Written by: Madison Van Horn

Over the past year, three students have set out to uncover an artistic thread that runs deep through Chattanooga. They’ve since fulfilled their dream through Strike Magazine.

Strike Magazine is a student-led publication, originally founded at Florida State University, which strives to bring together creatives from all fields in order to collaborate on an artistically inspired project. With chapters of the magazine gradually popping up all across the southeast, Strike Chattanooga was founded by UTC juniors Marli Geidt, Maggie Schut and Carianna Hunter in spring 2021. 

Geidt is a Marketing Major from Franklin, TN and her initial ideas to start a Strike chapter for Chattanooga came to her while in quarantine as she thought about her future goals and ambitions. 

“I love working on creative projects and I love fashion, that’s what I want to put my time and energy towards,” says Geidt. “I felt like there wasn’t really that opportunity in Chattanooga.”

With nothing but time on her hands, Geidt got to work and connected with Strike Magazine’s founder. She explained that Chattanooga’s own chapter of Strike would be the perfect creative outlet for her while creating “an opportunity for students to get real tangible experience” in fields like fashion, production, writing, and photography. 

Since its founding, Strike Magazine has already launched their founding issue in Spring 2021, which sent a buzz through the Chattanooga creative community. With a growing staff of over 50 students and 1,000+ followers on Instagram, it has become a “unifying thing for a lot of creative people,” according to Geidt. 

Geidt now works as the Editor in Chief of Strike Chattanooga alongside her two best friends and cofounders, Maggie Schut and Carianna Hunter. As the creative director, Schut collaborates with Geidt to brainstorm concepts, plan the magazine’s creative content and lead the many teams that make up Strike. 

Starting an entire publication from the ground up may seem daunting, but Schut says that she has gained so much from her experience. 

“I have obtained and grown many skills since founding Strike, some of those being communication, leadership, methods of design, time management, delegation and reaching my full creative potential,” says Schut. “It has been a huge learning experience and also a chance to discover what others and myself are capable of.”

Hunter, who operates as Externals Director for Strike Chattanooga, said Strike has been a pathway for “building confidence and believing in the vision that we set out in the beginning.”

“Coming into this issue, it was more about refining our technique and it was more about being sure in our decisions,” said Hunter. “I think that’s the difference in the first issue and the second issue is finding confidence in our voice throughout all of this.”

Strike’s most recent issue, titled “Chroma,” explores the concepts of perspective and color through “very crisp and clean shoots” with the whole production being “as editorial as possible” and “super saturated,” according to Geidt. Seven different colors are explored through completely different perspectives, as Geidt and Schut gave their teams creative freedom and interpretation over the issues’ content. 

“‘Chroma’ is an overwhelming sense of color and color is all about perspective,” says Geidt. “Building upon each other’s ideas and changing things with everyone’s perspectives makes the final product even better.” 

With perspective at the forefront of Geidt’s minds, she reflected on how Strike has been “a huge force” in pushing her towards her career goals, helping her grow as a leader and an artist.

In celebration of the many months of hard work that went into creating “Chroma,” Strike hosted an Issue 2 Launch party with the entire staff on November 20, 2021 at the Moxie Hotel.

“So many of us put hours and hours of unpaid work into the magazine. We gladly do it, but it’s just a huge project and I want to be able to celebrate it. I am so thankful for the entire team and I want them to all be able to come together and celebrate with each other. Throughout the entire creative process it’s so fun to watch everyone get so excited.” 

To view Strike Chattanooga’s Issue 02, “Chroma,” visit https://issuu.com/strike_magazine/docs/final_strike_indesign_file_1_ 

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