Anastacia Jido is Dote Magazine’s Visual Media + Blog Coordinator. Dote is a national print magazine with a strong online presence that focuses on curating a well-styled and meaningful life.
I think I was always flipping through magazines. When I was twelve, I got a subscription to Teen Vogue as a gift and I was like, “Oh my gosh I’m so cool. I get to flip through Teen Vogue. I’m a teen. This is great.”
This is embarrassing, but it’s funny. Back when Twilight was a thing, Robert Pattinson was on the cover of Vanity Fair — love him. So, I bought the magazine, and I still have that copy today.
l was just obsessed with the curation of this beautiful thing [the magazine] that everybody would flip through. I would get very sad when I finished a magazine. I was like, “Do I throw this out? Do I recycle this?” It was so sad. I went through a serious phase where I would just keep everything.
I would have massive bins of magazines. Magazines take me back to a younger time, or different phases that I went through. It’s cool to see how far I’ve come in terms of where my interests have gone and where life has taken me.
I initially went to school for criminal justice. After my first semester, I was like, “No, this is not my thing. I need to get out of here.” I didn’t know what I wanted to take — I just knew that I didn’t want to be in this program.
Portrait of Anastacia Jido. Courtesy of Anastacia Jido’s Instagram.
I picked the Information Design program at Mount Royal University and got in. On my first day, I walked into class and they were like, “Open Adobe Illustrator,” and I was like, “What is Adobe?” I knew nothing about anything. I didn’t really know that was something that you could pursue, get a degree in and move forward with.
I feel like it was meant to be in a weird way. I was just plopped into [the program], went with it and fell in love with it.
I was very interested in that statement of, “Print is dead and digital platforms are rising.” I think they both hold their ground in very different ways, but, for me, a print copy has always been something that I physically hold, smell and flip through the pages. It’s such a different experience than digital.
I had a couple of professors tell me I was making a huge mistake dedicating my time and energy in print. I had a lot of [professors] say, “This is not the way to do this. Don’t bury yourself in this hole.”
I always knew in the end, no matter what anyone said, I wanted to be in print. I wanted to do what I loved and make a job out of it.
I think the people who wholeheartedly love print will keep it going, no matter what. There’s no way that people can say, “Print is dead,” and things like National Geographic, TIME and Vogue are still doing it better and better every year. You just have to be wholeheartedly dedicated to it.
I don’t know what my dream job is yet. I’ve thought about this quite a bit actually in trying to figure out what it is I want in five or ten years. Right now, I’m very happy being so creative with a team of all ladies who are super passionate about this magazine.
Never stop chasing your passion. Never say no. Never let anyone tell you that you can’t do it. Keep working harder and harder and harder.
You’ve just got to live your life and do everything for you, not for anyone else. Because at the end of the day, they’re not the ones dealing with the repercussions if you don’t do it.
As told to Sarah Green. This interview has been edited and condensed.
This article is part of a series of profiles on industry professionals through the Calgary Journal. To see more like this, visit the On the Job page.
Editor: Alexandra Nicholson | anicholson@cjournal.ca