Alumni News Blog

The theme of the new edition of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine is “The Secret Life of Ideas”—so it seems appropriate to offer a glimpse into the “secret life” of the issue’s cover.

It all started back in February, when Alumni Magazine editor-in-chief Van Jensen and I were planning out the next issue’s feature stories and thinking about the often-veiled messiness of innovation. Perhaps subconsciously inspired by our own not-always-super-tidy workspaces (ahem), we landed on the image of a desk littered with tools and doodles and scrap paper—all the practical elements that aren’t evident once a project has reached its final, polished form. Around the same time, we’d also been hankering for a cover that incorporated some layered, dimensional elements and hand-lettering.

And so, because we’re always up for a diversion from the endlessly-blinking cursors on blank white screens we tend to spend most of our days staring down, we decided to stage a little mock-up. It was rough—really rough!—but it gave us something to send to our designers at Metaleap Creative. I seem to remember that email involved a lot of exclamation points (on our end, at least). Anyway, here’s how it looked, fresh out of our brains:

Yikes. Please disregard the completely preposterous fake equations written out on the pink paper; there’s a reason I work with words and not numbers.

Metaleap was fortunately not frightened by our feeble attempts at art direction (or, if they were, they did a good job of muffling their screams). After some fine-tuning and prop-collection, they recruited the seriously awesome Josh Meister to photograph their much much fancier setup and mega-talented designer Matthew Allen to hand-draw the masthead, cut-lines, notepad sketches and all the rest.

The result?

Yeah. Just a tiny upgrade. (If you’re wondering, the garish pink notepad has been banished back to the hellhole from which it came—i.e., my desk somewhere, possibly under some old magazines or meeting notes, I don’t know, I should probably clean this mess up.)

Vol. 89, No. 2 of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine will be in alumni mailboxes this week. Read stories from the issue here, and view the digital edition right here.

• Senior biology major Kristen Jolley pits her school-sweatered intellect against that of students from Georgetown and MIT in tonight’s Jeopardy! College Championship final. [Atlanta Business Chronicle]

• What do you think of Georgia Tech’s plan to offer an online master’s in Computer Science for less than $7,000? [College of Computing]

• Atlanta-based startup Techturized has won the 2013 TAG Business Launch Competition. The Alumni Magazine recently spotlighted one of its founders, Joy Buolamwini, CS 12. All three finalist teams were started by Georgia Tech folks. [TAG]

• A team of security experts from Dell SecureWorks, Damballa Labs and the Georgia Institute of Technology has discovered a new communications mechanism used by spam botnet Pushdo that makes it more resilient to takedowns. [crn.com]

• The Georgia Tech Foundation has named Al Trujillo, AE 81, as its next president and chief operating officer. [Midtown Patch]

• Atlanta speaks with Kyle Azevedo of GPS-enabled bikeshare system Viacycle. [Atlanta Magazine]

• Select students recently got a sneak peek of The Internship, partially filmed at Tech and starring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. They report that the campus looks “awesome” on the big screen. [@georgiatech]

Above: Electrical engineering students in an undated photo from the Georgia Tech History Digital Portal.

When G. P. “Bud” Peterson arrived as president of Georgia Tech, he went on a tour of Georgia to learn more about his new home state. He so enjoyed the face-to-face meetings with the people of Georgia that he’s gone every summer since. This June will mark the fifth President’s Tour, which is held in partnership with Alumni Association Networks. Here is this year’s itinerary.

• June 8: Brunswick/St. Simons
• June 9: Savannah
• June 10: Statesboro
• June 11: Lake Oconee
• June 11: Athens
• June 11: Lake Lanier

Want to attend a stop on the tour? Contact Alumni Networks senior manager Jane Stoner at (404) 385-2216 or at jane.stoner@alumni.gatech.edu.

In the August 2011 issue of the Alumni Magazine, we introduced you to Georgia Tech’s Class of 2015, including Christine Proctor, a freshman business administration major from Atlanta.

Proctor came to Tech with some entrepreneurial experience under her belt: Christine’s Cakes, the one-woman cake baking-and-decorating business she founded at age 14. But if you expected her to put those confectionary inclinations on hold while earning her degree, you were sorely mistaken. Christine’s Cakes has only continued to grow, and Proctor has channeled her passion for small business into the Scheller Society of Entrepreneurs, a networking organization for Tech business students.

Proctor’s double-duty hustle recently caught the eye of Bloomberg Businessweek, who featured a Q&A with the third-year student on their website earlier this week.

Are you planning to keep up with the business after graduation?

I’m being pulled in two different directions. I’ve worked only for myself for about six years. When you’re working alone, there’s only one opinion. I’d love to get someone’s critical feedback. … It’s scary, because I think I should take this on, but I also want to finish school. I’ve done one couple’s engagement cake, wedding cake, and their son’s second-birthday cake. It’s nice to make a product that people live their lives around.

Read Proctor’s Bloomberg Businessweek interview in full here, and order a Christine’s Cake of your own right here.

Above: Proctor, at center, attends a freshman orientation session in 2011.