NOTES - Rookie Yearbook One

Rookie Yearbook One by Tavi Gevinson

- Split into months
- September 2011 to May 2012
- Dreamed up a team of people who "so perfectly strike the balance between following their own voices and caring this much about their readers."

- Started Rookie because felt there wasn't a magazine for teenage girls that respected its readers' intelligence
- Started it online because it was best way to spread voices of our contributors far and wide
- Best way for readers to share their own
- Best place for readers to connect with on another

BUT

- Despite how well online prescience worked out, staff had knack for creating work that is more timeless than articles online typically get to be
- More beautiful than photos and illustrations can look on a computer monitor
- Created a Yearbook in an attempt to do justice to best pieces
- Adorned with doodles and glitter, stickers throughout the book
- Couldn't be stared on a screen
- Being able to actually HOLD art and writing that you love is really special

- Initially, seemed like a good venue for pure aesthetic enjoyment and smart, fun writing
- Experiences among typical females her age
- Don't want to think what makes someone "just your average teenage girl" or whether I fit that mold or if that's who will read Rookie

- NOT a guide to being a teen, not a pamphlet on how to be a young woman
- Simply a bunch of writing and art we like and believe in
- Danger of generalising about a whole group of people BUT some experiences are somewhat universal to being a teenager

Themes:

- First kiss
- First love
- School
- Higher learning
- Male gaze
- Halloween (festivities)
- Style icons
- First aid
- Seasons
- Home
- Drugs
- Food
- Music
- Fangirls
- Interviews
- Eating disorders
- Emotions
- Thrifting/DIY
- Make-up
- Life skills
- Hairstyles
- Prom
- Zines

How to make a zine p.g 304

- Self-published, small-circulation, often nonprofit books, papers, or websites
- Usually deal with topics too controversial or niche for mainstream media
- Presented in unpolished layout and unusual design
- Everyone can be an author, editor, art director, publisher - what makes them so awesome
- Invention of the photocopy machine - zine making has been one of the most popular forms of in dependent publishing
- Underground communities

BUT

- Hard to generalise about zines same way its hard to generalise about culture
- Not just hard - impossible
- Zines can be anything and everything, and they are

- Zine making isn't about rules or knowledge, its about freedom and POWER
- Zines are super powerful
- Can communicate rebellious words and strong ideas
- People who feel burning need to share energy with the world make zines
- No coincidence that zine culture is often associated with some of the most energetic movement

* punk
* feminist
* queer

- Some publications that sprang from subcultures, like punk fanzine Chainsaw, enjoyed cult status
- Others, like Bitch, got so popular they turned into regular magazines that can be found in bookstores

- Zines are not looking for a broad audience
- Not supposed to appeal to everyone
- They're exclusive
- Can make a digital zine/mag and reach people on the other end of the planet in a blink
- BUT what's nicer than a little handmade book you can hold in your non-virtual hands?
- OR unique feeling of being one among a tiny group of special people in the possession of a carefully made publication?

Interviews with and writing from

- Daniel Clowes
- Zooey Deschanel
- Lena Dunham
- Sky Ferreira
- Miranda July
- Aubrey Plaza
- Dan Savage
- David Sedaris
- John Waters
- Joss Whedon