The Zine Fayre - Final Post

After many weeks of exploring what a Zine is, how they have been created over the years, distributed, and trips to various locations, The Zine Fayre was finally ready for today! 

 

Tables set up to present our zines at the "2022 NQ" venue in the Northen Quater, a perfectly chosen location for an upcoming student art fayre.

 We set up our tables. Some of the girls made bags for the zine to be given in, with additional business cards, extra zines they fancied making at last minuite, and extra prints.

 The day was straightforeward at the setting up stage. once getting the table sorted, we ran down to a local fabric shop for a table cloth, and then arranged our work next to the other groups, in an easily accessible way for the public to navigate.

In terms of pricing, we decided upon £5 per zine, since individually they were about £7 roughly to create, including minor costs and the printing.

It was also incredibly interesting to see what the other groups had decided to create.

 Johanna's "Misty's Mum" paranormal zine was a favourite of mine, tributing the old misty comics of the 70s. Her stall included sweets and free tarrot readings, giving a great outlook in my opinion. definatly one of the most interactive stalls present.

As time went on, the Fayre began to bustle, as fellow students, and the general public also came to visit, and purchase our goods. I don't think there was a single table that didn't get a few purchases. Any that were not purchased on the day could be sold in the future.  

A landscape of the majority of the fayre. A small space, but a busy one as time went on!

The zine catalogue that fellow ziners Bea and Tom created were a handy guide to the general stalls and contributors in the fayre, making sure nobody was missed off the list. I helped fold a few of them out as we set up.

Another shot of our table before we started. As the fayre went on towards the end, we atleast made £30, with the Playscape zine being the most popular of the two, and the seperate prints also being rather popular.

Chloe's Ampersand Zine was a very slick publication, complete with a ring tie and plastic case. I purchased this and the Journey one as mementos from the project.



We also shared the space with the book group, featuring double spread pages from their work. I heard talk that some of the displayed work attracted new possible clients! 

 The ampersand Zine in all it's glory. I bought a copy, alongside the Journey Zine as mementos from submitting to the extra zines. A mention in a zine being sold to the public means alot, especially when you see the end result.

Our first sale of the day was to fellow student Reno from our course, who was displaying his book work in the venue. The newfound buzz from selling artwork I have taken part in has given me a much greater inspiration to do this again in the future. Maybe I'll even stick with zine creation?

The Zine fayre went on for the day, and was a big success.

Unit X (Round 2) - The Verdict:

It's been a very interesting project, probably one of the most productive projects I've been involved with this year.

Before deciding to do the Zine project, I crafted a book, based around Little Red Riding Hood, which was more of an illustrative project, rather than a marketplace project. The transition from that, to the zine work was something I definatly wanted to experience. My main reason being, I wanted to help simply create a publication, submitt artwork, and see it sold at the end.

By all means, this has been a successfully met goal.

In terms of unit orginization, this year has definatly been far better organized, and far more free in terms of choice, giving us further paths to narrow down our choices of practice, which definatly has a big impact on our next year. This year, Unit X wasn't a flop.

The overall orginization by Desdemona and Rosemary has been fantastic. We have met far more people in the practice than last year's unit X, and personally I felt more involved with the overall spirit of the creation side of things. Ryan and Marchin, the ex graduates who now work in practice were also very handy when it came to teaching us about interesting visual cominations of type and image, giving us very handy tutorials in terms of possibilities we could take our project.

Despite this unit x being far more productive and better run, the only bad points were smaller details. I felt like I could of submitted to more Zines, and hopefully worked with new people, however due to early grouping issues at the start of the course, this knocked my confidence slightly when I struggled to find a group that I felt was really something I wanted to contribute to, which slightly affected my workload, combined witht he fact I commute into university, causing the "trip" problems I mentioned.

This however wasn't a big deal. Despite minor feelings of neglect on certain group decisions, I still feel like we all pulled together in the end to fully experience how artists really get out there and get themselves noticed.

