#askmeanythingproject

THE ADVENTURE SERIES: ZINE MACHINE

What if there was a machine that would create a randomly generated 16 page A6 zine that is completely unique. Hmm

In a previous practical class we got feedback on our spreads, so I decided to work on finalising my zine before sending it off for submission.

I looked back on the slides and saw a comment from a fellow student about my spreads. I was really pleased to see some nice feedback from another student and it really pushed me in the right direction with my zine.

Fig 1. The comment I had received. Thx. Also enjoy my crudly scribble over the name.

I worked on my zine over the weekend so that I had finished it before the due date because I have been burned before with submitting assignments at the last minute and technology simply and logically saying ‘no’.

With all the feedback I was given, I now have a near finished zine. Here it is!

Fig 2. My near finished zine. 

I first took all the feedback I was given and made adjustments as such. I reduced the tint for some of the images, lined up everything to a central line and make the type on pages 8 and 9 more free flowing. That was the feedback section done and dusted.

There’s a story to how this ended up like this.

First, lets talk about page 12 (third row fourth image). Inside the number 4 (yes, that is the number 4), I added some notable images that had used Futura such as Barbara Kruger and Ford. This was a bit of a pain to make at the start but ended up working very well. It cost me though...

Secondly lets talk about the references. I initially was just going to have a single reference page where I could put all of my references down that I used for my research and my images. That’s what I would normally do, but little did I know that I had about 2 references for my research and about 16 REFERENCES FOR IMAGES, HALF OF THEM ON A SINGLE PAGE (page 12). I ended up changing how I was going to do my image references and I just put them at the bottom of each page that had images in it (in footnotes). Some pages, such as 8 and 9, would have their reference on the next pages as I got all the images from the same source. For page 12, I just said to refer to page 15 for reference as half the page would just be the references to the images.

I still need to make some adjustments, but they are not critical and are just decorative choices. The red tint is still strong on some of the images and somethings could be cleaned up.

Also, while looking through the zine after showing it to a group I am a part of and I saw something on page 12.

Fig 3. Page 12 in my zine.

Can you see it?

It struck me as soon as I looked at it.

The rectangle from page 13 erupted out the side of this page. ARGH! That was the first thing I had changed when I saw it because I am a perfectionist and that was interrupting my flow.

To top this post of, I will talk about the final page, or the back cover of the zine.

Fig 4. The back cover of the zine.

I realised that I hadn’t really showcase Paul Renners typeface fully (as in all the characters and symbols). I chose for my back cover, to showcase that by integrating his typeface into the letter F of his typeface. It turned out really well and I like how it looks. The final thing to note is my name. At the end of every publication or thing I make, I have a little signature that I like to add to it. It is made out of my own handwriting and is like a stamp of approval to me. I only add it to stuff I am proud of and I was very proud of this zine. 

This was an absolutely fantastic project as I needed an excuse to make a zine and this was the perfect time to make it. It would have been fantastic to actually print it out (on good, high quality paper) and share it with my peers. It really opened my eyes to what I would need to consider when making a zine and really helped me master InDesign. 

It really makes me miss the trips to Sticky Institute to get zines and talk with my friends about our projects. I miss that. I miss not having the time on the train where I can just listen to my music and read a zine. I miss that too. I miss everything about the Uni experience. I am glad I stuck through this transition and I am happy I got something out of it. I hope things go back to normal soon.

;(

THE ADVENTURE SERIES: LIGHTNING AND SPARKS

In a previous post, I was talking about how I had lost my creative flame for this project and was lost in what I was doing. Here’s my redemption story.

At about 11PM on a Saturday night, I was laying in bed watching a YouTube video about some useless facts when suddenly a thought popped into my head. What if I use the numbers in Futura as part of the question designs? What I would have done was jump out of bed, open my computer and start doing work but I just wrote it down and then circled it so I can work on it in the morning.

The result I got was better than I had expected...

Fig 1. The spread pages for pages 2 and 3. Our good friend Lorem Ipsum on page 2, although Lorem Ipsum is absent from this. :(

Fig 2. The spread pages for pages 4 and 5.

What I changed was that I started to integrate Paul Renners typeface more into the document, including the number for the questions. I also played around with angles as well, especially in Fig 2 where most of the things were offset to 30 degrees (something that most Bauhaus designers would do to indicate the transition to the future). What is great about this is that the pages now look more interesting.

The fact that the text is offset at a consistent angle does change the readability, but to the extent of being unreadable. The black and red bars make the images more visually interesting to look at. The change of typeface to the condensed Futura makes Paul Renner more of a focus in this task. He is on the front cover, so I might as well make him the star of the show.

