I don't get this at all but I'm trying my best

hey whats up

I'm still figuring out how to use this, quite confused honestly

but I'll get the hang of it

ARTIST INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:
Zine questions

1. What question/what theme did you use in your zine
2. What medium did you use to make your zine?
3. Did you print your zine, or did you make a digital file?
4. If you didn’t print it, why did you chose not to? What was it like just having it as a digital file?
5. If you did print it, how did you format it? Did you stick to the traditional zine format or did you differ?
6. Did you make a zine by yourself or with a collection of people?

ISAAC'S ANSWERS:

1. My project brief was to "design and disseminate a zine that documents the layers of time and/or place of the land or territory on which you currently reside." In other words, the theme was the land/city I live in.

2. I used regular paper and laserjet printing. For the content in the zine, I used photography, writing, and scanned ephemera.

3. I printed it and made a digital file.

4. N/A

5. I used the basic 8.5 x 11 paper folded in half, but trimmed a bit after it was stapled. My format was kind of unique though because it flipped upside down halfway through and also had a couple of extra add-ons stapled into it.

6. By myself, but for a class assignment.

CHARLIE'S ANSWERS:

1. My zine talked about queerness, in terms of sexuality and gender, and how queer communities function.

2. My zine was made digitally through illustrator, and used photographic elements throughout the work

3. My zine was made with the intention of being solely digital, but a few physical prints were made to see how a physical piece would look.

4. My main goal when creating my zine was accessibility. I wanted as many people from different places to be able to access it as possible, so making a digital copy that could be shared fast was ideal.

5. The test that I did print, I printed as separate pages and then tied together, in a non traditional binding method.


6.My zine was made by myself.

TYLAR'S ANSWERS:

1. I lean towards grounded human stories so I went with the theme of the emotional struggle of being a ‘woman’ and the outside pressure of ‘sexual freedom’ under the patriarchy and male gazes.

2. I went with digital because I wanted it to have a sense of disconnect and distance. In the future, I’d probably lean towards traditional but I think the type of story you want to explore influences the medium you use.

3. I printed it but had digital files for people who couldn’t afford a copy.

4. I did a 25-page PDF printed as a booklet. Then I folded, stapled and pressed them myself.

5. I’ve done both by myself and with people. I lean towards working just with myself as it’s a lot of work to curate bigger zines with multiple people. It was a super fun process when I did do it though.

ZINE PROCESS SO FAR:

GROUP PROJECT TASK:

U-HAUL price to move furniture is around 14.50 a day!
super cheap if we were to go with the outside living room project

This project has been so interesting for me, trying to describe my relationship with my followers is something I don't often do for fear of coming off as snobby or ungrateful. I've had so many opportunities because of my following because I have so much support for my art. I've had brand deals, I have a shop, I have a Patreon, and I get regular commissions. A lot of artists my age don't have that. I am able to support myself through my art. I'm only 21. I've been doing this since I was 13 years old, almost a decade of work to get to where I am, It wasn't luck, it's something I consistently put work into every day. I'll always be grateful, I'll always appreciate the love I get for my art.

That doesn't mean that there haven't been any negatives to posting my art online. I've had to take on loads of negative comments and unwanted criticism. I've had to deal with homophobic slurs and people telling me to kill myself since I was 14 years old. I've had to develop a thicker skin when it comes to my art, I've commercialized my art to such an extent that I've also started to sell myself as part of the product. That's why my zine is called persona. My persona "drizzledrawings" is a part of the art, it's a part of the package deal that my followers interact with. They know me as someone that doesn't completely exist. I made this person a form of self-defence. When people refer to me as my social media handle in real life it catches me off guard. She isn't really me and I always assume that everyone knows that. she's an extension of me, a little costume I put on. This all seems so dramatic but it's true.

Social media is my job, a full-time job, 24 hours a day. I'm always making content or planning content, I'm always thinking about what I have to do next. There are no breaks. Social media is nowhere near as demanding as a real job, as labour, but it sure is mentally taxing as an artist. Competing against robotic algorithms and art stealing and endless numbers is horrific.

