Zine Day Tutorial

¾ of Owt Creative

In today’s workshop for unit x we got taught about how to create are very own zine. Zine is a word that I have only really learnt since coming to Manchester as before hand in college or school it was never mentioned. I have since being in Manchester really loved that style of work and presentation in which seems a lot more personal and hands on it also gives a lot more freedom to artists to explore themes that they themselves are interested in and may not be able to create if they were working in a corporate environment.

In doing the zine work shop we got shown a variety of different zines from the people in Owt creative, from a variety of different concepts, narrative and also a wide variety of peculiar layouts and themes that make the publications more unique and original . The work of Owt creative is something that has inspired me since coming to MMU due to most of the publications have a very wide spectrum for the artists to work within, which is commonly a word or phrase in addition to this the actual content of the zine in which is usually a wide mix of various different styles and media which make the publication more appealing rather than being purely in one type of format, which after a while may make the publication repetitive and monotonous.

Are group set about are publication with the theme of getting items in the northern quarter for a pound, which was something we were interested in. We therefore in the zine chose to focus on the pages and which the randomness of the items set about making the pages as unique and as different as we could to chose a wide variety of work and more importantly are own style and the reason for choosing the item. Most of the work on the day was produced by using a cut and stick method in addition to this using the photocopier to make the piece a actual book from photocopying the work. When making the book we realised that the pages may look very disjointed so as a final touch we added the one pound sticker to make the piece look like it was in unison and had a common theme running through itself even how abstract it may be.

On doing the zine tutorial, it made me look at how I could produce my own work in a similar fashion and how I could possibly create my own books at a low cost to give to clients as a way of making more of a impact and adding a sense of personality. It also for my university work made me look at different forms of formatting my work to make my work better presented and more unique rather than just being simply a series printout. I would like to push the zine culture in other format from using a wide range of different materials, from the likes of digital design tools and also possibly the laser cutter. Even though the zine may not be of the best quality, it was however a unique experience in which I would want to refine and perfect later on.