If you asked me to rank all seven issues of Our Diary, I'd probably short-circuit. That's like asking a parent to pick their favourite child. I love them all, flaws and all, and I refuse to entertain the question. That being said, Issue 7 has, without a doubt, my favourite graphics we've ever done. HAHA! Sorry, not sorry. Space-y stuff has my heart.

 

For many of you, this might be your first time visiting Our Diary during an issue release. If that's the case, welcome! You've caught us at a particularly exciting moment.

 

I figured I'd take this opportunity to pull back the curtain on how the team and I put one of these things together. And believe me, it is a feat. Behind every finished issue is a ridiculous number of decisions, half-baked ideas, abandoned drafts, and hours spent staring at a screen wondering why something that looked perfectly fine five minutes ago has suddenly decided to look like shit.

 

Consider this a coffee chat between friends. You get all the hot gossip (which, regrettably, consists mostly of my all-nighters and ongoing feud with Wix), and I get to unload several months' worth of thoughts into a Google Doc at 5:30 AM on the very day this issue goes live.

 

I’d say that’s dedication, no? Anyway!

 

The first step is always planning. Our team gets together over video call and starts throwing ideas around. Anything goes, really. Someone might bring up an artwork they recently discovered, a political event in the news, or a colour scheme they saw somewhere and thought looked cool. We dump everything into a document, and look for connections between themes.

 

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We're especially interested in the things relevant to young people. What are we angry about? What are we celebrating? What are we trying to figure out? We want our issues to give those conversations somewhere to accumulate, and goodness knows Gen Z has plenty to say.

Issue 3: The Gen Z Experience was a particularly successful showcase of that. Looking back, a lot of our issues have gravitated toward social justice, relationships, growing up, and new experiences. It’s doesn't surprise me: we're all growing up alongside this magazine, and our interests worm their way into our work.

 

For Issue 7, my contribution to the brainstorming session came courtesy of a book. I'd finished reading Samantha Harvey's Orbital the night before our meeting, so, of course, it was all I could think about on call! I was particularly drawn to its cover, the colours, its use of repetition, and the conversations surrounding existentialism.

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It was also August. I'd just graduated high school and was preparing to start university, which meant I was eating existential thoughts for breakfast. Those months felt like being in a subway station! It’s such a liminal, transitional period, you know? Suddenly, people were moving away and the future was approaching like a meteor.

 

I figured the team might have something to say about that. After all, I wasn't the only one preparing to leave stuff behind. At some point, we landed on our prompt:

Everything revolves around something. What keeps you moving?

 

We put the title to a vote, and Orbit came out on top. Echo was our runner-up, which I also think is a pretty good name. I'm curious whether anyone reading this would've voted differently.​

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With the theme decided, our artists and writers got to work doing what they do best. You'll find contributions from Joyce, April, and Luckshmi throughout this issue, and, as usual, they've outdone themselves. (Their Issue 7 features are linked!)

 

Meanwhile, Patrick and I got to deal with the decidedly less glamorous side of running a magazine: website logistics, finances, scheduling, yada yada. It doesn’t make for particularly exciting Instagram stories but does, unfortunately, keep the whole operation alive. I think we'd both agree that conducting interviews is a much nicer way to spend an afternoon.

 

Once we'd gathered a decent collection of work, both from our own team and from you lovely people who submitted, it was time to assemble the website. It is simultaneously one of my favourite and least favourite parts of the entire process. It's incredibly gratifying to watch a collection of randomly-named files slowly become something coherent. It's also a spectacular way to lose track of time. I'm convinced the staff at the coffee shop down the street from my university could draw my face from memory.

 

Thankfully, I wasn't starting from scratch this time! We've developed a fairly reliable system for formatting written and visual submissions, which means I can devote more attention to the fun stuff like graphics and changing up the whole website to match the theme. For In Orbit, that meant leaning heavily into the cosmic aesthetic. I went hunting for cool-looking planets and moons on Pinterest and scattered them throughout the pages. Used a lot of black, neon greens, and blues to match.

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Fun fact: my signature in the introduction section of the issue is inspired by the 1977 "Wow!" space signal. Bet you didn't know that :)

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If this is your first time visiting us, you might be surprised to learn how different Our Diary looked when we started. Go take a peek at Issue 1: The Start of Our Diary. We had a pretty minimal purple-and-white colour scheme. It’s kinda charming, looking back… you can literally see me figuring things out, HAHA. I do love where we're headed, though. Our newer issues are progressively getting louder and weirder.

 

Of course, once the desktop website is looking gorgeous, there's one final obstacle standing between me and happiness:

 

The mobile display. Jesus Christ.

 

Switching to the mobile view means discovering that Wix has taken your work and thrown it down a flight of stairs. My text boxes are both duplicated and nowhere to be found. Where the hell is that painting I spent 15 minutes adjusting?! So, I spend the next several hours fixing everything… again. (Curse you, Wix.)

 

I do my best to make the mobile experience enjoyable, but I'll admit that the desktop version is where the magazine really shines. If you're reading this on your phone, consider this my very unsubtle attempt to convince you to open your laptop. (Please. I worked so hard on it.)

 

Now, the thing that actually inspired me to write this little article was the Instagram poster that probably brought you here in the first place. I finished drawing it about an hour ago. Yes, I know it’s on release day. Sue me.

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It took me roughly six hours, give or take, and I had an absolute blast the entire time. I'm fairly certain I listened to enough Incubus and Stone Temple Pilots to cover both bands' entire discographies. (Why couldn’t my creative process have been fueled by any other circumstance?) I've included some photos of the drawing process below because I thought you might enjoy seeing how it came together. 

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Anyways, In Orbit was meant to be released in time with the new school semester in September. It’s now November, and so much has changed since we began planning it in August. We've moved cities, met new people, and started, pretty much, entirely new lives.

 

I hope you leave Our Diary today remembering something here. Maybe a photograph? A sentence that makes you think, “why didn’t I write that”? Someone you hadn’t thought of in a while? And if you do, tell the person who made it. I’m serious! It’s an amazing compliment to receive.

 

That said, it's getting dangerously close to sunrise, and I still have a magazine to release.

 

See you around the sun.

 

Much love,

Kai