GD Illustration Zine - Update

The Illustration zine which i was planning to design and publish has had a lot of positive feedback and interest with 7 people submitting work for it and many others that wanted to.

I've not managed to meet my personal deadline which was to have the zine printed and ready to hand out before the Christmas break because I ran into some trouble printing. Below are a series of miss-prints that I have documented to show errors in my work.

Open publication - Free publishing - More illustration

This first print came out wrong because the pages that were meant to be facing each other on A3 sheets, were instead printed double sided on separate A4 sheets.

Open publication - Free publishing - More illustration

This second print is in the right order however it was still printed on single A4 sheets then stapled together at the spine which isn't what I designed the zine to be like. It's forced some of the pages to be too close together distorting some of the illustrations.

Open publication - Free publishing - More illustration

The third print out came out even worse as there wasn't a multiple of 4 pages to print. The result was that some pages were printed in odd places and rotated so that they were upside down.

Open publication - Free publishing - More illustration

The final print that I tried was in the correct order and had the right amount of pages to print properly. However it is still a miss print as the document setup is slightly wrong. I need no to go back and change the document size and adjust some of the content so that it wont be cut off once guillotined.

This is a good thing that these books have come out wrong as it shows I have made some mistakes which I need to address. This is one of the major learning outcomes i was hoping to get by setting myself this task.

From here I am going to:-

- rectify these mistakes

- document what went wrong and how to amend the mistakes for future reference

- reprint and publish on a better stock

- redesign/finish the design and layout of the zine

- propose the second volume of the zine

GD Illustration Zine.

I've had an idea for a an extra curricular side project that will give the students on the course a chance to do something illustrative and completely raw. The purpose behind this is to give people a break from having a structure to their design work and being completely free in their creativity.

The form of this project is a short run fan zine which I will print myself in my own time on cheap newsprint, I'm going to plan out some specifications to make it easier for me to create the zine and not have it impact on my other briefs.

The has already been forwarded to the 2nd years and if there its enough interest then I will put it forward to the 1st and 3rd years as well.

The deadline I've set my self for this task is the week before we break up for the Christmas period.

Specifications.

- Has to be illustrated - this could be hand rendered or created digitally

- the work submitted can be either a singular piece or a series of illustrations

- it has to fit on an A4 sheet so if its bigger it will need to be photographed - if vectored and created digitally this wont be a problem but will need to be submitted as a file

- for display options, you may want to photograph parts of your work up close and then have the full illustration as well, Its up to you.

- additional information about yourself and the design can be included as well e.g. name of designer/ name of piece/ inspiration behind it

- for now the artwork must be black and whit due to a lack of funding for printing. Remember you can use tints and opacity to help get around this if your feeling limited

The above will be sent out to all the 2nd years so they can produce something suitable for this project. I myself will also be contributing to the zine to get it going.

Other specifications.

- Simple type cover

- layout very simple, lots of even blank space.

- printed onto cheap newsprint 

- printed in my own time in the mac suite

- use Indesign!

- create a Facebook page for the idea to help put word out to the students.

Considerations for extension.

Using the Facebook group to invite other courses to get involved and submit work.

- invite the other years to be a part

- run more editions with new illustrations with different themes

This all depends on the success of the idea and the contribution of the other students, I don't want to be asking too much of them or myself as we have a lot of other commitments but I want to try this and see what comes of it. Ultimately its a really good opportunity to work with Indesign and practice my software skills which are somewhat lacking.

SWAP SHOP - first meeting

During the form rep meeting today we discussed with Amber and the first year reps a plan for a cross course swap shop. The general idea being that everyone and anyone in the college from all disciplines and come along and hand in some work, whether is printed or digital, 2D or 3D and in return can get someone else's work to keep.

We feel that this would be a good way for people to see what the other courses are doing and also it's a great opportunity for people to get their names out and show off. The work could be course related, personal, or even just a side project that someone has done. Maybe even a little doodle that they touched up and developed for fun.

To begin with we talked about how we thought people would react to this and some issues came up...

- quality of the work being swapped

It was agreed that the work needs to be on a like for like basis or equivalent for example 2 sheets of A2 for a sheet of A1

- how will it be run?

It would be run by either first or second years or both. Whoever has the time and would like to take part will determine this.

- when would it be held?

We suggested two dates 2nd and 9th of December but Amber directed us towards the 2nd as the 9th would conflict with other arrangements for both years.

- where would be best to do it?

The original scope was to have it in the Mosaic Cafe over a lunch period or for an afternoon on a friday or wednesday when someone from each year group would be available to run it. But as its a fresh idea with no budget we decided to keep it small and low key to test it out.

So the swap shop will be held in studio 4 instead and will be on the 2nd of December which is a Friday between 11:30am and 2:00pm

- design float?

We figured that we would need a design float to get the shop going so we plan to put a notice up on the VLE and the registration board to notify everyone on all three years that we are looking for donations towards the shop to kick start it. This should go down well as its a nice opportunity for people to do some raw creative designs and illustrations without any major restrictions.

- advertising the shop?

As the shop is only going to be a test run this time and its based internally at the moment there wont be any need to print of a mass amount of posters to put around college. It would need between 5 and 10 A4/A3 posters printed digitally with the basic information about where it will be held and when and the purpose for the shop existence. 

- guidelines/format?

Even with a like for like system of swapping there is still an issue of people coming with things that might not be able to match up, so we discussed how we could go about setting some loose guidelines to what people should bring...

- printed media only

- no bigger than A1

- no smaller than A3

- can be trimmed down

- primarily looking for posters.

These guidelines will hopefully make people produce work that we wont have an issue with swapping so they are free to choose what the want in return without objection.

- artist recognition?

This is something that is crucial the to swap shops purpose, which is to get people known and share work and details. Each person that donates work the the shop or comes and makes an exchange will be asked to fill out a small registration card with details such as...

- artist/designers name

- name of piece

- year group (maybe)

- email or web adress

- professional interests (maybe)

This would then be attached to their design with a paper clip or something similar so people can see who has done what even if they don't swap their work with those pieces.