CULINARIAN MAGAZINE
CO-FOUNDER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
In junior year of college, I met another foodie named Manon Cooper. She was leading the Columbia Culinary Society, and I was directing the society's blog. We both felt that there was a big niche on campus to develop a food magazine, a curated publication that spoke to the needs and desires of students to tap into the foodie movement. Everyone wanted to join eating clubs, know the hippest coffee shops to study at, the best pizza places to take their parents, cheap but delicious dorm meals to cook. So, we founded Culinarian, and over the course of two years brought the group up from scratch.
Our Founders’ Journey
We had to design our own infrastructure, diligently meeting every week for two school years and building up an Executive Board of amazing people. We had conversations on what our brand was, what the visual identity should be, settling on a combination of snarky intellectualism that truly and unabashedly adores eating.
On the three-issue, fully designed volume I worked on with Manon, we led a team of over 100 contributing students from a myriad of majors, and all of Columbia’s undergraduate schools. Culinarian was a huge part of my life, often taking up to 30 hours a week that I fit into an already packed college schedule. When our first issue launched, we threw a Roaring 20's party and partnered up with the Swing Dancing Club (which we quickly put into a layout and launched with the first issue later that night). The issue gathered over 207,000 views in just a few weeks. Under my tenure as Editor in Chief, we released two more issues. We featured dozens of restaurants, chef interviews, and recipes. I also was proud of the choice to support student artists and other creative writers; each issue featured multiple original art pieces.
Culinarian was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done with an insane amount of creative and leadership growth. I’m so proud of what Manon and I were able to accomplish, that we started something and finished it even when we faced difficulties at every step. I’m proud it continued for a year after our graduation as well.
Re: Design
When we started the magazine, we had a few volunteer students for designing — they were making simple, high school newspaper-style layouts which wasn’t the aesthetic that I wanted to establish for Culinarian. So I went to the school’s libraries until I found computers that had Adobe Creative Suite installed, and taught myself Adobe InDesigner until I could make the magazine look and feel the way I knew it could. These spreads are a few samples of pages I designed, though I supported our overall direction and supported teaching other volunteer students who were excited to learn the work. There are some things I would do differently now, after years of this work, but I still look at this magazine fondly and am proud of the aesthetic we achieved as a self-taught team.
Re: Writing
I was proud to contribute a few pieces of my own to each issue. My personal favorites are: “Kicking it With Korilla” (01, p. 15), “A World of Flavors: The Culture of Cheese” (02, p.12), “Your New Favorite: A Review of Rusty Mackerel” (03, p.50), and “Adventure Time: A Day Trip from Manhattan to a Catskills Distillery” (03, p.16).
CULINARIAN MAGAZINE, VOLUME 1
