#weekeleven

WIP Draft Zine Pages

Boy have I underestimated the time and effort that goes into making a zine. Even though the four pages I’ve managed to do so far look quite simple with sole collaging and text, they have been challenging to do. This is because it has been hard finding a balance between not being a perfectionist & trying to keep that rough and quick aesthetic of a zine, and the need to make sure my designs are reflecting the rebellious, random and playful aesthetic of the Dada movement. Having constraints on the zine due to the brief has meant I have had to rearrange layouts again and again and restart pages. 

What I have decided to do is to attach my collages and text onto the page with blu tack, as I found that even if I thought a page was all done, later I would likely rearrange it again. This has given me more flexibility that would usually be offered if I were to do it digitally. 

I have made some changes to my cover design from my last post, as I received feedback from my teacher that it wasn’t fully reflective of Dada with its softer aesthetic, and that I should try position it to appear more rebellious and limit pushing.

I’m planning to stick my designs onto new fresh pages a few days before submission as the final zine, as this will also allow me to make some refinements. 

Some refinements I’ve already got in mind are:

Front cover:

Changing the title type to look more unconventional, some letters could side at 90 degrees, each letter typeface could be different

Changing the underlined colour on the text behind the title to either be blue or red, as over time I have established a primary coloured palette to the zine which the orange doesn’t adhere to

Page 1:

Changing the interview question typeface to be like the cursive one on page 4, as I found that having a stylistic contrast between the interviewer voice and interviewee voice was more effective in separating them

Changing the outline around the man to be with markers as that will look more neat. Perhaps I could changing it to zigzagging lines to make the composition more playful

Did some more experimentations this week with different scanned items, scribbles and messes that I think could work well with my zine. 

Today, this week, I'm grateful for a chance to be future student of psychology 💪🏻 for my courage to meet new people, greet nicely old ones, and fight back with social anxiety and self-esteem.

We only go up, babes. Let's be positive.

Let's be grateful.

Love u all.

Beginning my zine for the “Ask Me Anything” assignment proved to be harder than expected. As I planned to predominantly use the technique of collaging to create my designs as it relates to the Dada and zine aesthetic, I couldn’t fully plan out my cover design like I usually would, as the collaging was to be spontaneous and random. 

However, I did roughly draw out how I could arrange my title in combination with the collage. I did not intend to post it onto here hence the messiness and lack of care, but I thought it may be good to show my development.

This meant I could cancel out certain layouts that weren’t as effective, which was useful due to the analog hand-made nature of my zine, meaning that I would not be able to play around with layout as easily compared to if it were in a digital form. 

I begun by flipping through some old Frankie magazines I had and cutting out images that I was attracted to. From this, I chose a select few of my images and collaged them onto my page. Eventually, I ended up being happy with my composition in the first photograph included, as the legs created effective contrast and balance due to its large size. The use of flat shapes added a more playful look. 

Once I established my first layout, I found that it did not leave much space for me to add in my title. Therefore I moved my collage further downwards on the page. From my planning, I trialled two types of my generated titles with greylead, and chose to create a typeface with the combination of the two on my final cover. I chose to draw my own type rather than digitally implement it as it gave a more personal and raw look with the imperfect structures.

Adding the border composed of “dadadadada etc.” made the design look more complete, but I’m still not fully satisfied with the composition. I think that more could be added perhaps to the top half of the page, and I will experiment with it more. 

Overall, I found this collage style quite challenging, as I am usually one to precisely plan out all my elements and keep everything neat and orderly. The reliance on chance when collaging definitely took me out of my comfort zone. I needed to keep reminding myself to take a more relaxed approach and to not think too much about it looking perfect. I also found it hard to create it all by hand as it was harder to play with different compositions.

This is one of the trial covers I made for my punk zine project! Almost done the final product, just putting those finishing touches on before submission. 

Some typographic and shape inspiration from music album covers on Spotify.

I got a friend to read my book and to tell me if they saw any errors in grammar.

I wanted to test the prototype on someone within the target market who was a non designer so they could interact with the book without looking critically from a design perspective.