Their story, in their words….
For several years I have wanted to make a zine. I have thought about it a lot but have never managed to put the time into making one nor had the funds for printing. A zine is a small, self published magazine and can contain anything from biographies to artwork.
When I started this project at the beginning of the summer my idea was completely different to the final piece I have made. I originally planned on making a mixed media zine around the theme of “People” , each page consisting of a black and white collage.
One of the outcomes I wanted from this project was to get back into drawing and painting. It was quite a struggle getting started but I soon re-discovered what I used to love about painting. The pieces I made were pen and watercolour portraits of fictional people. Although I did not end up using them in my final zine this was a big stage in the project for me and who knows, they might lead on to another project in the future.
I also wanted to learn how to do film photography. I had never used a film camera before so this was a very new experience. I used online resources to learn about F Stops, ISO, which film to buy, how to load the film into the camera and so on.
I went on several shoots around London with my digital camera trying to capture all the wonderful people going about their lives in our great city. On one of these shoots I went to central London, around the Piccadilly Circus area, and asked strangers if I could take their portrait. Surprisingly most people I asked said yes which was encouraging. These close up shots were very different from the more distanced photographs as they required me to make sure my subjects were comfortable in front of the camera. While directing them I tried to talk to them to make them feel more at ease. Some of them also gave me their contact information so I had to learn how to send large batches of photos through wetransfer. Up until this point I had had a lot of difficulty with getting my photos off of my camera altogether so this was quite a breakthrough.
The editing process was really tough. I made a long list of all the pieces I wanted to include and at this stage decided that I wanted the zine to be in colour and to have a cleaner finish, rather than collage. Because the images I had taken with the film camera were on black and white film, sadly they did not make it past this stage either. I did not have access to a computer with photoshop or indesign so I had to research alternatives. In the end I decided to use an app called Canva, this turned out to be slow and irritating but it allowed me to get the job done. Choosing the layout and order of the photographs took time and decisiveness.
I looked into copyright laws in the UK and found out about how to properly credit my finished zine.
My plan was to get the zine printed at my local printers so I could talk directly to them about my project and feel the paper and check the quality of the prints. However, their quote was too expensive so I went on a rapid search for London print shops that would be cheaper. I was unsuccessful so I turned to looking online for out of London companies. These were cheaper but I had no way of knowing for sure if the quality would be good. In the end I chose
a company called Book Printing UK.
I am really looking forward to my zines arriving. I learnt so much doing this project it has been a journey.