It also makes sense with my front cover as well, as the cover relates to the book covers of Josef Albers and the design inside is stereotypical Bauhaus designs. I think I’m also pretty sold on the red colour for the zine as it’s powerful and can relate to the works of the Bauhaus, as they also use lots of red as well (don’t quote me on that).

It’s beginning to look like something that I would actually read, and that’s the main thing I would like to create; something that I can enjoy reading but also make the message of my designer clear.

THE ADVENTURE SERIES: THE FINALE V5

Today I took all the feedback from the last Practical class and made adjustments based on that feedback. I started out clueless about what my zine was supposed to look like, leaning back on what I know best rather than testing myself as a designer and using the tools already given to me. Now, here is the final zine (in a gif)

Fig 1. A gif of my zine, which is V5 of the zine.

I am very proud of this final zine. I put a lot of time and effort into making this a great zine. Like I probably said in previous posts, I love zines and I would really like to get into making my own zines and what a better time to start making them than now, when we are stuck in isolation and have nothing better to do then make art.

Here’s a little secret. I uploaded the first version of the GIF and then saw something that annoyed me which was the fact that the black colour was inconsistent. I fixed it and then noticed that I forgot to change one thing so I went back and changed that then uploaded it again. Then I noticed that there were still some page numbers lurking (I was keeping page 15′s page number but 12 was still chilling in the background) around so I had to go back and then delete them.

I have learned through this process that I should make sure everything looks OK before uploading anything. Weird that I am learning that at 18 year old when all my life I have been submitting things without looking over them. Lucky it hasn’t gotten me in that much trouble (yet).

THE PRACTICAL SERIES: VIRTUAL PIZZA

In the surprise week 13 class we all caught up and got some final feedback on Ask Me Anything projects before we submitted it. It was good to hear everyone and see how much everyone had progressed throughout the course of this project. What’s great is seeing how everyone too the feedback they were given and then adapted their work to address the feedback. 

When I started this class, I thought I had completed my zine. I was happy with how it looked and felt ready to submit it. I still thought it was a good idea to get some feedback on it so that if there were any issues, I could fix it over the weekend so it was ready to submit.

Fig 1. The full zine on a single page.

Karen gave me some great feedback on some things that I didn’t really consider, such as alignments of text and visual elements and some things that I could adjust before submitting. Some of the things were that:

- The alignment of the text on page 4 still looked off.

- Could move the text around on page 5 so there isn’t the orphaned word.

- The gaps between certain elements were inconsistent.

- I could move the text around on pages 8 and 9 so that a staple doesn’t go through the text. 

- The exclamation mark on page 14 looks off.

- The word references doesn’t really need to be on page 15.

- I could remove the page numbers.

So, looks like I still have a lot of work to do.

THE PRACTICAL SERIES: LETS GET CRITICAL

In this session we looked through everyone’s (or at least everyone that posted their work on the slides) and got feedback on what we could work on and if the direction we were going was the right one.

After the last practical class, I dramatically changed direction for what I was doing for my zine. I took myself of the position of art director and made myself the art curator, taking what Paul Renner had already created and piecing it together into a beautiful exhibition that showcases his work. This is shown in one of my previous posts where I had that lightning spark of creativity (and I still have it which is fantastic)

I posted my spreads up into the slides to get some feedback, but I watched and listened to the feedback others were given whilst I was working on my zine. I think this was a great idea by myself as sometime, the feedback others are given can push you into a more positive direction. That’s how I eventually got to the current spreads that I uploaded.

I was amazed at some of the work other students have done. I saw comic strips, posters advertising a chair, a recreation of a cookbook and an animation, all having different identities but still having the same structure. I think this is what makes this course a great one. The idea that everyone can bring their own design knowledge, expertise and, most importantly, their world view and display it in a vastly different format than anyone else. We can still understand it because of it’s structure, but it’s fingerprints are entirely unique.

Anyway, here are my spreads that I uploaded for the session:

Fig 1. Spreads of pages 2 and 3.

When getting feedback on this, Karen pointed out that there were around 5 different fonts on these two spreads alone. I remember only using two (Condensed and Standard Book Futura) but then I remembered that colour, style and size all are considered different fonts as well. What I should do is change any body text to just be standard Futura Book and any titles into Condensed Futura. 

Fig 2. Spreads for pages 4 and 5.

When Karen was giving feedback to other people, she mentioned something about a tilted type box. I didn’t know what she meant until she came to this page and told everyone that this was the first tilted type box she had seen in the class. I figured out that she was talking about how all the text was at a 30 degree angle (something she mentioned in a previous session that I remembered). She did say that having the same image twice doesn’t really work so I should probably change that. She also said my grids were a bit off so I might look into that soon.

