The first of these images is the front cover of a Zine by Mike O’Meally which is about skateboarding and photographs of skateboarding.
The second is by Peter Nolan Smith. they clearly both have a very similar style and I really like the idea of photocopying blocks of paper with printed text, onto the images. It gives the Zine a grunge look and makes it look like an underground Zine.
So, my main project at university for the next five or six weeks is to create a ‘Zine’.
If you are unfamiliar with this term, by Wikipedia’s definition, a Zine is;
“(an abbreviation of the word fanzine, or magazine; pronounced ‘Zeen’) is most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier.”
Our Zine’s are based on a particular community which we have researched, my community is Motorcycle Clubs.
After doing some research on Zines, I have found a few examples which really interest me. These images are from a Zine about “sleepers”, basically, people who fall asleep in random places around cities. It was created by Rick Charnoski and mainly contains photographs which he has then drawn over or manipulated with pen.
I really like this idea, its simple, it means I can use photography and it gives the Zine its signature cheap, amateur look.
(Source: elkzine.com)
(This was a Christmas project and was presented when we came back to uni.)
Type Tart Cards.
This project asked for me to design a “Tart Card” for a particular font or letter of the alphabet.
I chose the font ‘Orator’ as it was one I had no experience of using myself and it didn’t look very familiar, meaning it wasn’t used very often, so I felt it needed a bit of advertising.
If you are unfamiliar with Tart Cards, they are the means by which London prostitutes advertise their services.
I had to create this Type Tart Card to make my font appealing to others.
I think in a way it was very successful, I was particularly proud of the strap line
“She’ll treat you Orator she’ll treat you very badly.”
I felt it was really clever because some people won’t necessarily understand the use of the word ‘Orator’ in this sense. In some parts of the UK the word ‘Alright’ is pronounced ‘Orate’ and so it basically means ‘Alright or’.
I’m happy with the clean cut, modern look of the card and the colour scheme works really well, its quite elegant and very feminine.
However, most of the other Tart Card designs included a cheeky image/ illustration which added to them and definitely made them look more like ‘Tart Cards’ which I don’t think is clear when you look at my design.
