By Khalida Sarwari
The future looks bright for Saratoga High School alum Lauren Mather. The 21-year-old just completed a semester as art director of a magazine at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she and her peers explored the role of land in shaping Wisconsin’s communities.
Mather is a strategic communications student in the School of Journalism, which means the focus of her studies is on advertising and public relations as opposed to traditional news media. She said she hopes to apply what she’s learned working for the school’s magazine to a career in advertising in Chicago, where she plans to move after she graduates in May.
“I absolutely love the magazine experience but I don’t see myself working in the magazine industry at least right now, so it was a really good experience to dabble in something different,” said Mather.
Working to put together the 2014 edition of Curb magazine was not without its challenges, Mather said. For one, each year the magazine changes its editorial philosophy, but the underlying theme every year is the state of Wisconsin. This year, the focus was on “unearthing
Wisconsin,” and the aim was to dispel the stereotypical perceptions about the state and instead
explore how people in Wisconsin interact with each other in terms of preservation, hunting and outdoor activities. For a girl who was raised in Saratoga,this was practically foreign territory.
“It was a unique experience writing about Wisconsin because I’m not from the state,” she said. “It was a unique challenge, but it was also really rewarding.”
As art director, Mather was in charge of leading a team of four people, including a photo editor and designers. She designed the magazine’s logo and about 50 of the 64 pages. She was also tasked with undertaking the art direction, schemes, colors, motifs and overall look and feel of the magazine. On the side, she also designed the media kit for the marketing and business teams and served on a leadership team.
Like the other students in the course, Mather also had to write and submit a long form story, an alternative story form, and a multimedia piece for the magazine. For her story—which was ultimately chosen as the cover—Mather chose to spotlight a company that uses whole trees in their building process as opposed to milled lumber. This article, in addition to the magazine as a whole, is being submitted for two awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Milwaukee Journalism Awards.
“It was a really cool experience to have not only designs in the magazine but also my story in the magazine which I didn’t think was going to happen,” Mather said.
The semester-long course was taught by assistant professor Katy Culver and instructor Stacy Forster. Each December, students in the course fundraise $10,000 to pay for the cost of publishing the magazine. This year’s class was no different. In her capacity as art director, Mather said she designed the journalism school’s apparel and helped sell $3,000 worth.
Copies of the magazine are circulated statewide, but is also available online. To view Mather’s work in Curb magazine, visit curbonline.com.
