Brief
The brief is to create a traditional punk zine. The zines layout has to be all arranged by hand. The purpose of this brief is to try a different style of editorial design, seeing how it is to step away from digital design. I will do it on the topic of female oppression in the music industry, looking at the women of punk. Sexism in music is still a something that is relevant today.
Research
I researched into different punk zines for layout inspiration. I found that it involves a lot of hand type and roughly cut out type and images. Most are black and white, or black on coloured stock. This would have been so that they were easily and cheaply reproducible. Everything is done by hand then scanned/photocopies.
The riot grrrl punk feminist movement was a dig influence to my zine. The movement started in the early 90’s and was thought to be the starting point of third wave feminism. The during the movement lots of people started to produce feminist zines under the riot grrrl title.
It is a subcultural movement that combines feminist consciousness and punk style and politics. It has also been described as a musical genre that came out of indie rock, with the punk scene serving as an inspiration for a musical movement in which women could express themselves in the same way men had been doing for the past several years.
Riot grrrl bands often address issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, racism, patriarchy, and female empowerment. Primary bands associated with the movement include Bikini Kill, Bratmobile,Heavens to Betsy, Excuse 17, Huggy Bear, Skinned Teen, Emily’s Sassy Lime and Sleater-Kinney, as well as queercore groups like Team Dresch and The Third Sex. In addition to a music scene and genre, riot grrrl is a subculture involving a DIY ethic, zines, art, political action, and activism.
Making the Zine
The zine focus’ on The Women of Punk. Looking into the female oppression in the music industry at the time. The zine will looking at the usually overlooked women that were involved in the punk music. During the 70’s and 80’s it was very hard for women to be taken seriously as musicians, even more so in the mans world of punk.
I started to experiment with different layouts for the cover. Not working digitally made it very easy to reposition the type where ever I wanted it. The font it Gotham, I wanted something strong in relation to the punk movement. I introduced hand type, to give it more of a personal hand made feel.
I made all of the images black in white to create unity and also to match the aesthetics of past punk zines. I stared by cutting out all the images and positioning them in the page. I tried to be creative with how I arranged the images. Using multiple copies of an image or deconstructing an image.
I then added in the text. The information that i used were mainly facts, so that the text could be read in any order. For the body text I found a font similar to the ones used in the riot grrrl zines. I think it worked well because it looked like it had been type on a typewriter. I found that breaking up the text looked best, and meant that it would work well layered over images. I cut out the text in a blocked fashion because this is similar to the zines from the riot grrrl movement.
Scanning and Printing
It scanned in really well, the image quality was very good. I was worried that it might not have scanned it clearing, but I am really happy with the results.
I edited the background to make it a much more vibrate pink. Harsh bright colours were seen throughout the punk movement and also in the zines. Also, I think that the text and images stand out much more on this background.
The print came out great quality and the colour came out really well.
I really enjoyed working this way while creating a zine, and have had lots of positive feedback on the final zine. In the future I would like to extend it further, looking at overlooked Women of Rock, Rap and so on.
