Generate Magazine

October 30, 2009

art / emergent / emerging church

We got our copy of the first issue of GENERATE Magazine the other day. Inspired by Real Live Preacher’s review, I want to share some thoughts, and encourage you to subscribe. GENERATE is a genuine artwork of what is going on within the emerging conversation, and I have been excited to see it since I first heard about it. It is fantastic to know that there are still quality pieces of print out there like this one.

There is an amazing group of people involved in the creation of the magazine, and I feel incredibly fortunate to consider some of them my friends, including Makeesha Fisher and Troy Bronsink, and to know of several others, including Paul Soupiset, Carla Barnhill, and Chad Crawford. They all do wonderful things, and make the magazine a fantastic experience.

First, as a designer I have to comment on this aspect of the magazine. I’m not a very good print designer, but I do know good print work, and am inspired by it in many ways. This is good print work. There is great typography for the most part, especially on pages that show poetry or photography (I would have done some of the story pages differently, but regardless); there is great color, and there are great photographs from a variety of sources, from the sky outside people’s houses to the food inside their refrigerators.

The content itself is also great – it really does feel like an artifact of emergence. I love the phrase, and hope it stays with the magazine. Things that stood out to me included Troy’s interview with folks from Paste Magazine, which has brilliant things that I hope to grasp and hold onto about art, mission, and risk-taking, as well as the music they cover and the reasons they do things.

There were also several poems where I found great significance and depth, from people like Michael Toy, Jessica Schafer, and Maria Garner.

So overall, I can’t recommend this magazine enough. I want to encourage you to subscribe to it if you can, and experience this beautiful art.