ZINES!

Overview

I was tasked with researching and creating my own zine, to start off I researched zines as I had no idea what they were about and then I experimented with different ideas for pages. I had to make my zine relevant to the work I had been doing throughout my first month in the course and to also expand on what I have done.

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What's a Zine?

While researching I discovered that zines are basically non published pieces of work that are easily made and easy to mass produce, prominently using a photo copier and then folded up. One thing that they are popular for that is they're mostly used for making something that isn't mainstream or controversial, the type of thing that wouldn't get published under normal events.

Some types of zines that are popular are comics, music, photographs or any collection in general. No skill is needed when creating one also, as all it takes it pen and paper with a pinch of passion. Throughout the 60's, 70's and 80's zines became popular in the punk scene, I found a few examples of these and I particularly liked them and the fact they used the news paper clipping style when making words.

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Sketchbook Work

Before starting the main zine I wanted to experiment in my sketchbook. I took pictures of all the pages so you can scroll through them:

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Making my own Zine

As I said I liked the punk styled Zines and that's how I wanted mine to turn out, scrappy and beaten up. During the brief I was told I needed to add in my college work, so I started by making mind maps of what I could include as well as different ways and materials I could use. I wanted to mainly go with the "Self as Seen" theme I did a few weeks back when researching graphic designers. Ideally this would be a prominent feature throughout the book as well as having the news paper clippings be the title.

Main first page:

As mentioned before I wanted "Self as seen" to be a main feature so I decided to have it as the main page. I wanted to develop more on my original piece for Peter Saville's factory poster where I originally recreated it (Took a picture of me with my fingers in my ears and manipulated it on Photoshop). Instead of that I changed it up by putting my hands over my eyes for the picture. I then put it into Photoshop, cropped it around my face/hands and repeated it two times then put a filter over the other two to make them look weird. Then I repeated the set of three and put different colours behind them to make the front page. Finally I cut out clippings from a magazine to title it "SHANE'S ZINE".

Back page:

For the back page I wanted to get a snap of the entrance to the college as I have to touch on my time being a student also. I then used an acetate sheet and a red sharpie to go over the outlines and stuck this on the back with an added cardboard frame around it to add support. The idea behind this was that I have tendencies to over analyse things, so I thought it would be fitting. Later on I decided to make use of the void space between the image and the acetate sheet, went to the same location and picked up leafs to put them into that space.

Emotion in colour:

One piece of work I did was the colour emotions where I had to pick two contrasting emotions (Hope/Anxiety). I originally made two A4 pieces where I experimented with collages and colours for how I'd express those emotions in colour. I wanted to touch on this and try the exercise again in my zine. Instead of Hope I went for Hopeful and the way it's laid out in the zine it reads "Hopeful Anxiety", I thought this was quite a play on words.

With the Hopeful side of things I wanted for it so be somewhat simple so I went with a pale yellow water colour as a background and some images of nature from a magazine. The big piece in the middle of the page was solar system scene as I feel like that is really Hopeful in the whole infinite conquest thing. Instead of drawing planets I found pictures of soups in the same magazine and it looks really fitting.

For the Anxiety side I kept it quite familiar to my last piece. It was really busy as if signifying over thinking Instead of the clean "HOPEFUL" I used paper clippings so its crappy. I also found a raw looking image of a dead fox in a photography magazine that looked fitting and.

Blog life:

In my brief it said that I'd have to include screenshots of my blog (I know meta) into my zine, but instead of doing something as simple as that Instead wanted to sketch out my work space in class. I sketched the mac I use and the window behind me as it's quite a unique background, so I could put a screen shot of my blog into it.

Not contempt with that I decided it had to be interactive. To achieve this I printed off multiple screen shots and applied the same void space technique and added the screenshots with arm sticking out so you can swap out the screenshots. I had to add in " BLOG LYF" in paper clippings to continue with the theme.

Recording Space:

I never actually recorded the space of the college as I was off that day, instead I did it in my back garden. Doing a page about going around the college collecting data was a naturally progression. While doing this I took a picture of the back entrance to the college and cut parts of it out so I could re sketch and colour them. I went back out and collected leafs to stick in and took a snap of the tree next to the entrance and stuck it on.

Self as Zine:

After editing that picture of me with my hands in front of my eyes I wanted to link it with the typography work I did in the style of Neville Brody. With this idea I experimented in my sketchbook trying out different fonts for the word "Zine" using Fontspace.com to find the fonts to write. I then added the Photoshopped image of me and came up with the slogan "Self as Zine" which is a play on words on the "Self as seen" project. I replicated the same idea into my actual zine and made my head pop out in a 3D effect.

