Fanzines: A DIY Revolution? [apres conférence]

After Teal’s talk I was lucky enough to have a good discussion with her over a number of issues, based primarily around the business aspects of fanzines and design in general and the role of women in the design industry. I teamed up with fellow student and good friend Justyna who also had some interesting questions to ask. Justyna asked Teal if she thought that fanzines would survive along with professional magazines. I agreed with Teal when she said that magazines may not actually be surviving at all. The economy has not allowed the magazine industry to flourish as it did in the nineties and many magazines are struggling against going under completely. I am greatly anticipating the relaunch of Graphik magazine in January 2011. Creative Review also relaunched in the Spring with a reformat and by also differentiating the market. By feeding money saved from their reformat of the print version of the magazine into developing and improving the online format. I found the information Teal provided us in regards to the business models of great interest and would like to research these models further. More interesting was the development of a number of fanzines into professional magazines and Bust magazine, a fanzine which claims it is still as such but has moved in business and financial terms much more towards a professional magazine format. Teal was a lovely person, really easy to talk to and a very interesting person with so much knowledge about seemingly everything! I realy enjoyed our talk and it was so motivational, I am feeling very inspired!! I’m going to stop here as there will be more to come on these subjects and besides, I have a lot to do for our current project ‘Static’, stay tuned….