digital art
Part One: For this assignment, you will create a “fanzine” – an amateur fan magazine dedicated to some interest, hobby, cause, or activity which you enjoy or are especially dedicated to. You will need to take the creation of your zine from concept to finished product, conceiving, planning, designing, writing, drawing, employing photos or clip art, and folding/stitching/stapling/pasting or whatever to complete the zine. While you may wish to use the topic about which you wrote in your in-class writing exercise, your zine can be about anything.
The finished zine should be 6-8 pages in length and contain approximately 250-300 words of written text. It should include visual depictions (drawings, photos, pasted images, doodles, decorations, etc.). Layout, words, design, colors, and materials are all up to you – use whatever you need or want to make your zine unique.
Part Two: The second part of this project will be an accompanying paper, in which you discuss the reasoning behind the decisions you made in putting your zine together. You might, in this paper, explain why you chose the topic you did, or what you meant by your choice of images. You might address your concept of the ideal reader for your zine, or the relationship between the words and images you’ve chosen. You may wish to explain what you feel was the most creative aspect of your zine, or what you would revise if you had the opportunity. The written portion of this project will allow you to explain the rationale for the many decisions you made as you created your zine.
The rationale should be 3-4 pages in length. The audience for your zine is your classmates, as well as at least one unknown stranger whom you imagine to be your ideal reader. The audience for your rationale paper is your instructor.
In the tradition of zine making, you would typically make your original zine, then photocopy it for others and leave it in strategic locations for others to pick up and read: the library, the bus stop, a social gathering area, a concert venue, a music store, etc.