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MICROPUBLISHING: PROJECT 02 – COLLECTIONS

Bernd & Hilla Becher • Blast Furnaces • Image via C4gallery.com

Your next zine will reflect the theme of COLLECTIONS.

Not everyone has a collection, but some people collect records, beanie babies, baseball cards, stamps, cars, books, posters, houseplants, or a million different things.

However, for this assignment, I don’t want you to just go home and photograph your collection of Breaking Bad bobbleheads. Instead, think back to artists like Bernd & Hilla Becher (1, 2), Kate Bingaman-Burt, and Ed Ruscha (1, 2, 3, 4).

You will choose an object or subject to photograph, draw, or otherwise document, and create a 12 to 24-page zine about that collection of objects, with commentary. Whatever the subject, I want there to be text and images. You will write about the things your are documenting: where did you find it, describe the context, the date/time, people involved, etc…

And once again, it can be set digitally, but the zine composed by hand. There should also be some consideration given to a special production technique of your choice: a page that folds out to reveal a bigger image, hand-added color to each copy, block printing, emboss, colored paper, vellum, … something else? It could be as simple as using a different paper stock for the cover than the interior.

Project Components:
1 Paste-up Original
5 Photocopies (with an interesting production element)

Project Timeline:
Mon Sept 12: Begin Project / Brainstorm / In-class project
Wed Sept 14: Review Progress
Mon Sept 19: Final Edits
Wed Sept 21: Project Due

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MICROPUBLISHING: Project 01 – Obsession

xacto

For your first full-scale zine project, you will create a 12-page zine designed completely by hand. In other words, you will cut and paste each element onto the pages separately, much like what we saw in the videos on Monday (1, 2).

  • You MAY digitally set blocks of type, but no more than a column at a time. (example)
  • You MAY crop and scale images to the appropriate dimensions, and adjust brightness/contrast.
  • You MAY NOT use Photoshop for anything more than scaling, cropping, or adjusting Brightness/Contrast of images.
  • You MAY NOT design an entire page or set of pages digitally, and then print them out, cut them up, and re-assemble them as though you had done it by hand in the first place.
  • You MAY NOT use color. Your zine will be entirely black and white. Consider contrast, texture, visual balance, and other design elements.

The theme for this project is OBSESSION. Interpret that how you will, but know that your zine should be your voice, and your point-of-view. Make it compelling in some way. Your obsession may be something completely boring to everyone else, but how can you make it interesting?

Remember the zine about the guys and their pigeons? I’m not particularly interested in pigeons, but I’m very interested in a smartly designed zine that gives me something weird to ponder.

It’s easy for these zines to become very image-heavy. However, I want you to try to balance your pages with text. Write about your obsession. And write in such a way that it engages the reader.

Regardless of what your obsession is, you need to make it relevant/interesting to a causal reader. Maybe they won’t share your obsession, but they can at least be entertained by it. For example, I think the Helvetica documentary makes typography seem kind of interesting to someone not particularly interested in design.

What is your OBSESSION?

  • Abandoned Buildings
  • Music / Your Favorite Band
  • Technology
  • Vegetarianism
  • Conspiracies ☠️
  • Sports
  • Feminism
  • Celebrities/ Movies / Television
  • Travel
  • Politics
  • Thai Food
  • The Mall
  • Art
  • Architecture
  • Something else?

PROJECT TIMELINE

Wed 8/31 – Get started / Brainstorm / Start writing & collecting images
Mon 9/05- Labor Day. No classes.
Wed 9/07 – View progress / Discuss print production techinques
Mon 9/12 – Turn in finished zines (5 copies + original)