Inside page:

For the big piece in the middle of the whole zine I wasn't sure with how I wanted to approach it, so I did a mind map to try to come up with some different ideas. I ended up wanting to do it about my life inside and outside of college.

The top half would be a sort of timeline on the work I've done in the past month and the bottom half would be about me. Mostly consisting of some of my favourite photographs that mean something to me and the music and general stuff I love.

To achieve the timeline look I printed off images of the work I've done and stuck them onto the top half in order. For the colour emotion I photocopied my original work from my sketchbook and chopped it up and tested randomly placing it in my sketchbook. I liked the look so I also did it in the zine. As an extra test I filled a page of my sketchbook with glue and dropped the excess cropping onto the page. I did the same exercise with the "zine" piece I did where I tested different fonts. I photocopied the full page from my sketchbook and did the same steps. I also got some one in my class to take a picture of me doing my sketchbook work for this project so I could feature that in the timeline. I decided to print it off onto red paper as an experiment and I liked the way it looked so I kept it. Then I got a piece of string to link all the work together completing the timeline.

For the bottom half of the page I printed off some of my favourite pictures as well as an image of a concert I went to for my favourite band and a picture of my favourite tattoo. These are a glimpse of things that mean a lot to me, so I had to include them. After finishing both half's I titled them using paper cuttings again. I then used splashes of paint and glitter to fill black space to make it more interesting.

Windows:

I was inspired by an exhibit at the Manchester Art Gallery where you can go into a small room and look through a window and it had different coloured glass. I don't know whether this was there intention but there is a piece of art on display in front of the window and looking through the different colours give it a different perspective. This really inspired me so I tried out different techniques in my sketchbook.

Using pieces of acetate I tried covering it in ink and crayon but they didn't seem to have the intended look, so I then had one of those eureka moments! The sweet wrappers from a tub of Quality Streets may work, so as a student with no money I politely asked my mum to buy a tub "for college". It took quite a bit of convincing but she bought it and let me take all the plastic wrappings off before people ate them. In my sketch book I cut out pieces of acetate and stuck the different coloured wrappers onto it and it looked like the stained glass look I was going for.

After testing I wanted to add this into the zine. I cut holes in specific pages so that you could see my photographs underneath, and added the acetate sheets with the different coloured wrappers added. I didn't want there to just be a window to see through the book as you're seeing the same image as you would if you look at the big page. I wanted there to be a different perspective involved hence the colours.

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Evaluation

All together I had one week to do this project and in hindsight that is plenty of time, but when I first got the brief I panicked, didn't do as much research as I wish I would of and rushed into the practical phase. Going straight into Photoshop and doing the "self as seen" I then felt lost because I didn't really have a plan on where I was going. I also was working all over the weekend so I was trying to rush it to get it done. When back in college on the Tuesday I became a lot more relaxed and experimented a lot more (with the font testing and the windows).

After finishing the work I am happy to say I'm really proud of the zine I made. I managed to give it that scrappy look I desired as well as keep the on going theme of the punky text. As I said I wasn't happy with how much research and experimenting I did, because it does come in critically for the final piece. I was happy with how I portrayed my work into the zine though and how detailed and interactive it is. I also presented my work to the class and I got good feedback saying its good how I managed to put my personal life and feelings into the piece.

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Bibliograpy

Unknown. 2008 "WHAT IS A ZINE?" by Art Gallery of Ontario. http://artmatters.ca/wp/2008/08/what-is-a-zine/. [19/10/18 14:36]

Styles. C. 2016 "What are zines anyway?" by Salford Zine Library. https://issuu.com/cherrystyles/docs/zinefest16. [19/10/18 14:40]

Unknown. 2016 "A short history of zines" by properganderpress. https://properganderpressblog.wordpress.com/2016/09/08/a-short-history-of-zines/. [19/10/18 14:48]

Unknown. 2012 "Punk A Visual Language" by Design Context. http://j-douglas1114-dc.blogspot.com/2012/05/final-punk-zine-punk-visual-language.html. [19/10/18 14:52]

Yang. A. S. 2014 "Zines for CAKE" by Small Science Collective. http://www.smallsciencecollective.org. [19/10/18 15:45]

Rotsztain. J. 2014 "SAPPYFEST ZINE FAIR: A RECAP" by Broken Pencil. https://brokenpencil.com/news/sappyfest-zine-fair-a-recap/. [19/10/18 15:48]