Student Publishing
RISD has a long, rich tradition of student publications dating back more than a century. The RISD Archive houses copies, and you can also see a few historic covers on A&L’s walls and recent issues on our shelves. They range from the earliest example, The Lotus (1910), an elaborated yearbook, to the long-running paper Blockprint (1958–68), which captures both everyday campus happenings and the political debates of the time, to the first online student publication, the aptly named All-Nighter (2013–15).
Today, RISD students produce v.1 in print and online (volume-1.org). Student publications also include anything from text-based art to zines, blogs to podcasts, and the graduate written theses (which are all archived in the Fleet Library and on RISD’s Digital Commons site). We define publishing expansively — as the public dissemination of linguistic and multimedia texts in print, online, and live.
A&L’s director, Jen Liese, is the advisor to v.1 and the center’s main resource for student publishing support. While all tutors and staff consult on publication projects, she can help you:*
– Develop skills and self-awareness in contributing to public discourse
– Consider what makes something “publishable”
– Analyze which forms of publication best suit a purpose
– Understand and apply editorial feedback on any text intended for publication
– Map out a budget, timeline, and editorial, design, and production plan
– Collaborate to develop course-based publications
– Survey and pitch publications outside of RISD
– Find inspiration among artists’ and designers’ writings
*Keep in mind that we can only focus on one or two priorities in each appointment; follow-up visits are encouraged.
Publishing & Practice
Artists and designers today contribute to cultural discourse more than ever, raising their voices in professional, creative, scholarly, critical, journalistic, social practice, and social justice contexts. We’re inspired by a proliferation of contemporary publishing projects led by artists and designers and by interdisciplinary forms like aesthetic journalism and artistic research. We house a small collection of relevant titles and texts written by artists and designers and host occasional lectures by artists and designers who are also authors. We’re committed to fostering the connective potential between publishing and practice (and publishing as practice).
