One of my dreams has always been to start my own teen magazine for African American girls. Growing up, I loved reading teen magazines but noticed that there weren’t any girls who looked like me on any of the pages. Maybe they would have one quote by a black girl, but none of the stories (i.e. beauty tips) were tailored to fit ME and my interests. I found it really frustrating because these magazines didn’t (and still don’t) seem to get it. Even though your audience are teens…different girls go through different experiences, especially girls of color. But I’m not going to lie, I still kept reading merely for entertainment because there was nothing else out there.
Even though, I’ve probably had this dream since I was 18 or so…I never really acted on it. I would always talk about it, but with school and what not I never really got around to it. Fast forward to Spring 2008, I took a InDesign course at Annenberg because I thought it would be helpful for when I did finally decide to create my magazine. For our final project, we had to create our own publication and I created Legacy (too bad the name was taken), the teen magazine I had been talking about for years.
But even after my final, I still hadn’t seriously thought of pursuing the magazine thing any further. After graduation I didn’t find a job as quickly as I had wanted, so that left me with a lot of free time. Lol…A LOT of free time! Anyways, I had e-mailed my final project to a couple of friends and they were really impressed with my work and said that they couldn’t wait for the real thing.
It’s crazy because those comments from my friends were what finally got me to be serious about my magazine. It’s funny how God sends people to remind you of His plan for you. Because honestly as much as I wanted to create this magazine, I was afraid. And the crazy part is that I wasn’t afraid of failing. I was afraid of succeeding. (corny but seriously true) My fears were over stupid stuff like having to run a big operation or what if it becomes so big that I have to do all these public speaking events? I dunno..for some reason with my not having a job and wanting to be productive while I waited somehow made the timing right.
So, the summer of 2008 is when Brownstone was born. I can remember going to bed and leaving a pad of paper next to my bed because that’s when God would hit me with all of His ideas for the magazine. That entire summer I worked hard on putting together my business plan. Looking back it’s crazy thinking about how I put together a business plan by myself…well with the help of Google and some books from Barnes and Noble.
And now almost 2 years later, the blog version of Brownstone is up and running. (the online magazine version hopefully will come later this year) We have several logos that have truly brought Brownstone to life thanks to SupaSista Designs. (She is an amazing designer and I’m thankful that we were able to find a designer that understands our vision and can articulate it visually) I have a group of 5 writers now. Our content is growing….too many things to list, but this is only the beginning. I really believe that Brownstone has the potential to be great. And I’m just taking it day by day….