Heck, I even heard from my group mates that a "random lady" from the zine fayre said she would take our left over zines at the end, if there were any left! I can't 100% guarrentee this, however that's a fantastic step foreward in terms of promotion of our practice to the outside world!

I really think that this time round, Unit X has given me far more information, experience and knowledge, and left me with actual distributed, sold artwork.

What's better than that?

If you have been following this blog, many thanks for taking time to read it. The work from this unit will deeply inspire me for the coming third year on Illustration.

- Harry Fryer

Final Zine Assembly - The Link Gallery

Now, it is time to collect all of our work together and actually bind it all into a zine. 

With all the letterpressed covers from Beth complete, and all our work printed onto top quality paper, we begin to arrange the content, and see what works where. 

This part of the work was fairly straightforward  All the works are to be arranged in a particular order to give a full view of everyones art, one picture in turn. 

We eventually managed to sort a rough order that would be looked at again, once the stitching took place. 

I'm incredibly pleased with the result, however I feel like I should of given more input into the aesthetic side of the book, since it seemed a bit dominated. Despite that, the result is looking slick, like an artbook-zine, which is exactly how I hoped it would turn out. Can't fault that at all! 

The Link Gallery - Progression work mini-exhibition 

While the main zine work came to a close, the committee thought it would be a good idea to showcase some of our work and development from the Unit X project. We were asked if we wanted to submit anything for the university to see as they passed through the link gallery.

I thought this would be another great opportunity to showcase what went on, and decided to submit the following works, with the photographs on A3 and the two A2 sized posters of some of my zine submissions: 

It feels good having submitted the design process somewhere, since this can add to the whole "group effort" in ways. 

Drifter and Playscape - The Final Submission Outcomes

 The silhouette tree branches - 
Representing how I was loomed over by the many 800 year old trees on the big Tatton Park trip. 

 The Cracked Tree - 
A particularly old tree with a smooth crack down the center, which began to break as the wind picked up, and caused it to shake. 

  Representing how the path home never seemed to end, my personal favourite image deals with that very subject. 

The hollowed tree trunk simply represents one of the many old dying trees in the area, and was a great test of how to incorporate inking and textures in an overall work. 














It's been great fun drawing and responding to the Drifter Zine. Overall, I feel like I've managed to alter my visual language to a more "rough" aesthetic, rather that keeping the work 100% literal, which works well compared to my colleagues work. The Drifter Zine isn't as colourful as the Playscape one, but still keeps a brilliant ambiguity, on a more natural and darker sense. The fact that we ended up taking a trip to different areas was no problem at all, since the natural elements we all provided flow enough to replicate this through visual response. 

 Based from my earlier photo collage, this image deals with how I made my way through the natural elements. The image keeps that level of interaction obvious, and also more texture, to look like it's merging with the natural elements around. 

 The Horses sign and the collapsed tree, once again show change, and how that change was represented to me on the trip. The fact that the sign was very old and the original area that it was for had gone, represented this, through the "collapse" of the nearby old tree. 

 With a looming plane flying overhead, this "block item" interrupts the flow of the natural images below it, causing a disturbance of sorts. With the planes going over regularly, I thought this would be a good chance to visually represent this from the outing. 

The bricks under the tree have a similar theme to the horses picture, showing a living tree, next to a damaged one. It grows over the brickwork, showing how in this instance, various man made elements have failed in the face of the natural progression. 

The Overall Feeling: 

I think the level ambiguity has definitely been captured in the works, and the fact that I was able to differentiate two different styles and themes for each zine was a difficult task, considering how I ended up going to a completely different place. The work itself has also taken a very sketchy "rebellious" route, compared to my regular work, making me feel like i've achieved a greater understanding for composition. It seems to be able to represent a better feeling for the area this way. I've really enjoyed working on the project! 

The Upcoming Zine Fayre! - Risograph and it's issues! - Our Zine's Looks!

Time has flown by since the last post, and I'm finally coming back up to date with posting too! 

