CAP99.

tut_fanzine 22 5/6/07 14:54:05

[illustration and expertise] Red Design, www.red-design.co.uk Tutorial
23 Tutorial Create your own fanzine
T
he rise of counterculture and the
underground press in the 1960s really
started the self-publishing movement,
but it was the punk rock explosion in
mid-70s Britain and America that really kick-started
the fanzine movement. Its this period that were going
to focus on in this tutorial by showing you how to
create your own contemporary take on classic punk
Zine design. Fanzines were made (as the name
suggests) by true fans of the music, or whatever
subject they were writing about. More often than not,
the producers had little or no design or art skills but
managed to create some of the most ground-breaking,
exciting, visceral, shocking and downright amazing
visual art that has ever been made.
A lot of the techniques used by the exponents of
fanzine design are much underused in the digital world
of contemporary commercial art, where it can be all
too easy to let everything happen inside your G5. We
want to show you how to get your hands dirty again, to
play and experiment with cut-and-paste techniques,
to get out that Letraset that youve been saving for a
rainy day and to ignite that passion you get from
designing for a subject that you really believe in for
no other reason than because you can. Not only
should this help you produce a great fanzine, but it
should inspire you in your work on any number of
other projects.
We show you how to revisit these old techniques
and play around with them in new ways using
Photoshop and InDesign to create a print-ready A5
fanzine that you can start handing out to your friends,
giving away at shows or sharing with like-minded folks
however you want to
Cut-and-paste, photocopiers, punk rock, drug
culture, passion, independence and the DIY ethic
all the ingredients you need for a classic fanzine
design. Go get your hands dirty
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Part 1: Find inspiration
Immerse yourself in DIY culture and get red up
2
As fanzines are invariably personal and largely based on
an individuals passions and obsessions, choose a subject
that youre truly infatuated with and want to share with the
world its this passion thats at the core of DIY culture. Were
making our xation with skulls the theme of the Zine, and
were going to call it Skull because it sounds pretty punk.
3
For this Zine were going to email some friends and
colleagues and ask them for contributions. It should all be
about freedom, so were making the brief as loose as possible.
Although blogs have
begun to supersede
printed fanzines, the
genre is still very
much alive. Thurston
Moore of Sonic
Youth is one of the
more important
proponents of
fanzine culture and
he still promotes his
record label Ecstatic
Peace with the
brilliantly named
Sweet Release.
Zine culture
Part 2: Get your hands dirty
Create artwork for your fanzine without using a computer
1
Get hold of
spray mount,
marker pens,
newspapers, tape,
a scalpel and some
Letraset. Most local
stationers still stock
a limited amount
of the latter.
2
There are two main elements to fanzine design, and these are elements that are
ubiquitous to all 2D design: type and image. Its the rough-and-ready
treatment and combination of these two that particularly characterise fanzine
design. For now were going to start working with type away from the computer
with a view to combining it with images later on in Photoshop.
24 Tutorial Create your own fanzine
1
Any project you work on should always start with some research, and a fanzine is no exception. Rie through old gig
tickets, hunt around your home town for yers, visit second-hand bookshops, go to your local independent record shop
and check out the vinyl section for some self-produced non-commercial design inspiration. Immerse yourself in the scene!
CAP99.tut_fanzine 24 5/6/07 14:54:25
Part 3: Treating images
Give your digital photos/scanned images that photocopied look
2
Take this image and convert it to a bitmap (Image>
Mode>Bitmap). Use the halftone screen method, click
OK, then set the number of lines to 50 and choose Line from
the Shapes dropdown menu. Experiment with different
numbers of lines and different shapes.
25 Tutorial Create your own fanzine
1
Take any
image you
want to use for
your Zine, convert
the colour mode to
Grey (Image>
Mode>Greyscale)
and open the
Levels palette
(Image>
Adjusments>
Levels). Use the
sliders to get a
high-contrast
roughed up image.
3
Have a go at creating a masthead and some bold title
type for your Zine by using Letraset and hand-written
type (use markers, pencils or a paintbrush for this). Remember
to not be too precious about what youre doing just do it!
