Fanzines by Teal Triggs
- zines = one of the liveliest forms of self expression for over 70 ears
- subject matter is varied as passions of their creators
- range across music, comics, typography, animal rights, politics, alternative lfestyles, clip art, thrift shopping, beer drinking...
- produce in small quantities
- distributed by hand or via independent music or book stores
- were original medium of super nice interest groups and cultural underground
- ephemeral and irreplaceable
- man have been lost to all but a few passionate collectors
- graphic style has DIY verve
- uninhibited by design conventions - widely influential in mainstream design and popular culture
- made with very basic tools: scissors and glue, photocopier, staples or string
- collaged photos and hand drawn type and illustrations explode across page
- first decade of new millennium has seen flourishing scene
- new generation of graphic designers, illustrators, artists and writers combines the urge to self expression with a rediscovery of handmade crafted objects
Chapter One - DIY Revolution: Definitions and Early Days
- days of small press publications are far from over
- for the most part, they remain hidden, flying beneath radar of mainstream publishing and its conventions
- production is often irregular
- distribution takes place at zine fairs, by word of mouth through independent music shops or bookstores, or through post
- zinesters are less concerned about copyright, grammar, spelling, punctuation or protocols of page layout, grids, typography than about communicating a particular subject to a community of like minded individuals
- print runs vary in numbers
- some are limited editions of upto fifth
- others may be downloaded digitally from internet
- hard to estimate how many zines are produced each year
STATISTICS
- in late 80s, the Guardian reported that more than 10,000 titles of UK football related fanzines alone were in publication
- 1994, Time magazine reported 20,000 titles were produced in US, a figure that was growing a an annual rate of 20 per cent
- 4000 were sold in one month at one branch of record chain Tower Records
*Gross, ‘Ideas: zine but not heard”*
- interest in small press publications and zines has increased over last two decades
- evidenced in plethora of international fanzine symposia and exhibitions and increased number of book compilations of zines published by mainstream publishing houses
- started in late 90s, bustle of activity in US
- Pagan Kennedy, journalist and writer, among first to move from underground to the overground with book Zine: How I Spent Six Years of My Life in the Underground and Finally Found Myself...I Think (1995)
- other zine producers soon followed in a publishing flurry that brought into the public consciousness insights into the everydayness of contemporary life
e.g. Paul Lukas, Inconspicuous Consumption: An Obsessive Look at the Stuff We Take for Granted, From the Everyday to the Obscure (1996)
Al Hoff’s ‘scavenging fun’ at thrift stores in Thrift Score (1997)
Chip Rowe, producer of Chip’s Closet Cleaner (1989), The Book of Zines: Readings from the Fringe (1997) - still sits alongside an accompanying website that continues to provide updated resource with practical how to advice, fanzine directories and interviews with producers
- process of moving from ‘below critical radar’ into mainstream publishing houses was not without critics or controversy
- by 1997 some within the DIY community were accused of selling out by trading on the DIY ethos for commercial gain
- despite zines being amateur publications, their producers have become their own makers of cultural meaning, taking part in the construction of the very pop culture that they critique
- critics expressed concern that mainstream publishing would ‘endanger the alternative, anti establishment viewpoint that makes zines unique’ and asked are these ‘the last days of Pompeii for the zine world?’ - Futrelle, ‘Been there, zine that’
- on the other hand, not uncommon for zine producers to have intentionally used zines as a testing ground before entering into professional careers
e.g. Jon Savage = Bam Balam and London’s Outrage to weekly music press then to The Face and then national press and television
Danny Baker = Sniffin glue to NME and BBC Radio
- on going debates have not deterred other zinesters from turning to mainstream publishers nor the mainstream itself from co-opting the fanzines as a popular cultural form
- 90s, faux fanzines being published by large multinational companies
- fanzine as an authentic, edgy, political underground into the world above as an item now imbued with commercial hipness
- by late 90s, zines become serious subject for academic study - Stephen Duncombe’s Notes From the Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture (1997) and Bob Dickinson’s Imprinting the Sticks: The Alternative Press Beyond London (1997) led the way for a broader appreciation of what had been a subcultural phenomenon
