Volunteer Magazine Designer for Queer Arts Nonprofit

Noise Made By at Fruitslice: A Queer Quarterly

About Us

Fruitslice is a volunteer-run Queer literary and arts 501(c)3 nonprofit. We publish exclusively Queer artists writers and creators. Under the Fruitslice umbrella lives Noise Made By, our music-focused subpublication exploring Queer music, musicians, scenes, and culture.

About the Role

We are looking for volunteer designers to help lay out upcoming issues of Noise Made By.

Designers will work together under the guidance of a Senior Designer to translate written pieces into fully designed magazine layouts that follow the issue’s theme and design direction. Each issue is approximately 155 pages.

Noise Made By is messy, maximalist, and zine-inspired. If you want a sense of the visual style and the kind of work we publish, you can check out past issues on our website: www.thefruitslice.com

Time Commitment

Noise Made By publishes two issues per year. Design work happens primarily during two production windows: March and September.

Designers can expect to contribute around 20 hours per issue during those months.

Outside of production periods, there may be occasional check-ins and planning conversations so the team stays aligned, but the main workload occurs during the issue design phase.

The role is remote and asynchronous, and we primarily communicate through Slack.

Responsibilities

Designers on the Noise Made By team will:

• Design magazine layouts for assigned articles or features
• Translate written work into visually engaging spreads using the established brand guidelines and issue design concept
• Collaborate with other designers to assemble the full issue
• Implement small proofing edits and layout adjustments after editorial review
• Communicate with the design team and senior designer during the production window
• Keep track of assigned pieces and deadlines during the issue design cycle

Skills and Experience

We are looking for designers who:

• Have experience with Adobe Creative Suite, particularly Adobe InDesign
• Are comfortable designing editorial layouts for magazines and zines
• Can work within established brand guidelines while still bringing creativity to the page
• Are self-motivated and comfortable managing their own workflow
• Are able to regularly and reliably check in with the team

Helpful but not required:

• Experience with Slack, Zoom, Google Drive, and/ or Airtable
• Experience working on editorial or publication design projects

Culture and Values

We are especially excited to work with designers who care about:

• Queer art and music
• independent publishing
• experimental and maximalist design
• collaborative creative work

Priority will be given to Queer, Trans, POC designers and people from historically marginalized communities. We are aware that unpaid creative work can often be exploitative. Our goal is to build a collaborative environment where everyone’s voice matters and where people feel supported, respected, and creatively energized by the work.

Additional Opportunities

While the core responsibility is magazine layout, there are sometimes additional opportunities to contribute design work such as:

• marketing materials
• merchandise designs
• social media graphics
• newsletter layouts
• promotional materials for events or issues

These are optional and vary depending on the issue cycle.

We can't wait to meet you.