Bold typography, striking colors and layouts, and beautiful illustrations. These are all things you’ll find while flipping through the pages of the most recent issue of Pepper Magazine, one of UW Stout’s student-run publications. Leading the charge is the club president Red Moser. I was able to sit down with Moser for an interview this week to discuss the upcoming issue.
If you haven’t heard of Pepper magazine, it is a student-led organization that publishes a magazine issue each semester. The group has been going strong for 32 issues—16 years. Students can submit anything they like as long as it fits into the voted-upon design. At the start of each semester, the organization meets to vote on a theme along with layouts and color palettes for the issue. Once all the submitted spreads have been edited by the organization’s officers, they are printed at the graphic communications lab on campus and finally shown to everyone at the senior show at the end of each semester.
Moser expressed that they believe Pepper is a great opportunity for people to make something creative outside of class, “sometimes [our classes] put us in these boxes with no creative freedom. [Pepper is a chance] to express that freedom and have fun outside of classes.”
Moser goes on to explain what makes Pepper unique, and why it is an important organization to have on campus. “[Pepper Magazine] is awesome because you get to see your work and others in a physical magazine, knowing other people are seeing [it] as well.” They continue explaining that a lot of what modern artists do is digital, and it’s not always possible to see their work be physically existent, and this is something Moser hopes everyone can experience through Pepper Magazine. They also think it’s important to be involved in such a “hugely collaborative process,” and hear the multitudes of different ideas everyone has.
Moser noted that with the new Illustration major, Pepper has seen an uptick in illustrated content in the magazine within the past year. While the president loves seeing everyone’s passion and creativity shine in these illustrations, they hope this semester they can return to their roots of graphic design a bit more and maybe see some more physical and studio art content.
Moser is a senior graduating this year and has served in the presidential role of the organization for three years. Through the years, they’ve seen the magazine evolve from a more graphic design-focused project to now more of an illustration/art scene. They’ve made a few changes since then, mainly technical, to make operations run more smoothly. They’ve been happy to see members becoming more confident and speaking their opinions on designs. They hope to see more physical art scanned in the future, “maybe some studio art majors,” they expressed.
This semester’s theme is oceanic. For more information, people can check out Pepper’s Instagram, @thepeppermag. Moser explained Pepper’s importance, “[Pepper is] real-world experience working with a client, and it’s super important to have your work published physically, to be able to touch it and feel it. [Pepper] is also a great place to get to work collaboratively with your classmates and have fun.”
Lastly, I asked Moser if there was anything they wanted to say to anyone wanting to know more about Pepper. They had this to say, “Pepper is super fun and cool and run by superhot, young, sexy people, and you should join, even if it’s just for a semester. What we do is not necessarily everyone’s thing, but you can always try it and say you’ve done it and had a good time, and you made something fun.”