- DIY authenticity fostered by early fanzine producers has not been lost
- maintain an enthusiasm for and commitment to fanzine form as way of expressing their individual concerns, rants on politics, loves and hates, desires and disappointments
- authentic resides in authorial voice where personal is political and not beholden to global corporations
- continue to operate on margins of mainstream
- disregard traditions of professional design studios and conventions of literary publishing houses
- rather than conforming, zinesters are defining and manufacturing their own identity and representing this through their writing and DIY image making
- referring to fanzine editors as producers or makers introduces new ways of thinking about the producer as a ‘popular author’ and the fanzine as an ‘autobio/graphical’ object - Jenkins, McPherson and Shattuc, Hop on Pop pp. 161-62
- through the DIY nature of their production, fanzines take on an enhanced value in how they contribute to and reflect a broader everyday cultural experience
- Wertham, 1972 study, fanzines are a ‘novel form of communication’, arguing they have a unique place in history of communication, design, journalism, publishing and popular culture
- documents of a social history framed by political, economic and cultural contexts
- Wertham observes fanzines ‘exist as human voices outside of all mass manipulation’
- these voices ‘deserve to be heard’ The World of Fanzines p.g 35
- relationship that is formed between producers and readers
- readers may also be producers but most certainly are fans sharing similar interests
- considered as virtual spaces where producers and readers unite in communities of interest or dissent
- visible evidence of this process is in football, where each club may have a number of separate fanzine titles, yet have a collective voice that can have a real impact on club decisions
- form of the fanzine and how it’s been made
- both elements feed into our understanding of what is being communicated
- includes design of the layout (often visually chaotic), the choice of typography (either handwritten, or typewritten or using rub down lettering) and production techniques (mimeographed, photocopied or computer generated)
- mimeographing and photocopying are both methods of duplicating, the former using stencil fitted around an inked rum, the latter using now prevalent form of xerography
- rise of computers in 80s, producers began to use desktop publishing packages to generate their texts and layouts
- producers have discovered the art of letterpress printing
- fanzines are usually sizes to be held easily in the hands
- occasionally might resemble more three dimensional objects and incorporate recycled objects or materials, such as old vinyl single records
- advances in technology over the last few years have also changed how we view fanzines with online or digital forms
Fanzines as Graphic objects
- form and DIY process provide some understanding of a history of design and popular culture
- looks the way it does because it is created by a single producer conflating the roles of author and designers
- opens up possibilities for experimentation in terms of a fanzine’s editorial direction and graphic sensibility
- production methods adopted by zine producers allow them to have more freedom in putting together the zine in his or her own way
- often without consideration of conventional design rules or aesthetics
- in Graphic Design profession, debates around graphic authorship came to force in mid 90s
- focus on designer’s practice and process of self publishing
- critic and designers Michael Rock’s seminal essay ‘The designer as author’ 1996 and discussion in ‘Fuck Content’ (2005) provided a platform for re-evaluation the role the designer might play in mediating between form and content
- went some way in legitimising designer’s voice as equal to that of other privileged forms of authorship
- Rock’s proposition was that object as a form could be considered as a kind of ‘text itself’
- design principles such as ‘typography, line, form, colour, contrast, scale, weight’ become devices by which a story might be told
- opens up for discussion ways of understanding graphic object not only by what it means but by ‘how it means’
- THIS APPROACH CAN BE APPLIED TO STUDY OF ZINES
- meaning is constructed not only through visual images but also through symbiotic relationship between image, text and graphic form
- elements communicate ideas and themes
- subtly shape readers’ attitudes, opinions and beliefs
- actively engage with popular cultural texts
- use of photocopier reinforces sense of immediacy of the message
- way in which fanzines are amateur productions suggest they are already situated in opposition to mainstream publishing and its conventions
- fanzines are designed to be ephemeral: produced quickly and cheap;y using copy paper and lo-fi production and printing processes, with irregular publication dates and limited print runs and distribution
