Task C

Task C:

RESPONSE:

My response to the book was a really positive one. The content was something that I cared about a lot when I was younger and has been something that has been fading for years, that is to say that I was very politically active from my mid teens to my early twenties and was regularly at protests or singing anti capitalist songs, but have found myself out of the loop in recent years. This book helped me reconnect with positive actions, direct action and feeling more positive and motivated about positive political change.

The book is all about politics and positive successful political actions that have happened over the last 50 years, what they changed and how they did it. I found it very inspiring and wanted to continue down the political route. The book was first published in 2004 with a revision in 2015. A lot had happened both from when the first publication was released (something that is acknowledged in the book) and even its second revision with added forward and afterward by the author. I wanted to make something that was more up to date and focussed on the political actions that had been happening in the recent past. With so much to choose from it was easy to find material. I also thought this would suit a zine format as they are more “of the moment” and new issues can be released more frequently then an entire book.

I wanted the zine to be informative as well as inspiring and give people an opportunity to find out more and get involved if they wanted to. RESEARCH:

Most of the zines that I have at home are either political or they are about punk / heavy music. I have a lot of zines about political actions, ideologies and theories, many of them are very instructional and give a brief but good insight into political movements or strategies. These can be very type heavy with little to no imagery. Along side those I have plenty of zines on bands or small comic books made as zines, these are much more creative with photos or illustrations. Both gave me a great basis for layout and content.

I did a lot of internet research on news stories regarding voting by the government, I also researched the topics that I wanted to include such as gay marriage.

APPROACH:

Many zines are black and white due to keeping reproduction costs down, however the brief asked for colour, so I want to use this as an opportunity to create the zine in a slightly more editorial magazine way. Short articles, bits of information, or personal stories accompanied by illustrations and perhaps a link to find out more information.

I want the zine to be a personal, honest response to politics and the current political issues that I care about.

A selection of zines from my collection that I took reference from during my research.

PROCESS:

First of all I thought about which positive political actions and changes that I wanted to include in the zine. I wanted to include the Black Lives Matter protests and have something about the toppling of the Colston Statue and the fundraiser print I had released earlier in the year. I also wanted to reference some positive things that I had come across while living in Australia. Finally I wanted to talk about some negative things that have been highlighted this year, the things that show that we still have a lot more to do.

Once I had each story researched and selected I then created an illustration that fit with each one or chose an illustration that I had already been working on over the summer that matched the copy. I worked on each article and went through rounds of revisions to edit and change what I had written or what image was selected or made for each article.

Between each article I wanted to include a quote from the book that I felt summed up the content of the next article succinctly, this was done as a nod to the book that inspired the zine but also as a break from the larger articles. I wanted to give the quotes maximum space so that they were the only focus on the page.

For the name and cover, there was a sentence in Solnit’s book that really resonated with me, that the “world is divided between false hope and gratuitous despair”. We are either promised things that are very unlikely to happen or we watch the world miserably from the side lines. I chose the title ‘Option C’ as a way to suggest that there are more ways to view the world and more importantly, change it. The cover image has ‘Gratuitous Despair’ on the left as it is seen as a Left Wing trait and ‘False Hope’ on the right as it is used frequently by the government. The illustration of me is looking at ‘Gratuitous Despair’ both because I am Left Wing in my politics and also it was how I viewed the world and politics at that time.

Examples of first spreads

After having a review with my tutor, I was asked to look at creating more space so that the text wasn’t so dense, I was also asked to look at grunging up the publication as it was going to be online only and wouldn’t get the benefit of texture from the paper stock.

I also did some more research about typefaces and pairings and wanted to create more impact with type and colour.

FINAL OUTCOME: https://issuu.com/nathfiction/docs/option_c_-_issuu_web