My project for the Adobe Design Achievement Awards 2017 is a sample design for the first edition of a magazine I work for. The magazine, for which I am volunteer Director of Graphic Design, is called Monstering. Monstering was created by and for disabled women and non-binary people. It is essentially a place for them to submit and see published, their art and literature, but it is so much more than that. The editor in chief, Brianna Albers, myself, and the rest of the staff, receive no compensation for our work on this magazine. For us, Monstering is more than just a project. It is a community of like-minded people working together on one vision. That vision is finding a place for ourselves, recognizing people like us, in the literary community. We've received over 200 submissions for our first issue, which demonstrated to us that the little community we created as staff is something that many other women and non-binary folks with disabilities long to have as well. We hope to expand Monstering outside of just a magazine, but to create an online space in which we can feel at home with each other. Above, is photos of the first hard copy printed of this version of Monstering. Below, is the full .pdf which I used to create it. While it is not the final draft of what the magazine will look like, I wanted to take this opportunity of the ADA Awards to not only showcase my design skills, but also bring attention to the work of the Monstering staff and contributors that we are so very proud of.

While you may be wondering, why is the magazine called "Monstering", I will summarize the words of our EIC that answer that very question. People with disabilities are often referred to as monsters, as freaks, as something abnormal and unwanted. With Monstering, our goal is to reclaim this. To retell the monster stories in our own view, with our own strength, power and beauty. As Brianna says, "we believe in monsters, which is to say we believe in their socio-cultural manifestation—women and nonbinary people with disabilities. In some stories, it is trauma that becomes the catalyst for monstering; in others, it is something natural, instinctive, welling from inside and raging forth. In all forms of the narrative, the monster becomes a symbol for that which is unknowable: the hungry, the grotesque, the terrifying and unlovely and strange. And so the myth perpetuates, giving form and voice to all things terrible and uncertain." 

So to conclude this project that I thank you for giving your valuable time to, I'd like to say one last thing. While this competition is an opportunity for me to showcase my skills as a designer, it is also so much more. It allows Monstering to find a larger platform for which to grow, and showcase the stories of a vastly different and beautiful group of artists, who've come together to share what it means to be "a monster".