Photo by Ortal Isaac

For the students involved with the magazine, Culinarian provides a real-world magazine experience.  Modeled after professional publications, Culinarian‘s system is designed to give students with advanced design, photography, business, and editorial skills to hone their techniques while also providing a learning environment for those interested in developing their abilities.

This past Tuesday, Photography Manager Ortal Isaac led a photo training session for all students interested in taking photos for the magazine.  She developed a PowerPoint presentation to teach our contributing photographers the particular details of work fit for a publication, and reviewed the standards of featuring food as art for our staff photographers.  She even brought cupcakes in for photographers, giving students the chance to practice their food photography (and have a snack, too!).

Photo by Ortal Isaac

Last Friday, Creative Co-Directors Tiffany Ong and Aly Gideon led an Adobe InDesign and PhotoShop training session.  Our designers, with varying levels of experience, were able to share tips, ideas, and their favorite techniques.  For our design team, Culinarian is a way for students to develop their own personal aesthetic and skill set while helping to establish the visual style of our inaugural issue.

Currently, our business department runs three sub-teams: marketing, advertising, and events planning.  Our marketing team is planning an extensive social media campaign to keep students excited for the first issue over the summer, our advertising team is developing a press kit to share with local businesses and partnered student groups, and our events planning team is hard at work creating a joint event before the end of the semester as well as a multicultural food conference in the fall.  And, of course, the launch party to celebrate our very first issue!

By Ortal Isaac

With a team of four members of the executive editorial team and six department editors, writers and editors alike have worked long and hard fine-tuning the pitches and assignments for Vol. 1, Issue 1.  The premiere issue, to be released in September 2013, will be our “Freshman” issue–the idea being that not only is it Culinarian’s first, but it’s also a guide to the food culture on- and off-campus for incoming students and for upperclassmen whose love of cooking and dining has not wavered.

For all the students involved with Culinarian, the magazine is not merely a chance to show off existing skills.  Instead, it is the chance to work in a professional and exciting environment, and to be a part of something truly collaborative and new on Columbia’s campus.  Creative Co-Director Aly Gideon recently said to me, “This is amazing.  I’m starting to realize that I could do this after graduation, and I would love it.”

-A.T.