VISION: Journey
About this work
In August of 2025, when I was still at home in Cayman, I was asked if I’d like to work with VISION Magazine a second time, this time in the role of Art Director. I said yes. Fast forward eight months…
The previous theme, Hello World, touched on humanity and technology. It was creative and unique, but also, in some ways, limiting to contributors. In our first meeting, the team and I tried to come up with a theme. We spent hours just talking about what we wanted this volume to be, and we wanted it to be about life, about humanness, about change, and about journeys. Specifically: the kind of winding, seemingly-endless journeys that haven’t yet ended. And so Journey stuck because it was broad, it was all-encompassing, and, most importantly, it didn't focus on the resolution (or perhaps, the destination).
Mariana Ramirez-Zablah and Camila Rodriguez, as leads of the admin team, and then-Marketing Director Zoya Rizvi went so hard on promotion. Our team put up flyers, filmed videos and trailers, went to giant lecture halls, e-mailed professors, e-mailed the department leads, set up booths at club promo events… all of which culminated in a team of over 40 people (which is massive compared to volume 6!)
Reflecting on volume 7, there’s a lot I am proud of and a lot I could have done better. This was my first time ever in any real design leadership role, and it meant a lot of my decisions were guesswork. The silver lining: I now have a personal catalog of bad decisions to draw from, which should help me make better decisions (and better mistakes) next time.
It was hard work to balance my social, academic, religious, and personal life with VISION, and I think there were times where I was so unfocused that VISION took a hit in quality. There were also times where I was so locked in on VISION that my grades dipped because I was working around the clock — at home, in class, between classes, during meetings, and so on. By the time the exhibition was done I was wondering what on earth I would do with myself.
Anyway: the magazine you see on the left was put together by my team of 12 unbelievably talented artists and graphic designers. A massive thanks to Naomi Chan, Iris Cioban, Juna Abutaha, Farah Baseet, Sameeha Fatima, Michaëlle Knights, Jules Lee, Crystal Lo, Ollie Paredes, Shanna Wong, Skylar Zhang, and Aria Zheng.
Another huge shout-out to all the executives: Mariana Ramirez-Zablah, Camila Rodriguez, Kaithlyn Chua, Leema Abbas, Jacqueline Vazquez-Doniz, Mayukha Pelluri, Ishanvi Tandon, and Martin Stric!
You can also read it on the VISION website (which I helped design!).
Process
I was at the Charlotte airport when I started racking my brain for art directions. Our then-Marketing Director, Zoya Rizvi suggested to me that I make the ‘O’ in Journey into a fingerprint, and then the idea of being very laissez-faire with the art direction popped up in my head. I wanted all my designers to bring their own unique styles to the table.
This, ideally, reflected the uniqueness of all people’s individual journeys. All the authors and artists contributed pieces that spoke to their individual journeys, and it was nice to give my designers a similar opportunity visually. Furthermore, Mariana had explained that her vision for VISION was that we would be an incubator for budding designers at UofT, and I thought that quasi-free rein was good for that.
I put together a brand guide using mostly warm tones to foil volume 6’s blues and greens and then asked my designers and artists to kind-of-sort-of adhere to the tones so that we’d have colour cohesion.
The magazine was made mostly in Adobe InDesign and took the better part of our Winter semester. It was a lot of far from easy and far from smooth — especially since this was my first time doing anything like this — but it was also a ton of fun. It would have been a lot more work without the help of Mariana Ramirez-Zablah, our Executive Creative Director; Camila Rodriguez, the Creative Operations Director; and Mayukha Pelluri, our Writing and Editing Director. Thanks guys!
Details
Type
ART & DESIGNTools
INDESIGNClient
VISION MAGAZINEYear
2026