Complications - A Change of plan and Zine Group Updates

Due to the busy extra-commitments we have all had recently across Unit X, it's been increasingly difficult to arrange a day when all of our group members were free, and ready to explore our two locations (Platt and Lyme). 

As an essay deadline causes a dip in our productivity, blog posting and days available, we decided that due to my commuting into Manchester everyday, it would be wiser to focus my trip on a singular location, (as similar as possible to platt fields and Lyme park). 

As irritating as this development is to the project, (since I feel rather miffed that it's causing a small rift in the group between myself and the others), I've decided to choose the expansive Tatton Park in Knutsford as my location. 

Click Here

Personally, despite my annoyance at this, I still feel I can gain some interesting photos around the extremely large grounds, and make some natural based responses to my trip. 

My group are committed and brilliant, but I just can't help but feel a rift between us, since these setbacks have limited what I could actually get illustrating for our main project, delaying my work. 

I'm hoping my commitments to the other two Zines can fill up the workload and still allow me to branch out enough, but still slightly concerned. 

Hopefully my trip to Tatton will go smoothly!   

Journey Progression - My Ideas

Taking the Journey into different areas: 

 Early sketches for a vague idea of wanting to include elements of myself, the train, the steel mill, into a picture. At this point I was uncertain of how to pull this off. 

 After drawing various versions of possible figures, my attention turned to how I could actually represent all those required, listed elements into one image. 

on the far right, we have a spiral of train carriages  alongside the mill in the background. A simple "pin up" of various events, with myself and my girlfriend as the central figures. It's a nice idea, but needs to branch out further. 

 Moved onto another character sheet. Drawing myself was pretty difficult (and rather self centered), but should make a rather handy pun in the final image. I moved from a simplified figure, to a more realistic one.

After exploring the figure options, I moved onto adding other elements, such as video game controllers, an iron man reference, and different ways of arranging the building and train carriages  with different patterns. I also had a cool idea of adding "street lamp ipod headphones" along the side, giving another dimension to the mashup. This time, we are walking toward something, rather than floating, which seems to give a firmer ground in a chaotic work. 

I moved onto two final designs, showing the twisting train as a path to Kidderminster, with the headphones and the street lamps, the hotel converted mill, and myself and my girlfriend wandering either toward or away from the scene. I also decided that the game controllers would make a nice repeated pattern across the skyline. 

I've decided to work towards refining one of these two works into a sketchy black and white image (as part of the zine rules), as my submission, that will hopefully inspire some wonder or questioning, and work alongside the other submissions, into showing how we can illustrate "Journey".

Ampersand Progression - My Ideas

The symbol itself holds so many possibilities for a graphic however, I want to try to create something with a little more meaning to it, in terms of another subject, or something.

 

After doing some sketches, I felt like maybe incorporating a human element. Above, was a simple design to represent "adding to another conversation, or inputting your own opinion" by raising your hand. 

I also made some notes on the symbol. It has a kind of cult-like aesthetic to it, like a symbol to secretly rally behind in some form. 

More progression: 

What if the symbol was like the old black spot from Treasure Island? "the revenge of the ampersand society!" 

Keeping with the culty element, i came up with a design that involves a hand of a "victim" that had been taken by the ampersand society  which i really liked, in terms of "how someone viewing the image might react". 

The opposite design was a different approach. We have a couple, and a friend, who feels left out, and shadowed. He has the ampersand on his chest, showing its them AND him. It didn't really seem any different from my regular comic work, and I thought it best to dive over to the former design for progression, since it's a different route. 

But where could I go with this? I decided to bring that discarded  photograph from the previous ampersand post, and actually try to incorporate it into a work, throwing in some digital hints. 

Where I am so far: 

My goal is to class this "Rough and Rebellious" zine image as the digital collage, attempting to combine simple techiques to convey a bigger message. 

The Art of Zine Aesthetics - What looks good?

(This took place before our "place" lecture, but posted out of the draft written on the date later on, similar to some of the previous posts) 

 Arranging the examples out before we decided to dice them all up.

