Making Zines! Tactics and Techniques

Zine, is a shortened form of the word magazine, and it usually refers to an independently published booklet. A zine could be a fanzine, made by fans or a perzine, about a very personal subject. It might be about some kind of personal obsession or a collective work, of poetry, prose, pictures and photos. Zinesters make their own publications about subjects the mainstream press ignore. For the mainstream press is subject to the whims and big budgets of big brands advertising in their pages.

However the Do it yourself movement relishes the imperfect and the downright cheap and cheerful. A zine could be a Do It Yourself comic with wonky line drawings, or made by cutting up mainstream magazines to collage illustrations.

First I'm going to talk about Cut ups and collages! The act of cutting up and collaging images is so important to the DIY printing and publishing community because by rearranging images and texts, the original's message can be questioned and mocked. For many artists the act of collage is not just a technique, but a tactic in challenging establishment values.

In France, about 1907, the artists Braque and Picasso, made collaged paintings by incorporating pieces of newspaper, but also pieces of wood into their cubist paintings. The painters wanted to create 3 dimensional effect on largely flat paintings. The still life and figure paintings appear to be disjointed as if painted from shifting viewpoints. Their technique emphasizes how we might each read a painting from a different situation and intellectual viewpoint.

Pablo Picasso

Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper

In Germany, between the wars, a very political art movement Dada utilised an absurdist cut up method in art and poetry. Both artists Hannah Hoch and John Heartfield (who anglicised his name disgusted by rise of the Nazi party) were associated with the Dada Movement.

By cutting up and remaking figures, Hoch's artwork 'Flight’ challenges our expectations of the Normal by presenting us with a human faced bird in flight and a defaced childlike figure. In ‘Adolf the superman: swallows gold and spouts junk’, Heartfield has created a political photomontage, with a heartless Hitler who has had his heart replaced by a swastika. The image of the dictator x-rayed, reveals a pile of coins, suggesting he wants for power to gain vast wealth. Heartfield's image is a direct critique of the contemporaneous political scene, but this kind of powerful imagery doesn't look old fashioned because artists and designers are still influenced by this cut up method.

Hannah Hoch

Flight (1931)

John Heartfield

adolf the superman: swallows gold and spouts junk. (1932).

A group of European artists under the umbrella name of the ‘Situationist International’, theorised the subverting of images/events and experiences by dismantling and remaking. These methods they called ‘detournement’. Often remaking photo or comic illustrations to further their political posturing. They claimed to have been the source for provocative street graffiti slogans during the Paris revolution in 1968. Translated these slogans seem to be utopian, and read as 'never work’ or ‘beneath the streets the beach’.

Guy Debord liked to think of himself as the group’s leader, as he kept expelling members. Debord focused on drinking and writing about the importance of imagery in society. By borrowing ideas from philosophers he wrote about dictatorship of appearance and images, in his influential book ‘the society of the spectacle’.

In the Late 1970s the 'Situationist International’ artwork and ideas influenced the punk movement in Britain, particularly the arch manipulator Malcolm Mclaren who managed the band the Sex Pistols. Artist Jamie Reid made collages to promote the band, later inventing the comic book legend Tank girl and working with the super-group Gorillaz. The cut up method of film making, favoured by the Situationists, was also used for the Sex Pistols film, ‘The Great Rock and Roll Swindle’.

In the eighties, the cold war had many of us of the edge of our seats awaiting a major nuclear disaster. In the overtly political poster ‘never again’, Peter Kennard combines a mushroom cloud with a skeleton to emphasize how nuclear bombings can only bring death. Later Kennard teamed up with Cat Philips as Kennard Philips to make photomontages. Their art moved onto the streets as this large scale artwork about immigration is pasted on an outside wall so as to be viewed by any passerby.

Peter Kennard Never Again (1983).

Making it Up!

Every zinester loves a collage. modern zines emerge from the counterculture movements of the late fifties/ sixties and seventies, and the availability of cheap and easy printing with the invention of  photocopier (also known as xerox machine). Photocopying was so much cheaper that printing photographs, and allowed for the ‘appropriation’ of mainstream media, books, comics, adverts all ready to be collaged.

 

Reimagining and remaking was particularly important for feminists keen to challenge a system that has women running around looking after men. By adapting advertisements and newspaper articles the young women's collective who wrote for the independently published ‘shocking pink’ zine /magazine, took full advantage of collaging techniques. The collective embraced the DIY movement, Brixton squat scene and alternative lifestyles in the eighties.

The Riot grrrl music of the early nineties emerged alongside the arrival of alternative rock bands like ‘Nirvana’. The Riot grrrl scene was a grunged up feminism, popularised by Courtney Love and her band ‘Hole’. Bands such as bikini kill made Zines, and discovered ‘girlpower’ before girlpower was brought into the mainstream by the Spice Girls.

The Pamphleteers!

However DIY publishing has a much longer history, if we consider the writings of the ‘Pamphleteers’. The university educated journalists Addison and Steele setup the pamphlets ‘The Tatler’ and later ‘The Spectator’, both containing essays on clothing, manners, theatre reviews as well as politics, that greatly influenced Tom Paine who was taken by London's coffee house culture.

The coffee houses were less rowdy than the public houses, and offered a place to debate politics and controversial ideas such as republicanism.The coffee houses were also known as the ‘penny universities’ as a penny would buy admission and a bowl of coffee, a place to read the latest pamphlets and hear gossip. All classes of men might mix in the coffee house as they were segregated by trade instead.

Tom Paine was trained as a corsetier by his father in Thetford in poor rural Norfolk. However as a young man he arrived in London. He is known for writing the pamphlets, ‘The Rights of Man’, as well as ‘Common Sense’ in 1776 which looked into the unfair treatment by the British of its colonies. His anti establishment views on religion, the monarchy, and Landowners meant that he did publish the pamphlets himself. He was keen for his words to be read so he kept reprinting his pamphlets to make them as cheap as possible for the widest readership.

However the popularity of his writings did have repercussions. The publication of ‘Common Sense’ was written after Paine visited America, where he is celebrated, because his work was influential to the American Revolution. Unlike in the UK where Tom Paine is almost forgotten, for his reputation is of one of a ‘traitor’ to the English Elite.

Print!

In the past most zines were printed by small independent presses or just photocopied, now many are home printed, or if they are something special then riso printed! I have been lucky enough to prepare and make Riso prints at Rabbits Road Press in East London. Riso printers look a lot like photocopiers, and are as quick to use especially for high volume printing. Yet wonderfully fluorescent pinks, yellow, oranges and reds might be mixed with teal, purples, blues and black inks. A master copy of the original in black and white will print the blacks In your chosen colour. The original is scanned and the image imprinted onto a drum and a second copy can be scanned and the image imprinted onto a darker inked drum. The machine can be programmed like a photocopier, and with the press of a button many printed sheets rapidly fly out.

The tactics and techniques of collage, and the mixing up of politics and pop culture in amusing ways can be utilized by any zine maker. Technological advances have brought cheap printing methods for pamphleteers and zinesters alike. The popularity of contemporary zine making enables many independently minded zinesters to have their voices heard. By making zines and Doing it Yourself means claiming the right and autonomy to voice an opinion. To voice ideas that have just as much validity as traditional or establishment viewpoints. I'm not suggesting following Tom Paine’s example. However, the message made by the making and methods by which Zines are created, allows the zinester to write something new and not written elsewhere.