A0 Poster

This is the A0 poster we have made for our pitch tomorrow. We’ve attempted to make it very imposing and powerful as an image, showing off our logo. We’ve also included the name of our group in morse code for readers to decipher themselves. The intention is for the poster to look like it could be used as part of a revolutionary movement.

Logo

Lee and I have been developing ideas for a logo tonight and have come up with this design for a starting point.

We were looking at powerful imagery with significant meanings and created this. The black star is commonly used to symbolise socialist causes. The five points of the star equate to the five fingers of a workers hand and the five continents in the world, bringing everybody in the world together under the banner of equality. Our logo is intended to show those points, symbolising the people in our movement, being touched by – or coming together towards – a point in the middle, meant to symbolise our magazine and our movement.

Black Market Manifesto

Following our rethink this week, we’ve received feedback on our new thoughts and have developed a manifesto for what we want our magazine to become. Here’s what we want to do:

• Shine a spotlight on issues that aren’t talked about in the mainstream media.
• Create serious content to comment on real world problems, surrounding us today.
• Create a forum for the disenfranchised to express their real opinions on controversial topics – anonymously, if they wish to – creating a feeling of solidarity amongst contributors.
• Hold regular workshop sessions inviting contributors to create work for our magazine on a different topic for each issue.

We’re going to host a workshop before the exhibition sometime in May, so that we can generate content for the magazine. The workshop will probably be open just to people around university at first, as it will be easier to market for the first issue. I’m going to start researching venues that we could hire for our event. We’re going to look at making encrypted or enigmatic invitations to the workshop in order to get people interested. Our best idea so far is to create a letter with a secret message in it. We also need to start looking at creating a logo for the magazine.

The Poundshop

Sara Melin came to uni to give a talk about her work with The Poundshop this week. The Poundshop is a vehicle to make art and design accessible to a wider audience. The idea is that artists and designers submit content to The Poundshop that is put on sale in a pop up store/exhibition in order to spread their designs to the masses and to create a reputation for the designers themselves.

The PoundShop hosts regular pop up events around the country (and has recently gone international) selling design work from prints to nick knacks, celebrating the best of kitsch. The shop displays are works of art in themselves, displaying bright colours.

Back To The Drawing Board

Following our pitch on 19th, we got together to brainstorm directions we could take our project. The solution we have come up with is to create something inspired by the black market. We want to create a serious publication about serious issues, and the black market as a theme or an aesthetic is a strong starting point.

We want to look at controversial topics, topics that aren’t covered in the mainstream media. We just need a specific talking point. We don’t want to look exclusively at topics like drug and gang crime, as the theme would suggest, because they’re already talked about. There’s already a spotlight on those issues. So we’re looking at finding some topics that aren’t covered anywhere right now.

For an aesthetic to our magazine, we could either look at creating something that looks very lo-fi to shoot for an underground look, or we take inspiration from other media that has been banned in the past. I personally like the thought of something very minimal and lo-fi for this project. Something that could be quite inconspicuous. We’ve talked in the group today about using symbolism, riddles, and encryption as part of this aesthetic.

Taking something from our idea to have a free speech magazine, we’re thinking about having a system where we could have a publication with content created by readers, and to publish anything people have to say about our topic. We could look at creating underground events to create this content. These events could also potentially be good word of mouth marketing, and could be used as part of our kickstarter video for the project.

First Group Presentation

Today we had our first presentation as a group of our initial three ideas. We went into the pitch confident, but left licking our wounds and wondering what to do next. None of our ideas were received as very strong interpretations of our theme, or as workable projects.

On the city wide art magazine, the feedback we received was that it would be hard to sell this magazine, as it was printed where it could already be read so people may be reluctant to purchase a physical copy.

The feedback we received on the second idea  – the free speech magazine – was that it was too comical to be a serious magazine that offered a free speech platform. I don’t think that the tutors saw the idea we saw it, and felt that we weren’t taking the idea very seriously. But the fact that they saw it that way made me think that it couldn’t be taken seriously by its audience.

The portfolio magazine idea was fairly well received, but we failed to realise that there are already professional applications of this idea that work well.

After this initial pitch, we have decided to go back and rethink the way we have interpreted our word, to see if we can create something that responds more to our theme.

Le Gun Talk

Last year, I saw Neal Fox talk at the Owt Discourse at Band on the Wall and loved the talk so much that I came to see him talk again at uni. This year he came with collaborator Robert Rubbish, to talk about their work with the Le Gun collective. The talk began as an introduction to Neal, Robert, and their influences – From Robert Crumb to Linda Mulvey – and then went on to Le Gun itself.

Le Gun is an art collective formed in 2004 at the London Royal College of Art. The main aim of the collective was to create a high quality art magazine that reflects their work as individuals and as a group, as well as to homage their many influences.  The funding initiative for the first magazine came in the form of themed student parties held by the group in their university housing. Using this money, they launched their first issue to moderate success. The collective then went on to create acclaimed art installations in galleries across Europe, creating three new issues of the magazine in the meantime. Le Gun’s collaborative work combines pop culture, urban legend, punk, psychedelia, and the occult.

