Design Rationale

As we come to a close on designing this year’s issue of Brainchild, I want to share with you the design team’s thoughts behind our visual identity.

During my first year as Creative Director and second year on the team, I had the opportunity to work with an amazing team of dedicated, creative, and hardworking designers. By listening and working alongside them, I learned to see art and literature in a new and authentic way. Our ideation process has been my favorite part. We painted, played with salt and watercolor, scanned circuit boards and yarn, did crayon rubbings of leaves, and used food coloring in milk to make organic swirl patterns. The handmade and experimental quality of our exploration gave us new directions to pursue in the magazine and ultimately shaped how we landed. I’m so proud of not only what the designers have made together, but the Brainchild team as a whole, and I remain amazed at the
passion and dedication they all have to celebrating our community.

This year’s visual theme—as always—was guided by our submissions. The art and writing expressed feelings ranging from nostalgia for a past that no longer exists to experiencing a future that you’re not sure you wanted—the push and pull between humanity and technology, and between stagnation and growth. In light of current events during the past year, many college students (including myself) have found that the future they expected to graduate into is not the future they find themselves in. Many of our featured pieces reflect this struggle with alienation and discontentment. It asks the question: if we can no longer experience our pasts, and the future isn’t what we hoped for, where do we look to?

To show this uncertainty, we went with a cold, muted color scheme, including a pale gray, pointing towards disillusionment and a constructed world, and a mossy green, pointing towards the natural world and nostalgia. A striking chartreuse highlights uneasiness, and the apprehensive, dissociative feeling that the future can bring. It is a saccharine version of the two more natural shades of green and connects to themes of nostalgia and seeing the past through a clouded lens.

Our line motifs are ever present throughout the issue—threads connecting the past and future between individuals and ourselves—and represents the choice of continuity and growth. Many of the pieces in this issue discuss the relationship of the self and autonomy, alongside the dichotomy of
loneliness and connection. 

The interconnectedness we find within art and writing is at the heart of what I love most about Brainchild. Throughout these past two years, I have been honored to be a part of sharing the literary and artistic voices of so many honors students in the Midwest. As we look toward the future, my deepest hope for Brainchild is that we continue to share the creative, honest, and sincere voices of our community here, no matter what the future holds for us. 

Sincerely,