- leads Duncombe to suggest that the form is operating ‘against the fetishistic archiving and exhibiting of the high art world and for the for-profit spirit of the commercial world’ Notes From Underground, p.g 127
Chapter Two - ‘It’s as easy at 1 2 3’ The Graphic Language of Punk 1975 - 83
- identifying specific moment punk began is difficult
- first wave generally been accepted to have had a three year life span
- began with depression and drought of 76 and ending with death of Sid Vicious of Sex Pistols in 79, Hebdige, Subculture p.g 25
- punk not only about music and class politics
- also had impact on fashion, fine art, film, comics, novels and fanzines
- Mark Perry, developed his own brand of ‘punk journalism’
- actively encourage others to participate in ‘having a go yourself’
- during early rise of punk, zines considered by fans as only reliable way of disseminating information about the music and the movement itself
- Dave Mcullough, 1979 “You didn’t know where to look in case you were being ‘sold out’. You could actually look up to an institution like Sniffin’ Glue and at least TRUST that they were going the whole way. It gave you The Word and put what the press said (which you always did suspect) in a rigid perspective.” Underground, Overground, Wandering free p.g. 34
- Perry very much aware of new found position as punk provocateur and influence he had on other fanzine producers
- speculated that the success of his zine was due to fact he was honest and told readers exactly what he thought, using graphic language adopted from American rock n roll fanzines
- written for and produced by those ‘in the know’
- had first hand experience as participants at gigs and were often allowed backstage
- interviewed bands directly, getting exclusive stories
- stories in mainstream were usually sensationalised
- punk was viewed as frightening and aggressive, with tabloids such as Daily Mirror and the People using scare stories to criticise morals of burgeoning youth culture
- driven by political agendas, including class politics an critiques of mainstream political ideologies
- also reflected fact punk had emerged from a position of knowingness about artistic practice and history
A Graphic Language of Resistance p.g 46
- Stephen Duncome suggest that through process of resistance we are freed from limits and constraints of the dominant culture
- in turn ‘cultural resistance’ allows us to ‘experiment with new ways of seeing and being’ Cultural Resistance Reader p.g. 5
- in zines this may be represented through content or graphically, or both where rules and prescriptions are disregarded intentionally
- strategies are easily understood within the subculture and provide a focal point and help establish a community of like minded individuals
- Reid established connection visually between Dada, Situationism and punk
- despite emerging set of punk ‘conventions’ including small, stapled format, ‘spontaneous’ page layout, production values of photocopier, mixture of typographic treatments such as cut and paste, ransom notes and handwritten and typewritten letterforms, each fanzine maintained an individualised approach
- manner in which graphic marks, visual elements and layout were presented reflect not only the message but also the individual hand of the producer
*CASE STUDY GIVEN IN BOOK*
- Chainsaw, Sniffin Glue, Ripped and Torn = these examples in spite of their individual handling of basic graphic notation of zines, established overall a recognisable punk identity
Punk Sites of Resistance
- can speak of zines as places of cultural resistance
- ‘offer fans a free space for developing ideas and practices and visual space unencumbered by formal design rules and visual expectations’ Duncombe, Cultural Resistance Reader, p.g 5
- unique visual identity emerged, with own set of graphic rules and DIY approach, neatly reinforcing punks new found political voice
Chapter Three - Liberated Spaces: Subcultures, Protest and Consumer Culture 1980s - 90s
- rise to power of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Raegan in late 70s, 80s
- new era of ‘free market’ economics born
- encouraged small businesses to develop, saw as co-opting of the individualistic DIY urge that had occurred during punk
- on the other hand, ‘greed is good’ culture that took over financial districts in UK and US provided zine producers with a target
- rhetoric of marketplace
- ‘equated the freedom to spend money with broader political and cultural freedoms’ Frank Mort
- concept of a selling lifestyle
- ‘we are what we buy’ Andrew Marr
- consumption became cultural practice and fanzine producers both capitalised on this and critiqued it mercilessly
- co-option by the mainstream was continuing
- UK, lifestyle magazines emerged, providing different take on youth culture, inc. The Face (1980-2004), the 80s fashion bible and one time zine ‘style bible’, i-D magazine (1980) founded by Terry Jones
