THE MAKINGS OF LUCID MAGAZINE

When I was 12 years old, I attended my very first concert. It was a Big Time Rush show and I was in the very back, but I instantly felt the magic of live performance. By the time I was 15 years old, I was going to concerts every weekend. Some shows were for bigger artists while others were lineups of local bands with little to no following. I enjoyed each show just as much as the next, and that got me wondering - why is no one shining light on these smaller artists? I could see that they were just as great as the more notable names in the music industry, yet they were going unnoticed. That was when I decided to start an online publication; with the help of my dad, Lucid Magazine was born within a week of my original idea. 

My older sister, Jhanna, and I took over from the magazine’s inception and we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. We just knew that we wanted to showcase underground musicians and introduce them to a wider audience. Jhanna had already been photographing musicians for a few years and I had been writing forever so it was not too difficult to get our feet off the ground. We gathered up the most creative minds in our inner circle and with only 6 team members, we released the very first Lucid Magazine issue in October of 2015! 

I’ll admit that I’ve lost sight of Lucid’s purpose and vision at different periods over the years. I was a sophomore in high school when I started Lucid, and my main goal was to go backstage and interview musicians. I had no real vision for the publication. The pandemic was when I experienced some of the worst of those creative blocks. Press as we knew it completely changed. As a result, the whole team had to take a step back and adapt. That’s when our rebrand with Khristine Le kicked in. Khristine worked with me to reimagine Lucid’s entire aesthetic by redesigning the website and logo. All the while, I worked on reimagining all of my dreams for Lucid while revisiting its roots to remember just what the publication was meant to be in the first place. It really helped put things into perspective and remind me of the bottom line - what we’re doing here is creating art. I had gotten lost in the business side of it all and forgotten the critical objective of Lucid Magazine . From that point forward, Lucid had a new mission statement: to create and release art that we were proud of. 

While the original intent behind Lucid was for it to be a music magazine, the publication has grown, evolved. and branched out into highlighting every creative industry that you can think of. But we aren’t just featuring the people listed in the table of contents, we are featuring our incredibly talented writers, photographers, and graphic designers as well. In my first editor’s note, I thanked Jhanna for “making my dream into a reality.” Now, 7 years later, I have so many more people to thank - Khristine Le for helping me with Lucid’s 2020 rebrand, Elyza Reinhart for taking on so many roles over the years and being my personal confidant, Sydney Lerner for taking any and every assignment I’ve ever thrown at her and absolutely killing each one, Caitlyn Hastings for keeping me inspired with her insane pitches and content plans - the list goes on. I am so, so, so grateful for everyone who has ever believed in this publication. Whether you’ve let us feature your work, feature you, followed our social media profiles, purchased an issue, or spread the word about Lucid - I can’t thank you enough. Lucid is just as much yours as it is ours.