Making notes on what goes where, apparently.

The point of the exercise: 

Ryan and Marchin's exercise with the books, articles and ephemera examples was confusing at first, but once we understood the true purpose, it was an important task, that got us thinking about the outlook of the products we intended to make. 

we each brought in an item that was personal to us, but not on any particularly high scale. It could of been a wrapper or a Zine, or even an antique book, however it had to have some kind of connection. 

We laid the work out across the floor, and certain members of the group were asked to photocopy as much as possible, then arrange it all together, in terms of "what looked similar" or "what went well together" in terms of visuals. 

There were also four tables of pre-photocopied material we had to cut up, arrange and label, in terms of what worked and what didn't. 

Our Result: 

 A newspaper style zine we crafted from other articles. It turned out pretty well. 

The groups arranging the content 











We ended up learning how to craft something that (although was completely confusing) showed a running theme, and still worked as a visual item. 

It further proved my point into how our zine's rough and rebellious aesthetic needed to be showcased out in the final product. 

Drawing from the 70s punk themes, I've gathered from this particular exercise that we could respond to our current theme with answers that were a mix of confusion and literal drawing, since it would still retain a personal charm, yet also look appealing to those who valued it as a personal item, almost on an auto-biographical level. 

Overall the morning went well, and not only got us thinking about construction and aesthetics, but also how we actually "saw" the content, and what we are visually gaining from it, in terms to it's cultural significance as part of a zine. 

I kind of wish we had more of these sessions, since it got us all working with different people on a much more involved scale, instead of jumping away to work in our enclosed groups. 

The particular Graphic Novel I brought in was this old 80s Hellblazer Series that I love reading. 

It's artwork is vast, dark and has a whole heap of great writers and artists involved. 

Sadly it didn't make the big photocopy the group made. But it was their loss.  The comic and the zine are very closely related, and since comic art is my main artistic ambition, normally it would be a perfect point to further that. 

However that just seems too obvious, and possibly won't work with the rest of the groups visual languages. 

Again, the sketchier  the more it could be a statement about zines themselves, being a "quick" and "one time only" publication. 

InDesign - A handy Tutorial

The majority of my work tends to come from photoshop, however for the book creation side of things, InDesign is a must. (whether our own group will use this digital method is to be debated however, since we wish to give out Zines this handmade aesthetic). 

( logo used from here here ) 

Before our talk with Des about Zine distribution, we had a short insight into how inDesign, and how we could use it to lay out our own work. 

I've used the program before and remember a few little tricks, however this time I had more work to actually throw into a small publication. 

After using the program however, we all settled on the group decision on only using minor digital editing to enhance our work, before having it all cut down ready for the actual process of putting the zine together. 

When looking into how we wanted our zine to look, we decided to all throw in a design for a front cover, and see what inspiration we could drawn from, towards the final product. As seen below, my own was based around handwritten and digital text, since we wanted the book to be as simple as possible, however it still needs a twist somehow. (Possibly some letter pressing of different colours?) 

We don't want anything too over the top or too obvious, since it kind of moves away from the whole "zine" aesthetic that we originally all shared an interest for. It also ties ties into my "rough and rebellious" visual which I am to keep. 

Ampersand Zine - The Elusive Symbol

I honestly didn't have a bloody clue what Ampersand even meant or was before I spoke to Chloe, (editor of the zine) early on in the project. 

After we spoke, she basically explained what it was, and gave me a link to her blog ( Click Here ) and detailed down a brief. The work simply had to be A5 in size, and use the symbol "&" somewhere in the work. 

(Used from here for educational non profit purposes!) 

As seen above, the ampersand takes many forms, and this particular zine seems to give a more graphical outlook towards what the outcome should be, which is why I decided to embark onto side job. I thought I could maybe keep the same "Rough and Rebellious" aesthetic going, while also using minimal illustration, and focusing on other themes such as photography and type. Here is an example below of a quick mess around I did as an idea for the work: 

The photograph behind was a scrap idea for something else, which just looked nice as a space filler, however I'm starting to like it in general. 