- these bridged gap between post punk and a new king of youth subculture - rave
- graphic reflected the fanzine aesthetic
- streetwise attitude of DIY photography, illustration, typewritten texts
- tapped into a more sophisticated look of the consumer-era zine
Consuming Dance Culture
- rave scene
- gave rise to new occupations - DJs, club organisers, clothes designers, music and style journalists - Sarah Thornton
- fanzines played a role in circulation of knowledge
- carriers of current slang and latest fashion trends, critiques of club and dance music
- Gear, produced by Camilla Deakin, took advantage of its position ‘below critical radar’ to flour libel and copyright laws
- North of England was notable for zines picking up on way in which rave/house was merging with indie rock
- affiliated with Manchester’s Hacienda Club
- Happy Mondays zine Halcyon Daze (1989) became focus for Madchester scene
Mainstreaming DIY
- 80s and 90s, exciting period for zines
- important to note that alongside newer variants, older genres continued to thrive
- probably true more indie rock zines being produced in this period that ever before or since, same for football and sports zines
- newer genres piqued interest of the mainstream
- co-option by mainstream culture industry was commonplace
*CO-OPTION = the process by which a group subsumes or assimilates a smaller or weaker group with related interests*
- fanzines and their producers became absorbed into consumer culture and the mainstream
- book deals, appearing on TV, radio
- questions around ‘selling out’ were debated
- fanzine world is infinitely malleable
- even as perception of zines becoming anaesthetised by mainstream was taking shape, DIY reaction was also happening
Chapter Four - Girl Power and Personal Politics 1990 - 97, p.g. 131
- after high point of punk, 90s was a prolific period for zines that were politically motivated
- rise of music inspired riot grrrl movement
- revitalised small press publishing through a slew of new fanzines, including Bikini Kill, Riot Grrrl, and Girl Germs
- helped galvanise a new generation of feminists to continue questioning notions of gender identity, sexuality and representation, queer politics, multiculturalism and equality with male counterparts in music industry and elsewhere
From Punk to Grrrl Revolution?
- came to public consciousness in 1991, International Pop Underground Convention, Olympia
- mainstream press made much connection early on with punk, while acknowledging that many riot grrrls were too young to have experienced punk
- explicit connection between punk and riot grrrl = shared notion of DIY
- punk’s promotion of philosophy that ‘anyone can do it’ prompted young women to pick up guitars and rediscover earlier bands
- 1993, surfaced in UK, bands such as Linus, Mambo Taxi, Skinned Teen, Huggy Bear
- advocated a female exclusivity, not always present in manifestos of earlier female punk bands
- later bands were pioneers of Girl Now Revolution
- fanzines = integral
Personal is Political
- punk fanzines took authorial position that reflected predominantly male concerns, riot grrrl zine texts often adopted women’s autobiographical approach
- reflect personal opinions and aspirations
- ‘I choose to write about my life for myself and because I think there is something to be learned from most people’s personal experiences.” Corin Tucker, Channel Seven
- importance of fanzine as a space for a women-only discourse underscored by first line of manifesto ‘BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways.’
- often criticised motives of mainstream music in press
- often misrepresented
- entire movement was trivialised by mainstream press as being ‘a fashion statement’ Corin Tucker
- Huggy Bear famously practiced media blackout, giving interview only to fanzine products
- fanzines provided a forum in which riot grrrls could critique and reject mainstream media
- represented an uncensored arena for reaching out and sharing experiences
- personal is also reinforced through visual identity of each zine
- took graphic language of punk - photo boot images, hand drawn comic strips, collage, illustration, cut and paste, ransom notes
- but added a set of feminist inspired characteristics
- each producer produced own unique DIY style
- appropriated techniques to add a ‘sweetness’ or visual associations of femininty
- Rebel Grrrl Punk (1997-2000) adorns covers with hand drawn stars and hearts surrounding photos of feminist icons such as Courtney Love
- visual sanctioned the ethos that riot grrrls were both empowered to be feminists and had the choice to be feminine
- can be paradoxical and often iconic
- graphic devices that are considered feminine are pitted against those that are found to be masculine
e.g. Hello Kitty as a third wave feminist icon - provided them with symbol of femininity and at the same time of commodity fetishism
