain open until Friday, but Nak said she told Choi that students can keep their work in the newsstand and she can buy it from them as individual artists and creators as inventory.