Most of the Ampersand's history is becoming more unknown to the public, who still use it regularly today, and not really knowing about it's latin origin.  

It's almost like the truth behind the symbol is dying out. (Possible theme for the image perhaps?) 

Journey Zine Submission - Update on ideas

When I looked into various Zines that were open to the group for submission. The Journey Zine was first and foremost one of the most interesting Zines that popped up. 

With such a broad and simple objective of creating an A5 work that responds to the word "Journey" in any way at all, I felt an urge to explore how it could unfold. 

From One Link to Another: 

Sine I want my Zine work to keep a "rough and rebellious" aesthetic across the entire unit X project (as discussed in previous posts), I thought initially about making an image, that was an A5 black and white illustration, resembling something personal to me. 

The first Idea revolves around a recent trip I took to Worcester, to see my girlfriend. This was the first "journey" down, and it was also a very recent and important trip made, so I think I could maybe derive something from it visually.  

 The industrial town of Kidderminster still holds a very victorian era layout, and many converted buildings and streets. 

 A little dilapidated in areas, and also rough, but still holds many visual possibilities (Notice the tower on these two pictures) which belongs to an old mill, which I saw everyday waking up.  

The town still thrives on it's train routes and import/export layout. 

After returning from the trip, and having a great time with my girlfriend, as we wandered about, I thought I could maybe represent various different aspects of our own events into the image. 

Aspects I would Like to Use: 

- The tower and mill exterior hotel, where I stayed. 

- Myself and my girlfriend 

- Possibly the nod towards Iron Man 3, the first film we watched 

- A big emphasis on the never ending train journey down. 

- Our shared passion for video gaming, and how we met through it 

- A nod towards the music I endlessly listened to across the journey down. 

I will continue to explore possibilities of these sketches as the project carries onward. 

Zine Distribution Lecture - Online

When considering how to actually distribute your artwork, (especially in the zine format), many options need to be taken into consideration before doing so: 

- Audience 
- Theme 
- Price 
- Online / Offline places of distribution 
- Size of publication 

And more. 

When we were given a Lecture by Des on the very subject, we discussed lots of handy ways of distribution via the internet, and how her own DoodleZine was distributed too. 

Various Links: 

- Cafe Royal (As mentioned in a previous post). A small but recognized publisher of art and writing books. 

- Etsy (Click here) Deals with a wide range of art, good for Zines and Comics 

- Big Cartel A great site to distribute art such as Zines 

- Issuu Another popular distributor, as mentioned in the Shrieking Violet lecture 

- Marc The Printers This particular printer distributes in similar ways to the above, with an environmentally friendly method of production, such as Risograph printing (more on that later) 

- Blurb UK A rather popular photo book and printing distributor. 

- Vampire Sushi A feminist themed distributor and art site 

- Cargo Collective More of a promotion site, allowing new up and coming designers to get their work seen. 

...And several others. 

Response: 

After looking into these various sites, its given me a bigger insight into how I could get my work (not just our zine)published and distributed in the future. 

The group currently has some ideas of posting through Worm Tree, however, this particular lecture gave me more options to play with in turn. 

DoodleZine Link 

Des' Zine distribution was also inspiring to hear about. We discussed the following in terms of how the zine came to be: 

• Handmaking 100 Zines 
• The popularity and quick sales 
• Originating as a Hobby 
• Starting a Facebook page / mentions on Etsy 
• Vroom mentions 
• "Le Shop" alongside Doodlezine 
• Wide range of distribution 
• "Live" Zine making workshop 
• Bigger Zine contributors, and the more made gives more business 
• Inkjet and Lithograph printing, as the popularity rose 
• DIY aesthetic 

Overall, it was very handy to see and hear how these particular steps can help further your own work. 

Our group have all been influenced by the method involved described above, and hope to get our own work on a similar standard at the end.