Tag Archives: Smoking

Getting My Zine On

… a.k.a getting in the Zine mood!

I wish I could get paid to blog but I don’t think it’s really a job is it? Nevermind :)

Working on the most confusing part of the whole Zine process right now – Imposition/pagination! Scary words right there but put simply, page order – a lot harder than you think! I’ve made it a bit harder for myself too because my Zine is A6 size – A5 size open as a double spread. The majority of people in my class are doing an A5 size Zine which means that they can quite easily print on A4 and then fold it in half. I like a challenge… haha

With the subject of my Zine being Smoking, I have taken an Anti-Smoking voice due to my personal views. However, the brief required creating a narrative style so I have kind of divided 4 different sections in my Zine:
1. Starting smoking – the appealing factors
2. Realising the downsides
3. How it feels to quit/ Life post-smoking
and 4. My negative views on smoking.

I photocopied a selection of my page ideas to create the first draft of my Zine and arranged them into a Zine form…

To help get my head around printing the final thing, I’ve made a dummy copy Zine with page numbers…

…and drawn a layout grid so I just need to add the thumbnails of the pages and make sure I’ve got the right mix of pages and also in the right order! Keepin’ it simple! :)

I’ve also chosen my paper stock! On Thursday we had progress feedback sessions with the tutors and the points suggested by Chris included using more imagery & faces, having a proper ending, showing the difference between my voice & the smokers’ voices and to add some colour. I think that the best way to add some colour is to use coloured paper because I want to keep my type-llustrations simply black.

I have chosen a light yellow (due to the title of my Zine – Yellow Fingers – and also because it’s the kind of colour smoker’s teeth and nails go!) and a light grey (because it reminds me of the ash left by cigarettes) but I think I will still use some white paper too.

My Zine is going to end up being quite thick (48 sides in total) so I think I will be just sticking to a simple binding method like saddle stitch just to avoid anything going wrong! Haha

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Filed under BA (Hons) Graphic Design, Book Making, Graphic Design, Illustration, Sketchbook, Typography, University, University of Lincoln

Keen on Zine

I am sooooo keen on the latest Visual Expression project to make a zine – my fave project so far!

For those of you who don’t know what a zine is, it’s a handmade, mini magazine which has a small print run of usually 500 or less.  They are usually quirky, controversial and very experimental so the complete opposite to the Magazine project (for which I received some quite good feedback in a critique on Friday afternoon – grade to be continued!) I had for the Graphic Design module before christmas!

I first became aware of zines back in 2010 when Llymlrs, a Graphic Design student whose fashion blog I follow, made one… never thought I would have the time to make one so having it set as a project is just perfect!

I don’t do enough quirky design; I find my design style to be very clean and neat but I actually really do like messy, weird design! I’m hoping that my choice of the smoking culture community (the subject of the zine is a community which we had to choose and research over the christmas holidays) will allow for a lot of weird, dirty and wonderful experimentation!

I have sooooo many ideas already – ahhhh sooooo excited about this project it’s unreal! Oh and another great thing about this project is that we have to blog our progress! Zine + Blog + Tasha = LOVE

This post is actually REALLY late in the project – the deadline is actually this Thurs (24th)! Oops! Been having too much fun! :)

Here are some photos of my typographic illustrations which are forming the basis of my zine…

All laid out on the kitchen table – 9 A3 pages = 36  A5 illustrations!

Watch this space for more… and the chance to buy one maybe? :)

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Filed under BA (Hons) Graphic Design, Graphic Design, Illustration, Photography, Typography, University, University of Lincoln