club to class

After 21 editions as a club, the Mini Marque successfully completed its first semester as an actual class. It used to run as an extracurricular with students putting in their own time.

NEW EDITIONS The Mini Marque, the only Middle School publication, releases a new issue every spring. Because of an actual class, students who want to pursue journalism will be more prepared for the Upper School’s intense publications.

The Mini Marque is the only Middle School publication that boasts 21 editions and many awards, a fact even more pronounced given that it is only a club. However, after Danielle Clayton, the sponsor of the club, concluded that the magazine would be more efficient as a course, the Design and Publication class came to be. The onesemester program would teach seventh and eighthgraders the basics of Adobe Indesign and Illustrator, two applications crucial to the production of the magazine.

The Mini Marque completed its first-ever semester as a class Jan. 15. Clayton first conceived the idea because she believed the workload at the end of the year would become much more manageable as a class than as an extracurricular club.

“It’s something I pitched last year,” Clayton said. “I thought that I could take on the extra class because, honestly, this is making work light for me. They agreed that it would be a good one-semester course and that it would always be in the fall.”

With the introduction of the new class, assignments and organization became easier. Eighth-grader Neil Yepuri enjoyed the more even distribution of seventh and eighth-graders.

“I think it’s generally more even between seventh and eighth-graders, so that’s helped it become more organized,” Yepuri said. “I also think that’s part of the class thing. I think both of those are much more organized.”

Because the Mini-Marque is now an official course, the class has access to new material to learn from, and eighth-grader Joseph Sun believes that he has improved significantly from it.

“Since it’s now recognized as an official class, we got to have textbooks,” Sun said. “We would go to [the textbooks] as a kind of reference, so if we needed help, we would just go to the page to look at how to do it. We’ve learned a lot from that, and from last year to this year to now, I’ve improved a lot more and I think the seventh graders did too.”

Having a class pushes the students to stay focused because it makes the Mini Marque a more officially sponsored project.

“It feels more like an obligation now rather than something you can do if you want to,” Yepuri said. “Before, we basically had to keep track of everyone. Sometimes people would drift off, they would start doing other things. That’s why we weren’t as productive in the first half of last year because there was no real control over what happened.”

Even though the class made things feel more compulsory, Clayton still had to overcome early struggles when trying to teach remotely.

“This was quite a rough start this year even with this group because of all the in-class, out-of-class troubles,” Clayton said. “Trying to teach this kind of stuff when you can’t get close together is infinitely harder because you can’t just all gather around a computer. I’m so grateful for the class, however, because I’m so much less stressed.”

Because the class is only a semester long, the Mini Marque has now shifted into a club where anyone can join. And although the class is over, it has provided a much-needed foundation for the rest of the magazine. The efficiency of the class led the group to complete 110 pages of design, some 40 pages over the normal number, allowing lots of time to edit and cut unessential pages.

“It’s going to help us out in the second half of the magazine because we’re done with most of the spreads,” Yepuri said. “Now we’re gonna have to go through and edit and hopefully get the magazine by late March or early April.”

In years past, applications were necessary to join the club, but because of the hectic year, Clayton decided to get rid of that system.

“When we are a club, it can be anyone,” Clayton said. “Before, we had applications, but things are crazy this year.” When the club began, new members were paired with veterans of the semester class in order to learn the basics. Clayton likes this idea of student-run instruction. “It should be a student-driven magazine,” Clayton said. “The veterans will train the club members once a week, and now that they’ve already created their own spreads [during the semester course], they’ll help the new members create new ones.”

Clayton has not decided on any editors yet, but she may make the decision further down the line.

“We’re all working together to create this, so there are no lead editors at this point,” Clayton said. “I really like the idea of electing those editors based on their service to the magazine at the end of the year and really allowing them to put a stamp on the magazine.”

With the club now underway, Clayton wants to focus more on producing rather than assigning management positions.

“That will be up till the end of the year when we come together to find our most creative minds and our hardest workers,” Clayton said. “They can sit down with the magazine in April and really hone it down to its finest edge.”

Danielle Clayton Humanities Department Chair

STORY Eric Yoo, Morgan Chow PHOTOS Morgan Chow

February 5, 2021

by Myles Lowenberg

Juniors Blake Molthan and Cooper Cole started Strawbuilt, a streetwear clothing company that has released its first piece of clothing, a t-shirt called “Powerlines.”

Cole said he and Molthan decided to start Strawbuilt after looking online.

“We were sitting in science lecture hall one day, and we were looking through a Reddit forum on t-shirts and small companies,” Cole said. “We were like, ‘We should start one’ because he’s good at the whole business side of stuff, and I can do the art stuff.”

Cole and Molthan found the right design for the shirt after going through plenty of others.

“I used my iPad and just kind of drew it up,” Cole said. “I made a bunch of designs, and then we picked one of the ones that we liked best.”

They settled on the “Powerlines” design, featuring a colorful background that stands out against the silhouette of a powerline and the white of the rest of the t-shirt.

“I liked that [design] a lot because the color gradient in the background looked pretty cool,” Molthan said. “We both agreed it looked nice, and [Cole] tweaked it a little bit, made some changes with the coloring and shading and added a little bit of text. And we were set from there.”

Molthan marketed the product by taking pictures and posting them on Instagram and on Reddit.

“On Instagram, most of the people liking it were just friends or anyone I knew,” Molthan said. “But on Reddit, it was all strangers, no one that I knew, and it was still getting some attention.”

Molthan was surprised by the amount of people across the country viewing his products on Reddit and buying them.

“People were giving me advice and updates on [Reddit], and I got a couple of orders from people from like California, Colorado, Idaho,” Molthan said. “Every now and then I get a new order from out of town, and I’m just like, ‘Woah, I’m actually sending the shirt to someone I don’t even know.

After this first release Molthan saw the potential that Strawbuilt has for the future.

“We already have the foundation built, the website and the Instagram and the marketing,” Molthan said.