Students work as a student-run publishing collective to create the first issue of an annual Noyo creative arts zine that shares the voices of current students, staff, and alumni with a real public audience. The experience asks them to answer, What can we create when we give Noyo’s creative voices a place to be heard? and What does it take to turn creative ideas into a real publication? through authentic editorial, design, production, outreach, and distribution work. The purpose is to build communication, social reasoning, and personal qualities through meaningful decisions about theme, curation, representation, collaboration, and community relationships, while also using research and quantitative reasoning to handle printing, pricing, and sales. By the end, students will have published creative work, contributed to a professionally printed zine, and created systems future Noyo students can inherit and improve.

Students will learn how a student-run publication moves from idea to printed object by developing a theme, writing a call for submissions, curating work, editing respectfully, designing pages, and preparing files for print. They will strengthen Communication, Social Reasoning, and Personal Qualities through critique, collaboration, professional outreach, contributor communication, and shared decision-making about what represents Noyo. They will apply Quantitative and Empirical Reasoning by researching audiences and local partners, comparing publication models, calculating printing costs and pricing, and making evidence-based design and distribution choices. They will also build creative confidence and ethical publishing habits by publishing their own work when they choose, respecting attribution and consent, and leaving behind usable systems for future Noyo zine teams.

Students will create working publishing artifacts throughout the lab, including a call for submissions, submission guidelines, editorial criteria, a production timeline, layout drafts, cover concepts, outreach emails/pitches, printing and pricing plans, and reflection entries. They will also produce creative and editorial work such as original writing or art, edited pieces, page layouts, contributor credits, and design files prepared for print. By the end, the class will publish the inaugural professionally printed Noyo zine and launch it through community distribution or sales with at least one local partner. The group will also leave a reusable toolkit for future cohorts, such as templates, contact lists, workflow notes, and publication guidelines for next year’s issue.

Open with a pop-up zine studio: spread out a strong mix of real zines, indie art magazines, comics, and small publications, then have students handle them, mark what grabs their attention, and sort them by features like voice, design, audience, and purpose. Follow this with an editorial challenge in which teams imagine they have been hired to create the first-ever Noyo publication and must pitch what it should feel like, who it is for, and why someone in Fort Bragg would pick it up. End by revealing that they will actually produce and print the inaugural Noyo zine, send out a real call for submissions to students, staff, and alumni, and work toward getting it into a local business or community space. Invite Sally Rodriguez or another local artist/publisher to respond to their early ideas and describe what makes a publication feel alive and worth sharing.

Host a public zine launch at Noyo or a Fort Bragg partner venue where students unveil the printed issue, display selected art pages as a pop-up gallery, and share brief readings, artist talks, or behind-the-scenes stories about editing, design, and outreach. Invite contributors, families, staff, alumni, local artists, and the business or organization carrying the zine so students can present the publication as a real community release rather than a class assignment. Include a sales/distribution table run by students, along with a small display of their process materials—submission call, mockups, proofs, budget notes, and outreach materials—to show how the publication moved from idea to print. End by having students pass on a simple “next issue toolkit” of templates, guidelines, and lessons learned to mark the start of an annual Noyo publishing tradition.