Fall 2023
OVERVIEW
This project challenged us to create an original zine based on the broader theme of our experience during the Coronavirus pandemic. The zine must follow design principles and elements as well as typography and layout guidelines. The 16-page zine will be a finished size of 8 x 10 inches and a flat size of 16 x 10 inches. In addition to the content pages, page specifications include an outside front cover, an outside back cover, an inside front cover, an inside back cover with an author's page, and a combination title page with a table of contents. Required type includes a title, student byline, headlines, subheads, page numbers, headers and/or footers and/or siders, body text, and a bio or author's note. Required type treatments include one illustrated word of three characters or more or three illustrated characters somewhere in the zine. Additionally, one contour type design or type figure must be included. Since this is an advanced type and layout course, special attention must be given to type and layout and not solely visuals and illustrations. Use of pull quotes, call-outs, kickers, side-bars, informational graphics, expressive type, and timelines are encouraged. We have creative freedom with zine binding, any special cut-outs or pop-ups, and overall color treatments.
Research + Brainstorming
To begin this massive Zine undertaking, I started by researching existing zines to get a feel for a general style and layout approach. Typically, zines are entirely handmade from the cutting and binding to the writing and any graphics. Most of the zines I found were very sketchy, almost like a journal, and had a very collage/scrapbook-y/artsy vibe. Although I would've loved to create a messy collage-style zine, I knew that I needed to have a bigger focus on typography and layout, with a more strict and cohesive set of layout guidelines than zines normally have. I then started digging into more research on magazine layouts, saving images of spreads that I liked. I was really drawn to more minimalist 2-or-3 column simple layouts, ones where the left-hand page featured a simple graphic and the right-hand page featured text. I also liked the layout examples where the text columns didn't take up the entirety of the page and instead had a good amount of intentional white space left around. Since this zine was going to be more text-heavy, I tried to pay close attention to example images where the text was a bigger focus than the visuals. I saved a lot of photos of interesting and expressive typography as well. I was really started to love examples where headlines and subheads were huge and expressive on one side of the spread and the body text layout on the opposing page was pretty minimalist.
After gathering a lot of great inspirational images, I started brainstorming. I started writing out a list of anything that came to mind when thinking about my experience during the pandemic. Then, I picked a few promising ideas from that list and made sub-lists related to those ideas. While writing these, I had a new idea that could combine a lot of these initial elements into one idea: a pandemic remedy shopping list of fake items that retrospectively would have helped me to deal with the pandemic a lot better. I wanted these items to be playful and more related to mental health and well-being, and as I was writing out and expanding upon these 'items,' I had the idea to make my zine cover in the style of a shopping bag (a shopping bag that holds all of my remedy items on the zine pages). I had a couple of plastic shopping bags at my house and loved the design on them, so therein jumpstarted my idea for the "thank you, please DON'T come again" zine concept.
Sketches + Doodles
After my research, I had already become pretty attached to the idea of doing a two- or three-column grid layout, so most of my doodles reflect that. I started by sketching out some of the illustration ideas I wanted to include before moving on to doodling some potential page layouts. Initially, I thought I wanted to have most of my spreads contain type and graphics that jumped the gutter, but after class discussions, I realized that would prove to be difficult. Given some personal time constraints, I settled on the easier route of having everything remain on their respective pages. I liked the idea of having large header display type paired with the main illustration on the left-hand page of the spread while the subhead and body text would be placed on the right. I didn't have to do a lot of sketching before the gears were turning enough for me to start sketching my ideas on the mini reader's spreads. I had doodled a few different approaches to my chapter names and page numbers, but after beginning my reader's spread sketches I decided that I liked the idea of just having my page numbers centered within the footer of the pages and having my 'chapter' names located on little sidebar tabs that would later be colored.
Story Outline
In creating my story outline, I knew I had to do something to tie all of my Covid remedy shopping items together so that each item didn't read as a stand-alone idea. I realized that each of my items could be expanded upon in terms of the stage of the pandemic that I needed them/experienced them. So, beginning of the pandemic, mid-stage pandemic, and late-stage pandemic. I ordered my chapters and their respective 'remedies' chronologically. In the outline, I made sure to write down the key points I wanted to discuss as they relate to each remedy.
Initial Dummy
I struggled with creating my initial dummy. I wasn't sure on what binding I wanted to do, so I settled on a classic stapled saddle stitch, but I still had issues. At the time, I didn't have any 11x17 paper, so to actually make my dummy the full size of 8x10 and flat size of 16x10, I had to cut and tape pieces of paper together to form each spread, but then when I folded the spread down, the tape got in the way and caused issues. Also, when I actually went to staple the four spreads together, I had lost a ridiculous amount of the inner margin, way more than normal. The tape on the folds of the spreads contributed to this as well as my measurements being slightly off and me just not pushing all of the spread edges as close together as I should have prior to stapling. Still, I got to see a rough dummy at full size with my margins measured and marked. I completely forgot to add my columns to my initial dummy, so I'm going to add that later on. In the meantime, I did print a single-page with the correct markings of my margins and columns.
Thumbnail Readers Spreads
At this stage, there were definitely some ideas that became more realized, but also some ideas that I didn't end up liking. I was able to sketch out typeface styles more, and I was able to see better ways of positioning headers, subheads, and graphics on the page. Here, I realized that although I kept a 3-column grid throughout my zine, nothing really felt cohesive design-wise. Each spread felt separate from the others.
