Lamplighter is transforming. The cocurricular is going through some serious upgrades, but they seem to be mainly for the leadership team. Yes, we dedicate this course to helping develop our leadership skills and, hence, the rest of the crew, but leaders come and go, and inevitably, some may not be as competent as others. Thus, we need a way to ensure that Lamplighter can continue to produce high-quality magazines a decade from now. The key to doing so is creating a standardized curriculum to equip future lamplighter leaders and their members with the right skill set to strengthen their basic skills so they can spend more time experimenting and developing unique skills. With the remainder of this course, I plan to dedicate my time to creating my own Lamplighter Design Academy. This Academy will include four modules, two on InDesign and two on Squarespace, that will cover the essential information to equip anyone with zero experience in the two platforms with the necessary information to prepare them for layout and web design work. This course will be targeted at all members of the layout and web teams, but I encourage all visual team members to use this to understand the other mediums better. 

This could be a starting juncture for something more significant. With future Lamplighter editors building upon this curriculum, we could construct an extensive, organized method ready for not only layout or web designers but also photographers, social media managers, illustrators, and writers. Some may even go in-depth on specific topics for those who are interested, for example, Political Visuals 101. The aim of this project is not just to teach them how to use InDesign or Squarespace, but to tailor it to the needs of a professional magazine, which is my envision for Lamplighter. Every school has a newspaper, but not all of them get to be Lamplighter. 

Kind regards,

Ivan O ’25