- within context of zines, Hello Kitty is a tool of cultural subversion signalling desire to protest against, but reclaim the term ‘girl’y
- re-contexualised as simultaneously feminine and radical by means of a post punk zine aesthetic of high contrast photocopied imager, degradation of tone into unreadable areas of text and collage like layering
Borrowing from the Mainstream
- draw upon mainstream media imagery
- cut up from newspapers and magazine
- often replicae the content format used by mainstream girls’ magazine e.g. review columns, readers’ pages, feature stories
- riot grrrl producers are in a proactive position of empowerment, operate outside mainstream fashion and lifestyle consumer culture, often in opposition
- never forgot second-wave feminist predecessors
- vehicle for women’s liberation movement
- most significant aspect of graphic language employed by riot grrrl is use of three r’s in the revamped word girl = attempt to reclaim the term but reinforce it through embellishment
- word ‘girl’ is invested ‘with a new set of connotations’ which now may be read as an ‘angry feminist who relished engaging in activity’ Leonard, Rebel Girl you are the queen of my world. p.g. 232
- historians have recorded term ‘riot’ originally derived from passion comment ‘we need a girl riot, too’ in reference to 1991 riots in Mount Pleasant
- term ‘riot grrrl’ is also reported to have derived from Bratmobile drummer Tobi Vail
- term graphically comes to life if ‘riot grrrl’ is visualised and read as an aggressive sounding growl
- multiple r’s have strong impact
- word is simultaneously read and heard
- symbolic and interpreted by different readers and producers to mean different things
- catering for and representing range of voices and audiences it embraces
Girls Grow Up
- 2000, organised first Ladyfest convention
- reclaim word ‘lady’
- Ladyfest Glasgow 2001, aimed to reject conventional role models offered by dominant cultural industries, fanzine programme
- for riot grrrl, signs are that print zines will continue to flourish
- format of printed fanzine as tactile and immediate form of communication reinforces personalised nature of riot grrrl narratives
- intimate experience of reading
- negotiating of public and private spaces
- building social relationship between producer and reader
- explains continued popular of Ladyfest events, set to celebrate tenth anniversary as a global DIY movement
Chapter Five - e-zines 1998 - 2009, p.g. 171
- hard to imagine world without internet
- hardly a day goes by without logging on and off, looking at websites, logging into Facebook etc
- social networking is now part of new media landscape, comprising vast net of personal pages where friends and family meet within virtual communities and where d=new digital relationships are formed
- concept of information economy is commonplace in twenty first century
- paradigm shift taking place in mainstream publishing, brings good news for self publishing community
- similar to way Gutenberg printing presses sparked off a literacy revolution as books reached wider audience, online publishing services have provided cheaper forms of printing and distribution
- this has changed business models
- ‘print on demand’
- uses online technology to print copies of books at the time of ordering
- economic advantages for small press publishers
- self publishing website Lulu allows authors to retain direct control of both design and production - prompts comparison with DIY ethos witness in early zines
- digital medium is immediate, inexpensive and widely available
- publishing forms are evolving quickly, impact on culture of zines - both on and offline, underground and overground
- fan cultures embrace realm of online publishing through e-zines
QUESTIONS
How has the web enhanced a fan community?
What has the web brought to fanzine production?
In what was has online fan publishing altered the writing and design of zines?
A Brief History of Electronic Media
- early e-zine producers known as ‘adopters
- ‘experimenters who took the net for what it was, and imagined its possible futures, without trying to bend it to fit the constraints of traditional media like newspapers or printed magazines’ John Labovitz
- DIY spirit prompted migration of print fanzines on to the web
- subjects followed along similar genre headings as print counterparts
- music and science fiction remained common
- new subgenre of technology-inspired productions added to the list
- by 1992, evident a specialist e-zine community was emerging
- despite technological characteristics of new medium, Labovitz’s definition of e-zines showed they remain remarkably true to original form: ‘zines are generally produced by one person or a small group of people, done often for fun, and tend to be irreverent... they are not targeted towards a mass audience, and are generally not produced to make profit.’
- difference is in mode of distribution, ‘distributed partially or solely on electronic networks like the internet’ What’s an e-zine anyway?
