Starting around 8am, a typical class day in London for me typically starts off with a coffee or café drink of some kind. I’ve always tried my best to make some sort of breakfast, but I usually will just grab a pick me up from my favorite cafes. I usually go to Pret, which is like Starbucks, but I’ve grown to like it more than Starbucks these days. One thing that might surprise you and definitely surprised me is that Pret locations rarely sell iced drinks. No iced coffees or lattes, just hot ones. As someone who always drank iced coffee in the US, it took me a couple of weeks to get used to drinking only hot drinks. After the heat wave that took over many countries in Europe, hot days in London have actually become the norm and I’ve been ordering more blended iced drinks which is a fruit smoothie of some sorts.
It’s a Monday, which means I have Zine Design from 9am-1pm. Zines are small scale expressive magazine spread, usually made up of no more than 5 pages. And at the end of this 5-week session, I will have created my own! So for today’s class we were informed that we were going to visit a magazine store. For someone who isn’t a graphic design student, you might think that this doesn’t sound like the most exciting field trip to go on, especially in a foreign country. However, as someone really fascinated by publication design and the culture of magazines, I was quite excited to see what was in store for our class.
The store is called MagCulture located in Clerkenwell which is in the Southwestern region of London. We were fortunate enough to meet the founder of MagCulture, Jeremy Leslie who was kind enough to give us a presentation on his love for magazines and why he founded his company. Their slogan “We love magazines” has already allowed me to become a fan of their celebration and appreciation for editorial creativity and publication. After getting to here Jeremy’s experience with magazines over the years, we were able to browse around the store. Again, I love magazines I always have so being able to look at magazines for class was quite literally the best thing ever. I ended up buying one magazine about street art and its influence on typography which also has some awesome spreads inside.
Mondays are only made up of one class for me, so after class I went to lunch with my classmates for a quick burrito and headed to Hyde Park to work on some homework and relax. On a nice day, I love going to Hyde Park and finding a nice spot of shade underneath a big tree and even sometimes taking a quick nap on my blanket. Hyde Park is about 4 miles wide, so there are endless amounts of spots in the grass to go to a different spot every time I visit. It’s also so convenient because I’m staying right across from it, about a 2 minute walk to get there.
A Message from the Office of Global Engagement:
The safety and security of Drexel students is a priority for the University. As part of the efforts to support Drexel students that are studying abroad during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Office of Global Engagement has conducted a rigorous review of programming and provided additional support to participating students with customized pre-departure orientations and regular check-ins during the required self-isolation period and the term.