Hey there Signal readers, I’m Evan Koenigs and I am the production editor here at The Signal. I took over the position at the end of the Spring 2021 semester and my job is basically helping lead the production team as they create all of the fantastic illustrations that you see with the articles you read. I also create the layouts and text placement for our print edition and make everything pretty and readable.
Speaking frankly, I’ve never had to write a letter to an entire reader base. Everything I say will go out to a bunch of Georgia State readers and if I say the wrong thing it might backfire and haunt me.
For example, I could say “yeah, I think wiffle ball is underappreciated” and then be known as “wiffle ball boy” for the rest of my college career.
That’s a little scary.
I’ve always been the type of person to be drawn to making and creating. I like to fabricate and paint, and I love movies so I’m trying to get into production design for films. Props, sets, creatures and costumes have always been my favorite parts of movies.
And, I’m currently at the stage in my life where I’m in a limbo of thinking ‘oh yeah, it’s all coming together’ and ‘did I just waste the last few years?’ Going into my third year here at Georgia State, I keep struggling with those two concepts.
But, the one thing that I’ve always understood is that I love the creative field of work. Art and the work around it has always been an interesting and exciting thing to me. Even though I know I’m not the best and will never be, I am continually drawn to it because of the challenges that it brings and how it forces you to rethink and reevaluate.
I got fully drawn into the creative field in the 6th grade. This was after I realized that if you can’t figure out how to make the trumpet not sound like a dying horse by the 9-week mark of your first band class, you will be asked to drop out by the band teacher.
But, thanks to a cranky band teacher, who couldn’t sense raw musical talent if it hit her in the face, I met my middle school art teacher Mrs Vanhoff. She gave me my love of art and creativity and instilled in me the desire to find new ways to solve problems. To this day I still look at projects with the lessons that she taught me about pushing myself and my art and finding techniques and ways to look at what I do and that there are no bad ideas when making art, sometimes an idea is just better for another day. I will always be thankful for what she did for me and taught me.
Those are the types of things I’d like to bring to The Signal’s production aspect, we can always push ourselves to find new ideas and small things to twist and shuffle around to make the overall experience of what we show our readers that much better. For creatives like us, everything can be a good idea or worth exploring, it just takes the right push to get started.
We get so caught up on if something could be a good or bad idea when pursuing our passions that sometimes things stop dead in the water. We even let people talk us out of things if there is no confidence in our own thoughts.
So, if I could say one thing that you can take away from my ramble, look at a random idea you’d like to explore with your passion and ask why not?’ With art, there are no bad ideas, only ideas that can be used another day.
