Guilt

I find guilt to be such a complicated and challenging emotion to come to terms with. However, reading the contributions in this issue has been quite eye-opening. The honesty and vulnerability people have shown in their work made me realise that guilt isn’t always a bad thing and it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person for feeling it. If anything, guilt reflects our emotional depth and the care we have for others. What stands out to me after reading the magazine, is how guilt can feel deeply personal yet it’s also universally understood. It’s something we all experience, though in very different ways. I hope this issue encourages you to reflect on guilt as I have, and makes it less intimidating. I want to thank every single one of you who contributed to the issue. Alice, thank you for your effort editing everything on your own. And a huge thank you to Phoebe and Mara for bringing this issue to life.
– Victoria Brustad, President of Smiths
***
When approaching this theme, we initially wanted to stray away from the obvious connotations of darkness, emptiness and solitude that come with guilt, instead opting for a vibrant explosion of colour and shape to
reflect the messiness and individuality of the emotion.
However, as we delved further into formatting the magazine, the vulnerability of each submission leant itself back towards the minimalism we’d once avoided- each spread designed individually to suit the content rather than attempting to
make people’s creativity conform to our colourful aesthetic.
Guilt has a huge breadth of complexities and to have the opportunity to be trusted with such beautifully honest pieces of art is a genuine privilege, one that we have thoroughly enjoyed designing for.
-Phoebe Webber & Mara-Sophie Molzahn, Designers
***
We came up with the theme of guilt based on an amalgamation of suggestions we received from contributors on what kind of topics they would like to see covered in this upcoming issue. Victoria, Mara, Phoebe and I put together
all of the ideas that the contributors had sent us. We asked contributors to talk
about how they deal with guilt in their everyday lives, how they navigate the conflict between relationships and the necessity to put yourself first sometimes, the guilt of consumption, and an analysis of whether guilt is productive. These were just starting point for our writers, with everyone free to go down wherever their own creative pathway took them. It was an absolute pleasure to read through everyone’s submissions, and I am so grateful for the committed designers, and the creativity of the contributors towards this issue.
-Alice Chapman, Editor