4
If your Zine features any lengthy chunks of prose, get
hold of an old typewriter and type them out yourself
(again, dont worry too much about making mistakes).
5
Get really messy and splash some paint over paper, get some drips of ink running down a page, draw some scratchy lines,
scribble and doodle with a marker, scrunch up some paper... do anything you like really. All this can be used to create
essential texture when you scan everything in.
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If youre not lucky
enough to live in a
town with a thriving
underground DIY
scene, dont worry
the internet is a
great place to nd
some contemporary
inspiration:
www.paperrad.org
mind-melting
self-publishers.
www.nieves.ch
mind-blowing
archive of Zines
(and you can look
inside too!).
www.atpfestival.
com the worlds
greatest mix tape.
www.eyoe.com
promoters of
amazing shows and
creators of great
yer art.
Internet help
26 Tutorial Create your own fanzine
Treating images continued
3
Open another image and go to Filter>Pixelate>Colour Halftone. Set the Max
Radius to 4 and click OK. Then change to Greyscale (Image>Mode>Greyscale)
and tweak the black and white in the image slightly using the Levels palette (Image>
Adjusments>Levels).
4
Scrunch up a sheet of white paper. Scan it in, convert it to greyscale then
convert it to a bitmap (Image>Mode>Bitmap) using the 50 per cent threshold
setting. Convert it back to a greyscale image, drag it onto another greyscale image
already open in Photoshop and multiply the layer (Layers palette>Multiply).
Part 4: Combine type and images
Use layer properties to combine your black-and-white images with your scanned type
1
Scan in all
your hand-
created elements
at 300dpi and
convert them to
greyscale. You
may need to
tweak the contrast
of the scanned
elements using the
Curves palette.
2
Its then simply a case of creating a new A5 PSD for each
page of your Zine and laying out the elements as you see
t. Dont be afraid to be a bit rough and ready. Use the
Multiply/Overlay features in the Layers palette to build up the
typographic/texture elements over the images.
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Once youve got
your printed Zine,
you need to start
sharing it. Give
copies to all your
friends, go to some
shows and hand
them to fellow gig-
goers, and leave a
pile in a local bar. Or
how about going
digital save your
Zine as a PDF,
email it round and
get the recipient
to print it out (a
good trick that saves
the self-publisher
some money!).
Distribution
27 Tutorial Create your own fanzine
If your Zine is low
on pages, why not
copy it on to a
heavier weight of
paper. If you dont
like black and
white, you could try
photocopying black
onto any other
colour (neons work
well) or you could
colour photocopy
your Zine in one
colour onto a
different coloured
paper stock.
Paper stock
Part 5: Lay it out
Use InDesign to compile your artwork and paginate
1
You need to paginate your Zine to get all the pages in the right place when you
print. Set up a new document in InDesign at A4 size with two columns and no
gutter, and number the pages according to the screenshot above. Then place your
PSDs into the right places.
3
You can
change your
black type/texture
elements so that
theyre white out
of a dark image
rather than black
on. First, invert
your type/texture
layers (Image>
Adjustments>
Invert). This will
give you white
type on an opaque
black background.
4
Then, using
your Layers
palette, apply the
Screen lter to
each layer. This
renders the black
background
transparent and
enables you to
build up type and
texture layers as
you see t. Try this
technique using
typewriter text it
looks great!
3
You can place PSDs straight into InDesign (rather than
having to save images out as TIFFs or JPGs), so if youre
not happy with a page once youve imported the le, its easy
go back into Photoshop, edit, save and then update the link in
your Links palette in InDesign.
2
If you want to increase the pagination (note, the page count must be divisible
by four), start with the right-hand side of your rst spread and number it page
1, then hopscotch diagonally left and down then right and down until you get to the
last spread then jump across and hopscotch back up the opposite way.
4
Once youve got all the pages in and youre happy, thats it! Save it out as a print-ready PDF and get
photocopying. The joy of a great Zine is being able to share it with like-minded people, so get out
there and start distributing copies!
ca p
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