Unit X - College Four - Evaluation

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Evaluation 

During this Unit X, it has felt very odd for me as I haven't really done anything that I usually do in my other units. I feel like I have a had a burden lifted from my shoulders and someone else has taken the artist role. When I first started I thought that I was going to be stuck with all the artistic things that come with creating a zine, as I was the only hands-on art student in my group with the rest studying Contemporary Art History. However, every single member joined in and took on a different role, however inexperienced each person was. I really enjoyed taking on a new role and spending time over research and writing instead of drawing and making. I am most pleased with the whole zine in itself, it’s a show of our group work and the time and effort it took to create it and see it selling at the zine fair was a proud moment. I was surprised by how easy it was to create a zine, I thought it was a lengthy and grueling process but it’s more about the passion for what you love rather than the skills you have. After my last experience of Unit X I really was not looking forward to this time round, however, I found the whole process easy and enjoyable. My group were really helpful and we communicated almost every day and let each other know what we were upto. I think it’s perhaps because there was only four of us this made it a lot easier to meet up and share ideas, rather than it being in a big group. I have found this Unit to be very rewarding, being there from the beginning process of thinking up an idea for the zine to being at the last process and selling it. This is something that I would like to take into third year and perhaps do something like this on my own. I really cannot describe how much I have loved every minute of it.

Overall, I have found this to be my favourite unit so far. It has been a massive change and it was great to see how a zine worked, was produced and distributed and it was a break from what I usually do.

Unit X - Zines - Final Zine

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Final Designs

These are the final print offs for our zine. I am so proud of what we have done as a group and I think that Matt's illustrations are beautiful and fit very well with our whole idea of the zine. The riso machine gives a really good finish to our zine and it's a relief to see how well it has come out. 

Unit X - College Four - Fair

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Zine Fair

We took part in two out of the two zine fairs. The one at Federation House in Manchester and the one at FACT in Liverpool. We spilt the time up and I took part in the Manchester one whilst others took part in the Liverpool one. I was quite nervous at first about the fair as it was something I had never done before so was a bit unsure about what to expect. However, it turned out to be really good. It was nice to see everyone elses hard work pay off and people enjoying themselves selling and chatting about their zine. We managed to sell quite a few of our zines as well which was a great feeling as it was a relief that people liked and wanted to by our zine.  Whilst there, I bought a few of the other groups zines, I really enjoyed Hannah and Grahams zine purely for the range of different things they had on offer, from posters, to smaller zines and then their main zine, which came in three editions.

Unit X - College Four - Marketing/

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Marketing 

Our idea for distributing our zine was to create our six editions, which can be bought separately and then all of our zines together in a bundle. We finished the zine off by wrapping a strip of tartan round each bundle and fastening it with a safety pin. This was a visual idea that instantly drew people to our zine and told them within a second that this zine was about punks, as tartan was the most icon thing to come from the punk era.  This was something that the group agreed on right for the very start so we have been very focused to get our idea into place and work towards our goal. We always wanted to distribute in a way that paid tribute to the original 1970s punk zine. The idea of selling online would perhaps take away the original method of those zines so this was never an option. We decided that the zine fair would be the best place to sell our zine as it was people who were coming especially to see our zines and it felt wrong to not take advantage of that.

Unit X - College Four - Production

Unit X - College Four - Zine - Production 

These images are from the production day of our zine. We printed all our zines on the riso machine was we thought it would be faster, easier and give off a better finish, as apposed to using the photo copier. I had never used a riso machine before so it was nice to see how it worked and learn how to use it. It was come in handy in the future and it is a good thing to know how to use. 

We chose a china white colour of paper to use, which was almost an ivory colour, as we thought that white might of been a bit too harsh, as our text and illustrations were all black. This stopped it looking just boring black and white. The paper gave the effect that these zines were old and not recently made. I think it gave them a nice touch. All in all we had to print quite a few off as we had two fairs, and six editions of the zine, plus extra to make bundles. 

Unit X - College Four - Illustrations

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Illustrations

These are some illustrations that I created. Although I wasn't doing the illustrations for my own zine, which I'm glad of as I felt that it would be too much pressure as I am not the best drawer. I decided to create some for myself as a way of getting into the zine mood. 

I actually quite enjoyed partaking in illustration as I found it quite interesting, trying to get the faces right and learn about colours. I don't think these illustrations are as good as the ones that Matt produced for our zine, but I feel proud of myself for having a go at something new. 

Unit X - College Four - Individual Research

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Individual Research

For my research I was very excited to get started. I was in charge of the zines about Virginia Woolf and Vivienne Westwood. I think that I made a really good choice as I adore Vivenne Westwood and know quite a lot about her, however, I don’t really know much about Virginia Woolf so this posed as quite a challenge for me as I wasn’t really even sure why she was featuring in our zine, hoever, something which I was keen to take on. I decided to focus a lot more on research based on quotes, interviews, essay papers and journals to conduct my research. As I already knew quite a lot about Westwood, I didn’t really need to go too into the reseach but with Virginia Woolf, I found her life to be quite interesting and know understand why she is the woman and literary icon that she is today. As you can see by the images above, the two women were complete opposites however, changed society and culture in exactly the same way. 

Unit X - College Four - Research

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Research

Since we had decided on what our zine was going to be based on, it was time to decide on what our zine would look like, what jobs each one of us had and what our zine would be focused on.

We all agreed that we didn't want out zine to just be a re-production of the original punk zine from the 1970's. We thought that an edition version of our zine would be more original and different. This gave us chance to experiment with writing and focusing each zine on the 'rebellious' person, putting in as much detail as we could. We decided that our zine will come in six editions, each one would be focused on the different people that caused a rebellion. It would contain facts, images, illustration and quotes about said person. 

Our zine would be made up from one sheet of A4 paper folded into a booklet form as we felt that this would be easier to print, compact and not too overloaded with content.

The zine will feature a quote on the front, with our zine name, the year and death (if necessary ) We decided not to include the persons name as we felt it would be more fun if it was a lucky dip and it would perhaps entice people to buy more. On the opposite page would be our manifesto and what we are about. The inside would include images and text about the person on why they became to be such an important figure and what exactly they rebelled against and why it was so important at the time. The final touch would be on the inside and it would feature a poster of the person, which Matt volunteered to illustrate, with their name and birth/death date around their image.

We decided that each person should do two zines focusing on a person of their choice, which are -

Myself - Vivienne Westwood and Virginia Woolf

Iona - Percy Bysshe Shelley and Caravaggio

Justine - Tristan Tzara and John Milton

Matt - Focusing on creating illustrations for the zines and a poster to advertise our zine.

Our idea was originally to print using the photocopier, this would bring the idea of the 1970s punk zine into our zine, as that was the menthol of choice to print. However, we all agreed that it would look more professional and probably easier to print of the riso machine. This turned out to be a better idea as it gave Matt's illustrations a beautiful finish.