Intermediate Readers Spreads
By the time I had drawn out my intermediate readers spreads, I was sick of my weird page ordering. I didn't like that each remedy item had its own entire spread EXCEPT the Paxlovid. The Paxlovid had to share a spread with the author's page. Also, while Chill Pills got its own spread, it only got page numbering on the right-hand page since the left-hand page was the back of the table of contents. All of this was bothering me since I wanted each item to get an entire spread with page numbers. So, I ended up adding four pages to my zine, adding a preface page paired with the back of the TOC page and an entire spread for the author's page. This was all decided after I had created my intermediate spreads and my intermediate dummy, so those extra pages won't be seen until the black-and-white computer stage!
Intermediate Dummy
Unfortunately, I didn't take photos of my intermediate dummy until after it had been thrashed around in my backpack all day, so my 'sewed' binding came undone. This was also kind of my fault since I used yarn to sew and bind it. For my final zine, I'm going to use waxed linen for more support. It was really cool to see my intermediate spreads blown up and assembled, and I got a better idea of how big I wanted all of my illustrated words and display type to be in comparison to my body copy and the margins. Since I was trying to recreate that classic shopping bag design, I thought it would be cool to mess around and tape some bag handles to the zine. It looks weird because it's brown bag handles on white paper, but I thought that I could always paint the bag handles to match the final colors of my zine pages. The only issue was I had no idea how to actually attach the bag handles in such a way that they didn't cover the actual page design.
Final Hand Readers Spreads + Dummy
Black + White Computer Progressions
I was all over the place with my computer progressions. This was a bad week for me and it shows. Looking back at these spreads now, I can say that I have NO idea what I was thinking when it came to any of those design decisions, especially my body copy. For the progressions, I made a good amount of minor tweaks, primarily to the left-hand pages of the spreads and little graphic elements. I do not know why I didn't make any decisions to change the body text at this stage. It wasn't until after my class critique that I realized how badly the columns of text were laid out. It was pointed out to me that the right text column felt separated from the larger left column as if those were two separate stories. I either needed to make it clear that they were different, or change something to make them connected. It wasn't until my color studies began that I fixed the body text issue and changed nearly everything around (very typical of me). So, I only had two progressions posted here, but during the color studies, I had another couple progressions and printed markups!
Black + White Computer Readers Spreads
Although I look at these reader's spreads now and seriously dislike the design, I can see that I still cleaned a lot of things up compared to my starting point. As I said, I had gone through many back-and-forth decisions when it came to the placement of graphics. For my reader's spreads, I reverted to my initial decision to only keep the remedy icons on one page at the beginning of the zine (this would change later too, though, are we surprised)? I'm really happy that after this point, things began to look WAY better.
Black + White Computer Dummy Assembled Full Size
I didn't photograph each spread for this dummy, but I wanted to show the improvement in my sewed binding. I used some sturdier embroidery thread which worked better, but I'll still be going with waxed linen for the final. I loved seeing this assembled, and I especially liked the placement of the chapter tabs on the edges of the pages. There's a lot of banding happening on the inner gradients, which is something I'm going to troubleshoot when I go to the color versions. I see particular improvements with the table of contents, this version looks so much more like a receipt than before!
Color Studies + Applications
Wow, a lot of big changes! Given that my entire zine theme is the classic red and white plastic shopping bag, I knew I wanted to use primarily red. That's a lie. I wanted to use all red. This was the moment I was waiting for. I do love how blue and red look together though so my backup plan was to add in some bright blue pops of color throughout the zine IF the red was too much. After printing my color strips (both reds and blues), I still wanted to do my entire zine in full red. I printed and assembled a mini dummy to test this, which is where I also decided to make some pretty major changes to sections of my type, layout, and overall design before moving on to more (red) color studies. The deep reds did look nice, but I wanted to find a red as close to a 'Thank You' plastic shopping bag as I could. Since I was so tied to doing an all-red zine, I stupidly didn't create any color applications with the backup blue at the time of uploading. I should have done this, though, because after my class critiques the resounding suggestion was to add blue, which I DID do for the Zine #4 check.
Color Computer Dummy
I was really happy with how my dummy turned out, except for the fact that my bag handles fell off. I also didn't have time to sew it, but I felt confident in doing so came time for the final. Not wanting to waste the expensive paper, I printed this dummy of very thin paper, so you could see through from each page to the next. This did kind of create some cool effects, but it was not intended.
Things were nearly done by this stage. After the class critique, I was told that I should try to add even more blue in my zine than this. The all-red spreads looked good on the computer, but when they were printed it was pretty visually intense. Although I loved the red, I knew I should incorporate more blue within the body text and do something to lessen the eye strain from looking at those red spreads, as much as that pained me. Two other great suggestions were adding a real bandaid to the emotional bandaids spread where I just had a plain blue bandaid shape. Also, the social batteries page where I had the 'A' and 'E' filled in with blue (to sort of look like a battery) needed to change. If the filled-in letters didn't mean anything, then I needed to go back to the drawing board. My remedy items, as you can see, also made their appearance on the content pages again, but I did need to move them farther from the edge. Most critiques were fairly minor and nit-picky, so I was feeling pretty good. But, overwhelmingly, the biggest suggestion was "add more blue, add more blue!"
Color Computer Readers Spreads
See, I added more blue! It was hard to let go of the full red spreads, but I think this looks so clean and nice. The emotional bandaids page is missing the actual bandaids because those were physically placed on the page when printed! This also goes for my TOC where I physically printed and taped the receipt to the printed page.
Final Assembled Zine
I managed to find the perfect transparent film to use as an outer cover for the zine and used a real plastic bag to place underneath. This gave me the bag effect I wanted! I'm also so happy I was able to attach real plastic bag handles and not the cardboard ones I was initially planning on. My paper ended up being too thick for me to sew with the thread I had, so I just stapled it. Since I used presentation photo paper, the colors printed way brighter than anticipated, but I still really like how it turned out. Next time, I need to remember to design for the creep that inevitably happened when I assembled the zine.