I don't think I would be who I am without it though, I've spent so much time as this persona, it's like I have a whole other person inside of me. I need to keep them separate for my own sake but I often mix them up and they get fuzzy around the edges

Maybe one day there won't be any lines between us, and maybe one day I won't be online at all, I don't think so but it's an interesting line of thought.

This is all brain-to-paper thinking, I want to give this zine more context to my thinking. I want to give my perspective on social media and how it can be amazing and damaging all at once.

MY SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS

INSPIRATION AND TECHNIQUE:

ILLUSTRATION BY JOHNATHAN HUANG/GOOD GOOD GOOD

MIRK'S "YEAR OF ZINES" INCLUDES 100 OF HER 365 ZINE CREATIONS FROM 2019. PHOTO COURTESY OF SARAH MIRK

CITATIONS:

Baker, Kamrin. “14 Zine Artists & Curators Making the World A Better Place.” Good Good Good, 4 Apr. 2022, https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/zine-artists.


Oregoniannews, director. YouTube, YouTube, 8 July 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixqr9e3wCxI. Accessed 15 Nov. 2022.


Biel, Joe, et al. Make a Zine!: Start Your Own Underground Publishing Revolution. Microcosm Publishing, 2022.

Bond, Bradley J. “Following Your ‘“Friend”’: Social Media and the Strength of Adolescents’ Parasocial Relationships with Media Personae.” CyberPsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, vol. 19, no. 11, Nov. 2016, pp. 656–60. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2016.0355.

Fleck, Jesse, and Leigh Johnson-Migalski. “The Impact of Social Media on Personal and Professional Lives: An Adlerian Perspective.” Journal of Individual Psychology, vol. 71, no. 2, Summer 2015, pp. 135–42. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1353/jip.2015.0013.

These relate to my project because they give me inspiration as well as artists to look at as an example for zine making. It also serves to show where zine-making can go, such as organizations and communities.

I like this site because it's very LGBT-friendly, which I think goes hand in hand with the history of zines as they started as a subversive way of publication, "going against the norms" if you will.
I included the video as well as the illustration of how to make a zine because there are always more ways to learn something.

Some zines pieces I've done for a zine:

Research on parasocial relationships on social media;

Social media have permeated the lives of adolescents and may be altering the way that teens engage with their favourite media celebrities and characters. This study surveyed 316 adolescents to examine the relationship between social media surveillance and the strength of adolescents’ parasocial relationships (PSRs) with media personae they follow on social media. Results indicated a significant positive relationship between exposure to media personae on Twitter and strength of PSRs. Adolescents who had experienced social interactions with their favourite media personae on Twitter in the form of retweets or responses to tweets had stronger PSRs than adolescents who had no such interactions. The realism of the media personae did not moderate findings as expected. The findings suggest that Twitter provides intimate glimpses into the personal lives of media personae that increase audiences’ feelings of connectedness to those celebrities and characters, an important finding given that teens are more likely to learn from media personae with whom they have PSRs. (Bond)

Social media refers to websites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedln, Instagram, Myspace, YouTube, and the like, sites where individuals create, share,
or exchange information and ideas in a virtual community and network.
Social media use has become more widespread, accessible, and common in
recent years, with advances in mobile technology and the Internet. Duggan
and Smith (2013) indicate that 73% of adults online use some kind of social
networking site, (Fleck)

WEBSITE:

https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/zine-artists.

FINAL

MINI REFLECTION:
I had a lot of fun making this zine, from the concept to the final execution.
Finally voicing some of my thoughts about social media was also very refreshing and liberating in some ways.

Going forward I want to make more zines but I want to push myself to be more creative with the format and try different ways to create. More pages, in colour, perhaps even no text at all?

Some things I would do if I were to do this project again would be to give myself more time to experiment with sizing!