Hello! For our first #wewrite spotlight, meet MCW alumnus Sevy Perez (B.A. ’15). As a student pursuing the writing certificate, Sevy had the opportunity to work on the design of Ink Lit Mag(which he helped found) and The Examined Life Journal, as well as create his own professional website (sevyperez.com) which served as his final Capstone project. We caught up with Sevy for a brief Q&A; see his answers below!

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When did you graduate/what was your academic background?
I just graduated in May 2015 with my Bachelor of Arts and Certificate in Writing. 

What are you doing now? 
Right now, I’m finishing my Master of Fine Arts in Visual Communication Design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, teaching and continuing my independent art and design practice.

What did you gain the most from pursuing the Certificate?
While the Magid Center connected me to some really formative opportunities, what I today think I bolstered most was the ability to translate — not exactly from one real language to another, but from one working language to another. Designers only translate. We take the muddy and make it clear, and whether that’s a team of engineers that needs to commercialize research or a poetry manuscript that needs to be interpreted into a [book]cover, the act of laying understandable and nuanced communicative groundwork unites everything that we do. Communication doesn’t stop at language.

What would you like to tell the world about the Magid Center?
There are, to my knowledge, few institutions that incubate an interdisciplinary writing curriculum and offer certification of the self-starting and effort the Magid Center requires. And this is important for a number of reasons. I speak for only a small population, but I always ask colleagues and employers if they’d rather hire an okay designer who’s a great communicator or a great designer who’s an okay communicator. The answer is always the same: the great communicator, because it affects a lot more than just the final product. And it’s a pedagogy the Magid Center prides.

http://sevyperez.com/
Photography credit: Steven Ford