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Megan Carr used to sit on her childhood bedroom floor, flipping through fashion magazines and creating collages. Carr cut out the pictures from her Vogue Magazine subscription she’s had since she was 13 and stuck them on her bedroom walls.

While she doesn’t collage as much anymore, the hobby led to her passion project: Pure Ginger.

“I realized that the reason I was doing it was because I like the visuals so much, I like how it’s laid out and laying it out in my own way,” Carr, a Syracuse University junior, said.

Pure Ginger is Carr’s magazine, which she created this year. The magazine highlights art and poetry, focusing on visual appeal. She’s now working on the second edition at SU, which is expected to come out in print and digitally in the first week of December.

Carr loves the photography and visual aspects of magazines, which are the main components of Pure Ginger. Instead of using written articles, Pure Ginger contains poems, quotes and headlines that complement photos.

Carr came up with the name Pure Ginger at 15. It’s inspired by her grandmother, Ginger, who taught her how to sew, draw, paint and more. Carr called her grandmother “the heart of her creativity.”

After sitting on the name for a few years, Carr realized how much she liked it.

As a creative advertising major, Carr decided to take the Pure Ginger name she came up with in high school and make it into a magazine. It’s where her ideas for photo shoots, graphic design and spreads live, she said.

“I had so much free time that I was like, ‘If I don’t start now, I feel like I never will,’ and it’s been great,” Carr said.

In high school, Carr was co-president of a fashion club, where she created small magazines using the design programs available to her, like Canva. Since then, she’d been wanting to start Pure Ginger, but originally thought of it as a fashion brand when she wanted to pursue design in high school.

Once arriving at SU, Carr took on leadership titles like vice president and creative director in organizations like Women in Communications. Despite these roles, she said she didn’t feel like she was fully showcasing her artistic abilities.

Carr officially started the publication over the summer with close friends from her hometown of Milwaukee. She reached out to friends asking them to model for her, and then borrowed a friend’s camera and took photos and designed the publication. Carr finished the first edition over the last two weeks of summer, and it came out in late September.

Carr said it’s ok that every page of Pure Ginger looks different. The content isn’t focused on articles, but on images, art and poetry. Cassie Roshu | Senior Staff Photographer

Just like when they were younger and dressed up to go take pictures after dinner, Carr knew her friends would say yes to her photo shoots — they’d already been doing them their whole lives.

One of Carr’s hometown friends, Emily Braunstein, was used to doing these fashion photography shoots with Carr. She helped Carr take photos for the first edition of Pure Ginger and also wrote a poem about Midwest summers included in the magazine. Braunstein said she’s loved watching Carr bring her creative visions to life and grow creatively.

“It started as fun photo shoots in high school and even middle school, and now it’s evolved into something very real, and a complete magazine,” Braunstein said. “It definitely shows her ability to take charge and test her creativity and see the full potential of what she can do.”

She now has a whole team of people working with her, which she said has made the process much easier. Carr said she enjoys having creative control over Pure Ginger, and that she and her friends can highlight their talents and creative work.

With the magazine consisting of Carr’s friends and people she knows, the team understands Carr’s passion for Pure Ginger, and Carr understands their strengths. Carr said working on the magazine feels like hanging out with her friends.

Junior Anna Jack has been the lead photographer working on the second edition. She said the familiar faces have made her more comfortable and helped her express herself more creatively as a photographer, especially knowing they’re all motivated to do the same thing.

“It’s extremely rewarding to actually have this idea,” Jack said. “We were just messaging about stuff in a GroupMe and now it’s a magazine.”

Jack and Carr tag team photo shoots and take pictures of the same scenes at the same time to catch different angles. Carr said as long as she has a good mood board for Jack, she can execute the vision.

Most of the poems in Pure Ginger revolve around art — Carr and her friends look to their surroundings or online to find pieces of art and artists they’re interested in featuring. Pure Ginger often features artists who people aren’t as familiar with, Carr said, like Claudia Andujar in its first edition.

Carr was inspired by her current social media marketing internship with Musée Magazine, a digital publication focused on aspiring artists. She looks to the magazine to find artists that people might not know about, and is planning on featuring the artist Ted’s Right Mind in the upcoming magazine.

Carr gives her writers free rein over how and what they choose to write regarding the art. She said she wants there to be no constraints with Pure Ginger; just people’s own twists on art.

“Every page can look different,” Carr said. “The cohesiveness of it is just that it’s all random put together.”

The point of the magazine is that there’s no theme; it’s centered around whatever her peers believe to be interesting and meaningful, Carr said. When her graphic design team asked what kinds of colors or fonts they should be using, Carr told them it could be whatever they thought was the most visually appealing.

“When people are wanting to design something or want to write something, it’s more so what they really feel looks cool,” Carr said. “It’s unique for the magazine, rather than what they think it should be.”

When Carr texted her sorority’s group chat over the summer, asking if anyone wanted to work on Pure Ginger, Lydia Phillips, a junior studying communications design, knew she wanted to help.

Now, as head of graphic design, Phillips works closely with Carr to comb through the photos from shoots and carry out her vision. Phillips said she’s looking forward to including more artists’ work in Pure Ginger, and she enjoys pairing the art with type and graphics.

The group that works on Pure Ginger is tight-knit. Working on the magazine gave them opportunities to see new creative sides of each other.Courtesy of Megan Carr

Right now, Pure Ginger isn’t a registered student organization, because Carr likes the magazine’s fluidity. Phillips said the fact that Pure Ginger isn’t an RSO lets people have more fun with it. For the first edition, she printed five copies at the Nancy Cantor Warehouse with her own money, but is hoping to expand that for the upcoming magazine.

The magazine has also taught the team more about themselves. Jack is used to taking formal senior portraits for students, which she said is more rigid and less artistic, so working on Pure Ginger has been something new for her. Carr’s perspective on art is special, she said, and she’s been able to learn more about herself as an artist.

“Meg has really opened up a creative space for everyone,” Jack said. “I love the way that Meg’s brain works.”

When they first talked about the magazine, Jack said she saw a light in Carr’s eyes she’d never seen before, revealing a more artistic side of her.

Carr doesn’t expect Pure Ginger to become a widely-published magazine — that’s not the main point of it. It’s still a work in progress; she said she just wants it to be a space for her and her peers to highlight what each person can do.

Carr hopes to continue making Pure Ginger better and broadening its horizons, maybe even after she graduates. She wants the visually-driven magazine to catch people’s eye and make them stop for a second.

“That’s what art is all about in general,” Carr said. “Just making you think, even if it’s for just a split second.”

Published on November 17, 2025 at 9:09 pm
Contact Mia: mjones58@syr.edu