By Sera Ahmad Fuad (‘20)
Prism is ISKL’s High School literary magazine. Every year, a team of copy editors, led by the editor-in-chief, accept submissions from ISKL’s community and go through a rigorous editing process, until the best pieces are left. Along with photography submission, the best poetry and prose are then published in a yearly magazine put together by the layout editor.
When I was asked to be a part of a special project celebrating Prism’s 25th anniversary, I didn’t even need to think—I was practically jumping at the idea to be involved with the literary magazine once again. After being a copy editor in my junior year of High School and then editor-in-chief in my senior year, the magazine is easily one of the highlights of my High School career.
We discussed many ideas on the best way to approach creating such a special edition of the magazine, and I came to realize that behind all the poetry and prose was what made Prism special—the people. So we listed every former editor-in-chief that we could find and contacted them, asking them about their time with Prism and their favorite pieces from their year of publication. The fear that none of them would reply was exacerbated every time I hit ‘send’ on an email to a former editor-in-chief, but thankfully, a lot of them were excited to hear the news of a 25th-anniversary edition and were happy to be involved. Thus, I was able to publish the pieces of their choice and include memoirs as well. This all resulted in perhaps my favorite part of this magazine—all the alumni I got to thank in the acknowledgments for their involvement in making this Prism, years after they had left ISKL.
When a former editor-in-chief declined to take part or simply didn’t reply, that left me the task of reading old editions of ISKL’s literary magazine and picking the best of the best to be published in the special edition. I genuinely loved this task. It was so interesting to discover the trends of certain years and look at the layout designs, and simply enjoy good writing. It hardly felt like work at all, especially with the help of Grant Venables, IB English Literature Teacher and Prism faculty sponsor.
I knew this edition needed something different in terms of layout. For as long as anyone could remember, Prism followed a black and white theme. My first thought when it came to the layout was to ‘spice it up’ and abandon that by including some color for the first time in over a decade. I was afraid I wouldn’t know how much was ‘too much’, and I had gone through almost every idea possible—from full color to hardly any at all. Finally, I settled on the color being only in the geometric designs I created for each spread, but each line containing the full spectrum of colors on the rainbow. Prisms refract light, after all, so I found it very fitting. I spent countless hours with Adobe InDesign, laying out every single ‘rainbow line’ in each spread of the magazine, and I hope the result is fresh and new while paying respects to the layout of the editions we know and love.
After graduating from ISKL and coming back to work as an intern, I was gladly reminded that we celebrate all achievements here. Student work and collaboration, creativity, the arts—it all boils down to opportunities like this one. I’m so grateful I was able to work on this edition of the beloved literary magazine, and applaud everyone involved in the last 25 years of Prism—I look forward to the next 25!
The 25th Anniversary of Prism magazine is out now – check it out here!
Sera Ahmad Fuad was involved in the production of the 25th-anniversary edition of ISKL’s literary magazine, Prism. A Class of 2020 graduate, Sera was involved in Prism during both junior and senior year of High School, as a copy editor and editor-in-chief respectively. She is currently interning with the Advancement Team at ISKL.
