Browse the American based Smithsonian Libraries’ Artist Book archive to identify books that you find interesting or questions the notion of the book in some way.
https://library.si.edu/collection/artists-books
Explore fanzines in more depth by reading Teal Trigg’s chapter Definitions and early days (pages 6–43) from her book Fanzines: A do-it-yourself revolution (2010).
This chapter is available as a course resource on the student site.
Document visual examples of work you find interesting with annotations in your learning log. You’ll be using some of this research in your first assignment.
OCA Book Design 1: Creative Book Design
Artists’ Books
I started my research at the link given in the research task. I found this collection interesting, though hard to navigate at first. Once I got my head around how to use the library I found the following artist books really interesting:
I really liked how this book seems to break away from the traditional book format. The black and white is really striking and is a nice way to bring out the dark side of the classic fairytale. I seen a TED talk by Virginia Flynn, her papercutting technique is quite interesting.
I also really liked French fries : a new play By Dennis Bernstein, Warren Lehrer. Purchase, NY: Ear/Say, 1984. I liked how this book uses such a mundane topic but manages to create something that is interesting to look at. I think sometimes we are blind to the great graphic design around us and I like how this book shows off something that became so ingrained in popular culture that we don’t really think about it anymore and showcases it in an interesting way. This book reminds me of the work of Warhol.
This book is very inspiring. I love how the artist has pushed the boundaries of what can be considered a book. It must have taken quite a while to create something so elaborate. I love the attention to detail. No surprise that this book is truly exclusive with only 25 copies ever released.
Fanzines
The research task asked me to read a section of Teal Trigg’s Fanzines: the DIY revolution, but unfortunately at the time of writing the old student site that had the resources was inaccessible so I had to buy the book. I will need to wait a couple days before I can carry on with my research, but in the meanwhile I wanted to find some examples online of some fanzines.
During my online research I found out about some gaming zines that are popular in Japan. These are considered part of Doujin which is a word for fan-made merchandise and is extremely popular in japan. I found this article super interesting.
About a day later, I have been pointed in the right direction for the resource that this task was asking me to read so I was able to carry on with my research.
After reading the excerpt from the book mentioned above, I wanted to see if there are any fanzines that are published within my interests.
Route One
This Pokemon themed zine was published to raise some money for a children’s charity. It was published in both digital and printed formats as well as a blog. It is a collection of art by different artists celebrating starter Pokemon. Not sure if this would strictly qualify to be a zine; as far as I can tell there are no written content in it only pictures that were created by various artists. More about this publication can be found here: https://twitter.com/routeonezine?lang=en
FINAL FORM: Galar Edition
This fun Zine was created around speculations of what the final evolutions of the new Galar starters will look like. I really enjoyed looking at the available pictures as I think this marks a very exciting time just before the new Pokemon games launched late 2019. I really like how this was made into a zine and now it is funny to look at how the speculations compare to what was actually released.
Pokemon Variants Fanzine
I absolutely adore what I could see from this fanzine. It looks so nicely made and great to look at. It is basically some other forms created for original Pokemon. I have actually ordered this as I was really interested to see all of it. I was surprised with how nice this was. I really loved the illustrations and the hand drawn quality of the zine that harkened back to some field notes with their messy look.
Finding these zines made me very excited about the prospect of creating my own. They are a great form of self expression and are very cool as graphical objects to own to showcase one’s fandom.
I am looking forward to creating my own zine in a future exercise.
Sources:
- https://www.si.edu/spotlight/artists-books
- https://siris-libraries.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?term=39088015314677&index=BC
- http://siris-libraries.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?term=39088013951017&index=BC
- https://www.si.edu/object/siris_sil_1019895?height=85%25&iframe=true&destination=spotlight/artists-books
- https://www.wired.com/2012/12/japan-gaming-doujin/
- https://twitter.com/mixamprint/status/1201531002440564736?s=20
- https://twitter.com/RouteOneZine
Graphic Design 