[Yay for new blog, thank you Adam!]
I’ll start off with a quick one on a panel talk I attended last night at D&AD called The Art of Fanzine. The session was chaired by Professor of Graphic Design, Teal Triggs, an event organized in conjunction with the launch of her new book, Fanzines – which I think WSA is going to get some copies in soon – Yes! Just in time for when the new students get in. The panel she chose consisted of Alex Zamora (Feverzine), Cathy Lomax (Arty and Garageland), Neil Boorman (Bonfire of Brands, Shoreditch Twat) and Laura Oldfield Ford (Savage Messiah).
The place was jammed even though the booze wasn’t free – so speaks for a pretty stellar cast of zinemakers, who talked about how they started their zines (all nearly ten years ago), who they worked with and how they distributed them. Cathy described the overlaps between punk culture and the student arts scene in the early naughties. Laura’s zine of intricate byro illustrations, what she calls “a visual psycho-geography” was inspired by her work with the Royal College of Art and of her walks through Dalston when she moved there 15 years ago. Boorman started his satirical zine as a club promoter for 333 and said Shoreditch Twat was initially a “glorified club listings” with lots of humourous cultural piss-takes of his customers – the popularity of his satirical writing caught the attention of Channel 4 who later developed a tv series out of the zine. Zamora, who works with designer Simon Whybray, showed us how Feverzine grew its readership and networks through Myspace, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook.
All the speakers delivered an impassioned insight into the importance of ‘doing’ and of building communities, a formula that obviously works. Cathy and Laura are now successful publishers and artists in their own right have work at the ICA and the Tate while the current bios of Neil and Alex boast roles not only as journalists and writers, but also as brand and social media strategists.
Evidently, the distinctions are hard to draw; anyone interested in design, branding, advertising, writing, journalism, social media, art, youth culture should check out their work.
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