Fig 3. The spreads for pages 6 and 7

A lot of what was said for the previous spread applied here but Karen mentioned that she liked ‘The book that got Paul Renner in trouble with the Nazis’ which was what I wrote personally. I found that quite interesting.

Fig 4. The spreads for pages 8 and 9 (the middle page of the zine)

I really like the idea behind this spread but this was kind of thrown together at the last minute before class. Karen said she like the idea behind it but, once again, the lines of type were a bit off. I agree because the ends of the 3 don’t quite match up. Also, the red was a bit too much so I will tone it down a bit.

Overall, the feedback session was great to have and I look forward to what’s in store next week for our final session. I think it would be great to see everyones final works and how they progressed through this course. It all looks fantastic now and I wish I could take some of these home to add it to my collection of zines.

THE PRACTICAL SERIES: TEARING PAGES

In this practical class, we were first introduced with the task of adding our spreads to a Google Slides document so we can get some feedback on our work. I’ll show these later on in this post, but for now I will talk about the InDesign tutorial that Andy gave us during our class.

The beauty of online learning is the idea that you can easily swap between classes at will without the trouble of moving parts. It was great to see that we didn’t need to log off and back on and that all we had to do was just wait till Andy joined the session. I remember times in high school in which I had to pick up all my stuff (and as an art student, I had a sh*t ton of stuff with me always) and move across the country because ‘the teacher didn’t want to move classrooms’.

Anyway, Andy taught us a few tricks in InDesign which were to make our lives so much easier. For example, the shortcut to place an image is CMD/CTRL + D (I’m very old fashion as I just go to file and then place). The beginner things he taught us I kind of knew beforehand from my previous projects. What he taught us next was mind blowing.

In InDesign, there is a thing called an ‘A Master’ spread which I have ignored for so long because I didn’t see any difference between them and the normal pages. Andy told us that the purpose of those pages is that they act like a base for every single page and anything you put on it will appear on every single page. For example, if you would like the page numbers, you can add a special character for them on the pages (which will be shown as an A) and when you go back to the normal pages, you will have page numbers.

Fig 1. The pages tab with the A-Master’ spread I was talking about.

I wish I knew this before. I painstakingly added the page numbers to every page in my old projects. I spent so long trying to make them look the same and be in the same place. AND YOU TELL ME THAT I COULD SET THAT UP IN THE MASTER PAGES AND FORGET ABOUT IT! I was (to say it the millenial way) shook at the prospect of that. 

I suppose that these things will reduce the amount of time it takes to create stuff. I know it took forever to do stuff like this manually so now I can save some time and focus on the content of the document rather than the decor. This day will be remembered in history as ‘the day Bailey found out he was an idiot’.

After the tutorial, Karen came back to class to quickly give us some feedback on what we should work on for our AMA project. I have recently lost my creativity for some reason so I didn’t have many ideas. I went with my initial idea of ripping pages and adding text to them in InDesign. Here’s some of the spreads;

Fig 2. The spread pages for 4 and 5 for my project.

Fig 3. The spread pages for 8 and 9.

When looking at these pages, I feel a sense of disconnection between myself and Paul Renner. My initial idea was to do something like this for every single page but it doesn’t really look appealing. It’s off, and I’m a perfectionist.

Whilst Karen was giving feedback, I took note of a thing she said about how we were ‘showcasing the designers work rather than our own’ and ‘bringing our questions into their designs’. I feel that my work is me trying to force my way of design into Paul Renners design and it isn’t working well.

Also, although it was a bold decision of mine to include some images from Nazi Germany’s propaganda, documents and including their flag, I think that detracts from the message of Paul Renners’ work. He didn’t like the Nazis, so why am I adding their work into a book about him. It was initially to link his book to the Nazis, but it didn’t work well. Once again, inserting myself into his design world. The image didn’t look great anyway, so I’m probably just gonna cut it.

I think this is a good chance to look back in time and take some design decisions from the Bauhaus and the works around at the time and try to find a way I can include them in my zine. I also had the tagline on my front cover ‘the father of Futura’, so I should try to include Futura in more than just the original typeface. I like my cover, maybe I should look at that.

THE PRACTICAL SERIES - BABY’S FIRST ZINE*

*if you don’t count a zine I made a couple of months ago as a test.

In today’s session we got our hands dirty (not really) and made a zine. Well, four zines, two of which are templates which help to in the creation of a zine.

We began if an A4 sheet of paper and folded it in half twice to make the sheet the size of an A5 piece of paper. We were then tasked to start from the front page and write 1 to 8 on the pages. We would then open the sheet and be amazed at the fact that some of the numbers were upside down. Wow!