- as technology moved forward, so did way in which zinesters used medium
Pixel Perfect
- ‘ISNT A ZINE JUST A PAPER BLOG? No way! Zines are totally different [not least] because they physical objects that exist and take up space IRL. You can’t hold your blog together with tape and staples; and you can’t hold you zine together with css and html.’ Secret Nerd Brigade
- what has the web brought to the fanzine concept?
- Chris Atton argues that the ‘e-zine appears less distinct, its culture more amorphous’
- Duncombe’s point is that the internet has made ‘communication too easy and that the deviant socialisation process of the underground might be lost as a consequence’
- many contemporary zines have both web and print presence
- yet intent of online mode does vary
- Librarian Jenna Freedman in online essay ‘Zines Are Not Blogs: A Not Unbiased Analysis’ suggest one shard aspect of blogs and print = MOTIVATION
- readily evident in act of blogging
- blog writing is diary like in tone
- brief descriptive entries regarding specific activity, observation or event that has happened in writer’s life
- template is predetermined for most sites
- relies on blogger writing a couple of paragraphs for each entry
- entries normally run in a linear sequence
- in reverse chronological order
- analogy with traditional print perzines is clear, though purists always defend design and materiality aspects of printed zine
- e-zine websites allow for greater flexibility to move in between texts
- immediacy inherent in technology e.g. updating entries, proving feedback
- comment boxes also provide and record dialogue between content and response or author and reader
- producers of printed fanzines, receiving feedback is much slower
- printed on irregular basis
- sociology of zine reading is altered
- ease and speed with which a blog can be accessed versus the old style method of sending off for something in the post
- DIFFERENT SORT OF CONNECTION BETWEEN READER AND PRODUCER NOW EXISTS
E-Dreamers versus Print Purists
- Matthew J. Smith ‘the potential for community, facilitated in publications like e-zines’
- e-zines have facilitated some of the best work in the field: but the death of print is evidently greatly exaggerated
Chapter Six - The Crafting of Contemporary Fanzines
- links between zine culture and craft culture, early 90s with emergence of riot grrrl scene
- knitting, crocheting, cross stitch, sewing = reclaimed as part of third wave feminism
- craft moved out of domestic sphere, more into public domain as form of hipster ‘creative expression’
Crafting Fanzines
- exploration of zines as graphic forms - way in which fanzines are intimate graphic objects, holding meaning through form and content but functioning to communicate
- zines = defined by materiality
- often visually chaotic and use scale to advantage, results in an object that can be unusually tactile
- intimacy derives from fact zines remain amateur, handmade productions operating outside mainstream publishing conventions and mass production processes
- the hand of individual producer or maker is evident in fanzine itself
- history of object is bound up not only with history of zines in general but also with history of individual maker
- 2000, tactility became a trop and was symbolised by increasing use of letterpress and screen printing
- production technologies have always been important to zine aesthetic, but this seemingly more sophisticate use of printing techniques had effect of slowing things down
- immediacy offered by cut and paste and photocopied zines replaced by intentional and time based acts of making
- as a result... traditional zine aesthetic shifted in the 2000s
- chaotic nature and visual intensity of photocopied pages started to disappear
- zines are now more clearly akin to handmade aesthetic of many small press artists books
- uncluttered design, handmade stock, unconventional forms of binding
- zines have started to appear as numbered limited additions
- nod to recognising the value of time and skills of producers
Crafting Alternative Communitie
- no surprise fanzines are part of growing alternative craft movement
- ‘shifting production back into hands of ordinary people’ Metcalfe
- contributing to lifestyle shift through the publishing of ‘how to’ zines
- zines writing about how to make zines and zines that provide lo-fi how to guides to making you own product or crafts
- main places zinesters go have continued to flourish
- zine festival, small press book and comic fairs, independent book stores
- alternative communities
- micro craft economy
- etsy
- at the same time, virtual networks and communities are also thriving and zines are morphing into new digital formats
- worth noting the shift in the use of terminology among zinesters
- appear to be moving away from favoured idea of networks to development of communities
- complex set of relationships around notion of communities
- difference is in intent: communities build upon a sense of belonging and shared discourse, whether personal or politically inspired
- communities foster relationships through participation
- authorial positions and voices
- active participants in a vibrant thriving zine scene
