Process and Production Lesson - Zine

In this process and production lesson, we were learning about Zines and how to create them. I found that this lesson was really interesting because I found that a Zine could be quite useful to me, as I could consider using this for my own studio project. This is because I have been thinking about what format and publication I want to print my design onto, whether this is a Zine, Posters or Postcard I thought that the Zine was a really nice idea because it is created when using just one piece of paper. It is like a booklet, but it only uses one sheet of paper.

What Is A Zine?

A zine is a magazine and self published piece of work. 

After this we were shown different examples of a Zine. I found that this was very interesting because I noticed that a Zine could be used in several different and creative ways to display your work. We then moved onto creating the Zine itself, that we were going to work with within this process and production lesson. I found that the Zine was quite easy to create, however at one part of the process, I got confused as I wasn't sure how to fold the Zine into a certain point.

We were then given several different words that would could work with for our zine. I decided that to start off with the words that we were given and then think about other words of my own, which I could produce for my Zine. I thought that this would be a great starting point for this process and production lesson, as I wasn't too sure about it at first. Although after a while I kind of got into it and enjoyed the lesson overall. This was because I allowed me to think about and learn new skills that I can develop in the future, the words that we were given were Off, Refresh, Like, Dreams, Emotions, Live, Minimise and Share.

The first word that I decided to look at was Off, I found that this word was quite hard to think about because I didn't want to make my design too original, as I wanted it to be different but still connect to the word well. I thought about this for a long time and came to a decision that a light bulb would work well, as you have to switch off the light when you leave a room or your want to go to sleep. I thought that this was a nice idea. 

The next word that I decided to look at was Refresh, for this design I decided to draw the symbol of that is usually displayed on the screen when you refresh a page until it reloads. I thought that this design was very nice and quite a creative design that I had come up with. I then looked at the word Like, I thought that this word was one of my favourite as I came up with a idea and design for this straight away. I decided to try change the design and make the design very realistic compared the like button that you see on social media, for example Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr. In addition to this I found that the designs that I had created for this was really nice.

The next word that I looked at was Dreams. I decided to look at this word because I wanted to make it a lot different as I noticed that the other people in our class were creating clouds for this design as it you think of clouds when you think about the word Dreams. However the idea that I thought about straight away was a Dream catcher, I thought that this was slightly different but still connected with the word that I wanted to design for. I then looked at Emotion and decided to draw out my favourite emoji that I always use when texting my friends, which is the laughing face emoji. I was quite happy with how these designs turned out in the end. 

I then moved onto the word Live, I thought that this was quite an easy word that I could work with because I had several ideas for this design, where I thought about drawing out a heart. However I decided to go with the House as it is a home that people live in with the loved ones or friends. The next word that I chose to look at was Minimise, I found that this word was quite hard to design about because I couldn't think of any ideas that I could create for this page. After this I had to think about how I could create a design for this word, I decided to write the word on the page and draw out an arrow as you use an arrow to minimise and maximise the screen.  

The final word that I looked at for my Zine was the word Share. For this word I decided to take inspiration from the Facebook symbol that is used for the share button. I thought that this design was simple and related well with the word that I wanted to create a design for. To make my design slightly different, I decided to add the word share and morph it into the shape of the arrow and Facebook Share Symbol. 

This was final design of my Zine that I had created in the process and production lesson, I found that this lesson was quite interesting and fun. As I got to learn about different things in this lesson, to improve this design even further in the future I am going to think about my own words that I want to use a create a Zine for them.