We then repeated this with another A4 piece of paper but we would fold it once more to make a smaller, 16 page. We did the same process and unfolded to see number all over the place.

We were then tasked to draw pictures and stuff in it so we can see how the shapes transform from a solid page to a mini-zine. I was very creative in this and even got some colour involved in the process. Have an image of my very creative and original artwork!

Fig 1: Some very creative artwork.

It was also very interesting to note about how images would be cut off if you put them on pages that split. Take this image for example:

Fig 2: Another page from my mini zine.

It made me more aware of creating images that spread across two pages of a zine. Maybe I could use that to my advantage. I’ve got a zine called ‘Who is the real Julia? No. 2′ which takes advantage of this as it confused you and disrupting your perception of a face and ‘the real Julia’.

Fig 3: The cover of ‘Who is the real Julia? No. 2′ zine. 

Anyway, we then created little templates of our zines and marker out the lines that would be cut, making sure we take into consideration bleed and making our artwork extend out into the bleed. I kind of already knew about this from previous classes but its good to see it physically rather than digitally.

When I was making these zines, I remembered back to a couple of months ago when I made a test zine called ‘MINIAGITATE’, which included artwork that I submitted into the Arts Agitators Zine which was themed ‘Agitate’. I had a different method that what was shown today, which was to cut a hole in the middle to it would fold into a book. It was 8 pages and I was very proud of the result.

Fig 4. The folded out version of my ‘MINIAGITATE’ zine.

Karen was talking about how she used the method she taught us to layout their books and zines. I think that is the best method of doing it, having something physical that you can look at instead of putting it digitally and printing it out and seeing that you stuffed up the layout. I know it’s the best method because, along with this zine, I found my trial zine, with the numbers to let me know how I should layout my work.

Fig 5: The trial zine to figure out the layout. 

What I learnt today was that I am a good problem solver, even if I don’t know it.

All this lead us into making a trial, layout zine for our upcoming project. I did a little trial for my zine for the middle spread and I look forward to seeing it physically.

Fig 6. A draft of the middle spread for my AMA zine.

We moved onto doing stuff in InDesign, but I feel confident with InDesign at the moment so there wasn’t really much to say about it.

Overall, this class was good and helped me to figure out what direction I want to go for this project.

To top this very long post off (aka an essay), here’s a GIF of my MINIAGITATE zine.

THE ADVENTURE SERIES - ZE QUESTIONS

I’LL DO THE COVER LATER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, for my ‘Ask Me Anything’ project (which I will refer to as the AMA project because the titles long and I’m an impatient millennial) I have drafted 8 questions and responded based on those questions based on my research of Paul Renner as how I would think Renner might speak.

I took this approach to see how much detail I could get out a question and how much Renner might repeat himself. This could mean that I can combine questions if they are very similar or not use questions that don’t have as much interesting content in them 

Here’s a couple of examples of some questions and answers that I have thought of.

Fig 1: A screenshot of one of the questions I might ask.

Why am I asking the question? When researching Paul Renner, I see a lot of places that compare his typeface to the Bauhaus school of design (or Staatliches Bauhaus, which I might put in brackets next to it). Even I made that mistake, thinking Futura was a part of Bauhaus. Turns out it wasn’t but there is kind of a story behind this comparison that would be interesting for Paul Renner to tell. 

Fig 2: Another screenshot of another question.

This question is interesting. It’s good because this would tell the story of Paul Renner and how he used his design expertise and available resources to protest a political party, something that is used in the modern age with organisations such as Extinction Rebellion or Greenpeace.

Side note: I remember Extinction Rebellion made a website that looked like a Google blog post about their commitment to stop funding climate change deniers. It looks legit and even fooled me into thinking Google is starting to make a change. Kind of links to how Paul Renner made a statement in Germany about the Nazi’s hatred of modernism through publishing a book.

Anyway, this question is good, but didn’t mention Futura. This was because it was a later question that was answered in a very similar way to this one. I will probably end up combining these questions together. There was also another question that asked why Renner was targeted which could be combined with this question.

It might be a very long question, but I think Renner would like to have his opinions on the issue known as he was silenced after his controversial book was published. He might also think that it would inspire the generations to come.

The other three questions are:

- What was going through your mind when writing your books ‘Das modern Buch’ (The modern book) and ‘Die Kunst Der Tyopgraphe’ (The art of typography)

- What would be your thoughts on your typeface’s use now a days?

- Where could we go next in terms of design?

I omitted one question thought. It was ‘How did you come up with Futura?’ which, again, was for a political reason so it can be combined into the politics questions (it’s gonna need like three pages the way things are going)