Zines, short for fanzines, are self-published booklets about an given subject. It is about anything you have the interest to publish. As a mini task we were required to write a list of 50 things that we simply like in order to gain ideas for a potential Zine of our own.
My first idea for a Zine was one for a mission to Mars. The topic itself has intrigued me for a while and the choice to create a Zine about it gave me the opportunity to research more into it and better understand it. I then began to research all about mars, why we were going, how we were getting there, how much it would cost etc etc. Just general facts about the whole thing.
From there i wanted to create a flat plan to visualise how my zine would look and what would go on each page. It was a quick and easy way to lay it all out and decide how to order it all. It wasn't very pretty or colourful but it allowed me to expand on my ideas a little and see the actual pages with the content on them. With that all out of the way I started to design the zine itself and a big part of any magasine or booklet is the front page. I wanted something that stood out and was bold but also reflected the topic of the zine. I looked into typography and different fonts so I could title my zine the best way possible.
A lot of the inspiration came straight from the Nasa font as they are the world leaders in space exploration and will be fundamental in the journey to mars. I also found their font to be really smooth and easy to draw, the curved corners were a nice change from the san-serif typefaces. I decided to leave the stroke on the letters instead of having them filled as to not completely copy the Nasa typeface.
After I had the lettering done I wanted to add something else so that it wasn't just a title on the front page, it needed more colour. I wanted a planet to be on the front, the red planet to be exact.
I started to research existing planets created by designers on Pinterest and collected a few examples to create my own version from. For this i used pencil but ink pens would have worked even better as the strokes wouldn't be as visible and it would look more printed. I tried a couple of variations whilst also copying out the two I sampled as practice.
This was the result. Mars is simple enough to be made easily and can be simply recognised. I did end up taking part of the title out as it would have been too big, forcing me to either work over the planet which I tried here and didn't like. That was my first page done and out of the way.
The rest of the pages were to be filled out with facts and figures about the mission to mars.
Overall i don't think the success of my pages were that high. They weren't very colourful and they were very text heavy. Despite them saying a lot and giving very vital information to a budding Mars enthusiast it doesn't look very exciting. I could have drawn some more planets or space related things so that it has more of a space feel to it.
WORD PLAY
The next task allowed us to explore typography and manipulate words in relation to what they mean, we had to choose two words from a list and arrange each word so that it expresses its meaning. We could vary the size, spacing, placement and orientation of the letters. We could use tracing paper, we could cut them up and stick them back down and we could photocopy them but we weren't allowed to change the nature of the font. My two words were repetition and expansion.
For the repetition one I photocopied the word to get the right size and then traced over it making sure to retrace over the two letters I repeated so that they were definitely identical. I then traced it onto the paper and inked over it in fine-liner pen. For the expansion one i had to once again photocopy the original word multiple times at different ratios to get a scale of sizes to work with. I then worked out which ones i wanted to have huge and cut them out with a scalpel and stuck them down. I cut them out because it wasn't as tough as tracing. I took the shortcut.
We then made a brainstorm about ideas for a Zine so that we could create one that was far more developed and to a better standard now that we know a little more about the process.
We put our idea down in the middle and started to expand upon our idea, asking ourselves questions and providing alternate ideas. Then we swapped with someone and they had a look and started asking questions and giving me other options and ideas. It was a way of getting a fresh unbiased mind to look at our idea and try to avoid having a generic idea like our "favourite band" or something similar.
My idea was originally "Recycling" but that was a really broad topic and it has already been covered excessively by tabloids and newspapers all over the world for years now so I narrowed it down.
CAN CONSUMERISM HELP RECYCLING
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