Teal’s talk today was inspiring and motivational. She used a quote from Stephen Duncomb’s 1997 publication of Fanzines: Notes from the Underground” to describe fanzines as “little publications filled with rantings of high weirdness and exploding with chaotic design”. I found myself beginning to develop ideas for a fanzine of my own whilst she flicked through slides showing the covers of fanzines based on a huge variety of subjects. This was what I found the most interesting, there are so many subject areas it is impossible to catagorise fanzines, they can literally be about anything. I like this idea, it’s mysterious, personal and very expressive. I believe if I began to produce my own fanzine then it would be a very good method of improving my own editorial design skills and good practice for working on the quality of my writing.
From what Teal explained it appears that a high percentage of fanzines are collaborative and involve people from different disciplines to produce different aspects of the fanzines. I feel this would result in a higher quality of fanzine. However, it would be an interesting project for me to produce my own content and arrange this for a fanzine as I was also inspired by Adrian Shaughnessy and Tony Brooks talk in May which focussed on designers growing ability and passion for creating their own content. I do love to write and explore topics through the written word so feel this could become a successful outlet of a variety of creative talents for me. At the moment I am contemplating a fanzine revolving around a fascination with birds but also a tense fear of the creatures, particularly of pigeons which, much to my terror, I seem to attract. I aim to produce at least one fanzine just to try out the chaotic, copy and paste style methods and have a good experimental session, but I would like for it to be really unique and none regurgitated like many appear to be. I will start by researching subjects and try to find a subject, hopefully birds, which there are not to many fanzines about. It would be nice to perhaps create a serious and include the best pages in a special edition book.
It is easy to dismiss fanzines as an irrelevant format of publication with unimportant, badly written content. With the Guardian revealing that there are over 10,000 football fanzines in Britain alone it is difficult to consider that these are serious publications that can really evoke deep thought and make a difference in the world we live in today. The sheer volume of publications suggests that fanzines follow a very throw away culture. This is not the case which she clearly presented to us using the example of Guinea Pig Zero, the fanzine which stands up for human rights rather than animal rights. The zine focuses on humans who have been used as subjects for medical and product development tests and features interviews of many of these test subjects. Guinea Pig Zero is a passionately written, perfect example of zines that make a difference in the world. The writer has faced a number of law suits from large companies wishing to gain ‘gagging orders’ and his exposés have led to many businesses reconsidering how they run medical experiments. This demonstrates the political power achieved by some fanzines and the changes they can provoke.
I find it interesting that the success and appeal of a fanzine is in neither the content or the mark making but in the combination of the form and content. Fanzines are amateur and irregularly produced, basically whenever the producer feels that he would like to produce another. I find this fascinating and began imagining a world where newspapers and Vogue magazines were only published when the editor in chief fancied. This would create chaos within the middleclass and fashionable members of society respectively. One thing about fanzines that irritates me slightly is that the text is unjustified and the editing is less concerned with spelling and grammar but capturing the chaos within the design. I feel this limits the readability somewhat and results in the information about the subject which the producer feels so very passionately about is devalued in the lack of attention to detail. Why does the content seem less important? I would like to see a correctly written and well designed, chaotic or not, fanzine produced just out of personal preference. Perhaps this is a task that I should fulfil myself.
I found it interesting that Camilla Deacon began producing a fanzine called The Face Mag before soon taking a position as chief stylist at Vogue magazine. I also wish to research the Feverzine that Teal described it as one of the most important and influential of current fanzines. My favourite image taken from Teal’s slides is the front cover of Hey! Four eyes!, a fanzine produced by Robin Chatman which focusses on people who wear spectacles. This particular cover features an illustrative screen-print by Manchester based illustrator Jim Medway whose drawings of cats appear as people. At the end of the lecture only one question was asked which was ‘Do fanzines and professional design connect? Do you think the knowledge of design prevents the raw visuals?’. Teal answered this question well, suggesting that fanzines created by design students and professionals are just as successful, if not more as they just further consider the raw visuals so beautifully recognised in fanzines. I would elaborate on this point whilst considering David Carson’s Ray Gun magazine issues to suggest that fanzines are actually a brilliant outlet for design students and professionals for less considered but more experimental design which results in the chaotic design that we see in zines. For those educated in design schools I believe fanzines feature as an activity similar to playtime for school children.
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