Creativity and Genre

Creativity and the creative process is extremely important, especially for this project of creating a piece of media, in my case a magazine. There are so many different types of magazines to choose from, and within each type, countless choices about images, content, and general presentation. As discussed in the TED Talk we watched, it's necessary to get out of our specific “river of thinking” in order to be truly creative. Creativity is important because it's necessary to make this magazine unique from the countless others out there, and also because it takes a creative magazine to catch readers’ interests. As referenced in the Gale article “An Interview with Ron Beghetto: Subtle Nuances of Creativity in Learning and Life”, an important aspect of creativity is creative self efficacy. Creative self efficacy is the confidence in one’s ability to be creative and make something unique. Ron Beghetto explains it in his words, saying “ Creative self-efficacy typically refers to our confidence to perform creatively on a particular task (or set of broader activities) in a particular situation and is influenced by a host of other factors, including our physiological and psychological state, the social situation, and the task at hand.” Higher creative self efficacy is needed in order to create something like this, and to achieve high creative self efficacy, research and experience are necessary.

In order to achieve this higher creative self efficacy, I did my research by looking at two different magazines, Rolling Stone Magazine and Lacuna Magazine, both general interest magazines with an emphasis on social justice, current events, and pop culture. It was interesting to look critically at a magazine and note the depths of their creativity, as well as what aspects I liked and those I didn’t. The Rolling Stone Magazine, although it's focus is normally on music and pop culture, has quite a few articles about social justice and current events. They used bold fonts and striking pictures of the person in the article looking proud and determined. They creatively broke up their articles with pictures and pull quotes, keeping the readers’ interest and making the story flow. What I liked about the Rolling Stones articles was that they took a bold approach to the issue with both their text and their imagery. The other magazine was the Lacuna Magazine, vastly run by women and committed to “exposing injustice”, as their selling line stated. This magazine, unlike the Rolling Stones articles, exhibited more muted texts and colors, but the stories themselves, as well as the pictures, were anything but muted. This magazine emphasized highlighting traditionally underrepresented groups such as people of color, queer people, and women. They split the articles up into certain issues to let the reader find what they’re interested in, which seemed like a creative approach. Something I liked about it was that they weren’t just writing stories on the trending issue at the time, but about equally important issues that generally get less representation in the media. This brings light to issues that need exposure.