EP 128 - Big News! New look for Presence Journal - a podcast by SDI - The Home of Spiritual Companionship

The calendar has turned over to March, and this week we are rolling out our peer-reviewed flagship publication, Presence Journal. We are so excited to share this issue with you – as we get to reveal a brand new look!

Presence, which has been published by Spiritual Directors International since 1995, last received a redesign in 2003. Since I began working at SDI in 2018, we have been dreaming about giving Presence Journal a look and feel that reflects the vibrant dialog and intimate stories of spiritual direction and companionship that we bring to each issue. Over the past year, I have been working with some amazing creative people to make this a reality. In this episode, I have a conversation about this process with graphic designers Cristina Mejia and Martha María Tobón, who worked extensively under SDI’s guidance to help create the new look and feel of Presence. Cristina is the director of True Indigo, an editorial design firm with over 25 years of international experience in publishing. She is also a spiritual director and a member of SDI.

In his foreword to this first issue incorporating our redesign, SDI Executive Director Reverend SeiFu Singh-Molares writes, “One of the keys to change and transformation, particularly in a community as committed to both as SDI, is to stay true to our essence even as we continuously realign. So, we listen deeply as an act of spiritual presence, and we do so reverentially and lovingly, allowing the multitude of manifestations of the eternal to flow with us, through us and into us, from all of those that we companion, and who companion us. And by doing so, we learn to rest in the change, and to refresh even as we remain faithful to our calling and its essence.”

I also want to thank Toby Becker, who has been a longtime designer with SDI, and helped me wrangle our design templates into a working issue, and to the Creative Team at SDI – Ann Lancaster and Larry J Morris III, for producing and integrating the redesign into the web edition of Presence. And of course to our Executive Director Rev. SeiFu, for his encouragement, leadership, and stewarding of this undertaking.

Check out the new look in our current issue for March 2022, Volume 28, Issue 1.

Presence Journal is published four times a year, in print and on the web. Presence is produced and shared with SDI Members. You can learn more at sdicompanions.org/presence/

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Supported by the Fetzer Institute: helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. Fetzer’s Sharing Spiritual Heritage report asks How will we hold onto ancient wisdom traditions while applying them creatively in today’s time? Learn more at fetzer.org. 

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Cristina Mejia has 30+ years of experience in the graphic design industry, primarily in international editorial design for commercial organizations such as ELLE, Impremedia and General Mills, to social organizations such as the National Immigration Forum and Catholic Relief Services. Cristina is a certified Spiritual Director from the Hesychia School 2019, a member of Spiritual Directors International (SDI), and focuses on the evocative method in her practice.
 
Martha María Tobón is a Colombian graphic designer and art director with more than 25 years of experience in Graphic Design and Art Direction, who has worked for many years in Advertising Agencies and Graphic Design studios in Bogotá and London.
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