New Tricks 2014: Better Than Ever

Photo by Ashley Burtz

Creativity has been flourishing once again this year in the liberal arts programs on the Dakota State University Campus.  One way the artistic and literary talents of students and faculty are showcased each year is through the publication of New Tricks magazine.

This magazine has been designed and published each spring since 1992 by the members of Sigma Tau Delta, DSU’s English honor society, and by the students enrolled in the Publishing for New Media course, taught by Dr. John Nelson.

This year there will be all new visual productions from art and digital arts and design majors. There will also be poetry of many different styles, like the modernist style poetry of Jesse Kotilinek to parodies from Chelsea Kruse. There are even a few excellent prose pieces by Mostafa Haque and Jenna Sorsen.

Due to a large donation from the photography club, the New Tricks staff is improving the print magazine by including eight colored pages to display artwork and photographs in their true form. Katie Miller and Sarah Sproul have taken on the task of creating the print layout, and design of the magazine.

New Tricks will also be distributed in multiple forms of digital media this year. In previous years, the magazine was published in EPUB and Kindle, but it will also be published in iBook this year due to Brianna Prill’s knowledge of working with that format. One of the main advantages of using the iBook format is that you can also publish video and music along with the visual art and literature.

One last major improvement this year will be a fresh new look for the website.  Mary Metzger, who redesigned the new site, says she “wanted the website to be easier for future users to use and navigate, and to make it more modern and visually appealing.”

New Tricks is designed, created, and distributed each spring by the students of the Publishing for New Media course offered at DSU. All selections for the magazine are made by the members of Sigma Tau Delta. Before New Tricks, there were a few other attempts to start up an art and literary magazine at DSU, those being The Experiment Magazine from 1971 – 1972 and Posey Magazine from 1986 – 1988.

Get your copy of New Tricks today!