As the project work flies forward in full swing, our Fayre Committee have crafted this fantastic poster for our event: 

With  a printing press drawn by by my fellow teammate Steph, and the poster then taken to be Risographed, This was the awesome result. I'm incredibly pleased with the general aesthetic of the work, and massive kudos to them for taking time to create it! 

Minor Risograph Issues: 

It's finally come the time to get our work printed and cut down to A5 for the zine, however today, we had a small problem. The overall colour schemes for each zine require certain colours, which annoyingly, are not currently available and are out of stock! 

Personally I thought the priority week of the Zine creation would include a bigger availability, however this wasn't the case. 

I've decided to print my work out the expensive way on the printers. 

This is a big frustration, since it's not only going to cost us more, overall, but it's going to loose the aesthetic I was after, with the half tone patten. 

Sadly these things happen, and I've got to get printing my work out. 

The Zine Layout: 

After another short meeting, we decided to discuss exactly how the zine would look and function. Below are some quick notes I made in my sketchbook on the subject, looking into the size, and how / where the text would be placed. We decided on making darker card covers, with an inch margin on the top for stitching, and some original letterpressed covers, that Beth kindly offered to create. Overall, I think we can pull it off!

Now, the final step involves actually sorting the work and getting the prints done in time. It's a busy time, but we are going to do our best to create everything in time. 

Journey - Submission Progression and Final Work

Not long after the previous Ampersand deadline, the second risograph zine (Journey) also comes to a close. I decided to keep with the previous ideas of an illustrative "mash-up", I began to draw the elements of the images out in higher quality, then begin to photoshop them together into a montage of my journey to Kidderminster. Here are some examples: 

Journey To The Midlands: 

The work is simply a visual pin up of various elements that made an important journey, to see an important person in my life recently. The trains, music, video gaming, and the converted hotel/mill, are all key elements that made the trip important to me. 

I've enjoyed this work the most (so far) in terms of creation, since it's comic aesthetic is something that not only appeals to both of us, but creates a connection between the art and us personally. It shows how a journey can bloom into other areas of life. 

Ampersand - Final Dev and Submission

First deadline draws near. 

The tension kicks in as we all work hard to submit what we can, as we craft our zine work. 

Progression: 

I now have a solid and complete work for the Ampersand Zine, which conveys a small message through simple visual means. 

Using the cobbled street from the drifter/playscape work, and the hand photo i used earlier, i decided to combine the two with lettering, making a "black spot" style murder work. 

Using further editing, and some type manipulation I created the final work, using a mix of digital collage, and hand drawn elements, with added photography. 

I'm pleased with the result. It doesn't go overboard on any excessive intricate linework, and tributes the old punk style collage of the 70s zines, discussed awhile ago. 

Symbolica Mortem - (symbolic death) 

with the general public never truly understanding the origins of the symbol they always recognize and see, the ampersand gets it's revenge, in a forensic style pun collage. 

After handing the work to chloe, she asked me to make a lighter version, so the risograph would detect the image better, which may mean a colour change. The tones should work well hopefully... 

Drifter - Responses 2

This zine focuses more of the natural form side of the trip. 

I decided to explore possibilities regarding the 800+ year old trees and their forms around the area, since I don't normally draw trees or natural forms in general and thought it to be a cool response, in terms of intricacy. 

Responses: 

- The first two images relate to the silhouetted arms of the trees, and how they constantly loomed over me while I was there. 

- The cracked tree seen in the next one down actually began to break around me, when the wind picked up. Another incident of nature I can record. 

- The final two relate to two possible images, involving the hollowed tree trunks, and the endless path, another two important events in the flow of the trip. 

My responses above are the final pencil stage sketches for Drifter. I decided to dive in and sketch these, mainly due to wanting to keep the images very "developmental" and almost giving off the "half process" vibe. 

I'm pleased with how they look overall, and could do with some digital editing to enhance them. 

This particular zine will stick to black and red, with my work sticking to a crisp black and white.