Today’s Plan:
- WTF is a Zine?
- Crucible Design Project
- Homework
WTF is a Zine?
A few preliminary thoughts: those of you in ENG 220 Writing, Transformation, and Change likely have an answer to this question. Let’s talk about that.
What are the aesthetic principles of a Zine? [How well this conversation goes will influence what we do next, I’m going to trace out a few menu options below].
Some design resources on Zines:
- BinderyMike, which takes me to Zinester Directory
- From directory, catalogue
- From directory, see potatofuzz as well [juxtaposition of clean, typeset poems and chaotic drawnings
- Let’s Talk about Zine Aesthetic
- Let’s talk about “literary magazine non traditional layout”
- 80 Cool Zine and InDesign Templates
Why (Maybe) a Zine?
This is a more loaded and more rhetorical question. Well, two questions. Okay, three:
- Should The Crucible embrace a “Zine” design style or should it embrace a more “New Yorker” style?
- What are the rhetorical issues–especially regarding ethos (as character, credibility, perception)–attached to design, layout, typography?
- What audiences matter to the Crucible staff?
Looking at Past Projects
If there is time today.
Crucible Design Project Creative Brief and Specs
Expectations/Deliverables:
- Once available (Wednesday), you will make a copy of the “copy-and-materials” folder and store your files in there.
- You are encouraged to use custom fonts for the project
- You will design a front and back cover for the project using LuLu’s template specs
- You will (obviously) layout and design the issue. We will be using a bleed (so design out past the edge of the paper).
- Pages need to have a header/footer with at least the page number and the author/artist’s name.
- At least one page in the design needs to be different/special (you can set up a pattern, so that every 7th/8th/9th page does something different). I will ask you to reflect on this/these page(s) at the project’s conclusion.
- Think about how you want to design art content using a bleed. Will you create a background frame? Will you extend the edges of art pieces outside the guaranteed edge into the bleed/safety zone? Will you create a background overlap effect?
- We’ll need a contributors page (double-check that this is included with the content copy)
- We will create a Table of Contents using paragraph styles (essentially, meta tags).
Creative Brief from Hannah Hehn, The Crucible’s current editor:
Well I mean baseline there are certain things it has to do. You can’t go all the way into ‘everything is sideways and nothing is readable’ territory because our goal of presenting written work suffers at that point.
BUT my view is that it’s almost always to make a bold choice that someone might not like/think looks ugly/whatever than to do something bland. To me, as long as it’s not to the point Lisa Zimmerman looks at the edition and goes “Hannah, what the fuck did you do” everything is fine. But generally, due to both my sensibilities and those of most of my current staff, a little more punk zine-leaning is the way to go. We want something that we can pick up and say “Oh that’s interesting!! I want to look at it!” instead of just “…that sure is a magazine right there.”
The only audience we’ve every really cared about is ourselves/our contributors as the little group of kind of weird people who make it. Sure, some people want to be able to send it to their parents or the more standard audiences of higher-brow lit magazines, but we’re students. We don’t have to cater to those tastes and we mostly don’t want to. We don’t get paid for this.
Project Timeline
Here’s the plan:
- Monday, Mar 20: Project Intro
- Wednesday, Mar 22: Copy and Materials, setting up a template and Master Page
- Friday, Mar 24: Team Work Day
- Monday, Mar 27: Team Work Day
- Wednesday, Mar 29: Developing a Table of Content [Note: most text should be flowed by this point]
- Friday, Mar 31: Crit
- Monday, April 3rd: Team Work Day. Projects due Monday April 3rd at midnight