In 2011, they ran an exhibition in Paris based on The Black Squid group – a fictional group of surrealist painters that broke off from the mainstream in their age, due to their disagreement of the surrealist use of colour. The group believed that dreams were always in black and white, and that the exclusive use of these colours in art would turn life into a dreamscape. They claimed to have simultaneously received a vision from a black squid who imparted this manifesto. The exhibition marks their final night, documenting their final banquet and their lifes work in gallery. The Black Squid exhibition is a self referential religious experience by Le Gun. A caricature of themselves as a group and the way they see the world around them, the way they believe others see them. I love the work they did on this project, and the humour they introduced to it.

Word Briefing

Today we were given our one word phrase or theme and discussed potential ideas for our magazine as a group. Our word is ‘trade’.

In preparation for the presentation of our first ideas, we have come up with three different ideas relating to our word.

1. The first idea is to create a magazine about local artworks, businesses, and hidden gems that would be printed around the city. The magazine would be printed on walls and inside businesses around Manchester to encourage people to seek out other pages and enjoy a new perspective on the city, that they would otherwise have never known. Each issue of the magazine would cover a different city, and we would look at creating a physical issue of the magazine to be sold in single pages at the locations of the places featured. These single pages could be traded to create the full magazine or collected in full by seeking out other large print pages of the magazine.
2. The second idea is to create a magazine designed to encourage free thought and the trade of information/opinions/ideas. We want to create a magazine that would print literally anything that a contributor submits. We’re hoping that this format would create a balance between the comical and the serious, the offensive and the family friendly. We’re hoping to have a diverse collection of art, design, writing, and photography that keeps the audience interested. The most important part of this idea is to create a magazine free of any censorship or mediation.
3. The third idea we have is to create a magazine of portfolios designed to give new and emerging artists and designers a platform to market themselves to a wide audience. The magazine would come as singular pages in a box that could be taken out, and compared or put on display featuring artwork of featured artists. The magazine would be available in arts shops but would primarily be used to send to large companies as an advertisement for recruitment purposes.

Overall I would say that I’m feeling confident about our initial ideas before our pitch with Sue on Thursday.

Pecha Kucha Presentation

We have been asked to make a Pecha Kucha presentation, using some examples of interesting magazine ideas or layouts. These are some of the examples that I featured in my presentation.

This is Modern Drunkard Magazine. Modern Drunkard is a tongue in cheek magazine dedicated to people who are unashamedly alcoholic and features articles such as how to avoid being caught out on your hangover at work. The magazine is designed to look like a 1950s mens’ adventure magazine. The magazine prints sporadically. I like the humour and style of the magazine.

This is Found Magazine. Found is a collection of funny letters, notes, lists, etc. collected by the editor or contributors. I love the concept of the magazine.

This is Lemon Magazine. Lemon Magazine is an annual pop culture magazine, influenced by 60s and 70s culture, featuring specially commissioned art, design, and photography. I love the aesthetic of this magazine.

   This is The Miserablist Magazine. This magazine started as a student project, and is aimed to cater to the pessimists and cynics of our society. With articles such as ‘Sex is Rubbish’, ‘I Hate Festivals’ and ‘Crap Buildings’, this magazine derisively funny and original.

This is The Matilda Ziegler Magazine For The Blind. The concept is to create a source of news and entertainment for those who cannot see. The Ziegler Magazine comes in a wide range of formats including braille printed and audio book. The magazine stretches back to 1907, and although it is designed for the blind I really love the stripped down aesthetic of it.

This is POSTR Magazine. POSTR is a free magazine available in mainland Europe, printed in A1. The magazine is mainly a news source and is designed to be pasted on walls. The magazine is folded up and distributed to bars, cafes, and shops throughout mainland europe.

This is Anorak Magazine. Anorak is a magazine created to challenge the uncreative magazines aimed at children between 6+. I love the colours the magazine uses and the illustrations it features.

This is Fire and Knives. Fire and Knives is a quarterly food magazine that has a very muted look. I think Fire and Knives comes across as a mature magazine with high production values that cooking enthusiasts would really enjoy keeping, rather than throwing away like other magazines.

This is a Thai magazine that is designed to use a very strict colour scheme. I don’t know what the magazine is about, but I really love the look it has.

This is Curio City, a pocket sized map magazine of London. The magazine is designed to give both tourists and locals alike a new perspective of London, with new things to do and to look at all across the city. Curio City is filled with urban legends, London talking points, secret places, and small facts. Each issue has a different theme, to keep things fresh, but all the maps are of London. Previous issues have looked at: Fictional London, London Dissected, Celestial London.

This is an illustrated map of a woman’s heart from the 19th Century, displaying ideals of womanhood and beauty of the time. Although it would be looked back upon as extremely sexist and inappropriate by today’s society, I really love the look of the illustration.

First Group Meet Up

Lee, Tom, and I met today to discuss working on the upcoming magazine project. Although we haven’t received our key word yet, we thought it would be beneficial to get together and talk about potential ideas, themes, and formats that could be explored in the project.

We want to create an interactive magazine, to make it more interesting for the reader and to keep their interest. Some of the ideas we came up with:

• Scroll magazine, that flows continuously and seamlessly from one story to another, as opposed to regular magazine.
• A magazine that would be displayed on a wall or a hallway, that could be walked through and read as if it were an art installation.
• Using Tom’s 3D expertise, we could potentially create some kind of conceptual 3D model magazine.
• We could create a magazine that is hidden and must be sought out (using riddles, geo-caching, etc.)

Of course, all of these ideas are just starting points, and are up in the air until we get our key word on Monday.