The Open Brief

The open brief

The creative content is generated through a monthly open brief providing a platform for artists, designers and photographers to showcase new and exciting work to a wider audience. Each issue revolves around a theme set by the creative team at Stalker. The aim of the brief is to find six outstanding artists each month to feature in their own mini zine.


Sofie x

Website Trial One

We started to create a website on a free template called Moonfruit.

http://www.stalkerzine.moonfruit.com/

We put our branding onto it and spent a good deal of time thinking about what we should put on here.

In the end we decided any content that may not be featured in the zine but we liked would go on here alongside anything we received from local creative students.

These are screen shots of it:

Abbie and Sofie x

Graphic Inspiration

Graphics Inspiration

The graphic design used in the zine could be hand-drawn & painted images mixed with dark lines edited on photoshop. This will give the reader an idea of the topic of the zine (fresh artistic talent), while at the same time maintaining it's professional image.

Sofie x

Creating our Brand Identity - Attempt One

So after establishing who we are and what we will be doing in the zine, we need to come up with a brand identity for others to recognise us by.

So we had a play around and these are the ideas we started with:

We then came up with this font and ended up with this logo:

The background is like a cream wallpaper/cartridge paper. We like this as it has a texture. We like the contrast with the electric blue too.

The actual font is BRUTALITY which gives off a hand-made feel which we wanted alongside that cool and collective feel too.

What do you think?

Abbie and Sofie xxx

Our Rational and Concept of the Zine

So this is who we are and the concept of the zine!

 

"Introducing a new publication to the ever growing zine market; combining the increasing trend in social media with the tradition values of handmade zine production, Stalker Zine celebrates the wealth of creative talent at Nottingham Trent University.

Known widely to generation X, the colloquial term Stalker is used in everyday life and understood to mean ‘somebody who follows a person's every move, on Facebook or otherwise’. Using this term to form the backbone of the zine, the concept of ‘Stalk my work’ allows the viewer to focus their attention on the creative talent of the individual. This provides a relationship that not only satisfies the need of the reader but also the artist. Stalker Zine will be the first place to share and view creative talent from NTU and meet others from different creative disciplines.

Rather than a traditional magazine layout the zine will consist of six mini zines that fold-out into posters. This is a form that generation x are familiar with due to the stereotypical student bedroom with poster covered walls. Each mini zine will contain an A3 fold out poster of the artists work alongside a short informal interview and an illustrated photograph of the artist. The six mini zines will be tied together with the first issue containing a mini spy glass for users to interact with the smaller details in the publication.

Each issue will revolve around a theme set by the creative team at Stalker. The creative content will be generated through a monthly open brief providing a platform for artists, designers and photographers to showcase new and exciting work to a wider audience.

As well as creating the zine as an offline version of a social media site, an online presence will still need to be maintained. This will remain separate from the actual publication however cross-over’s will be made. The Stalker website will provide the opportunity for ‘stalkers’ alike to access exclusive content not featured in the physical zine. A gallery will display the variety of entries from that months open brief so other creative’s can gain inspiration and have a chance to see what is normally only available to the editors of a magazine.

To continue the social media theme throughout Stalker’s online presence, a Facebook page will provide ample opportunity for its creative users to interact, share and collaborate with each other."

Abbie and Sofie xxx

Creatives at Nottingham Trent

After deciding on our idea aimed at creative students we though we would need to understand what size this demographic was at out uni. This we decided is the best place to start the zine as we have a perfect audience and belong to it too.

List of creative courses (full-time, undergraduate):

- Costume Design and Making

- Decorative Arts

- Design for Film and TV

- Fashion Accessories and Design

- Fashion and Textile Management

- Fashion Communication and Promotion

- Fashion Design

- Fashion Knitwear and Knitted Textiles

- Fashion Marketing and Branding

- Fine Art

- Furniture and Product Design

- Graphic Design

- International Fashion Business

- Mulitmedia

- Photography

- Product Design

- Textile Design

- Theatre Design

From this we calculated that this amounts to 20.6% of all full-time undergraduate courses which is 3, 840 creative students.

With this many people we could have a great demand for our Zine and create a great platform for these creatives to network with each other!

Abbie and Sofie xxx

Current Creative Networks

After looking into the Facebook and social media trend we have discussed the content/idea behind our zine and want to create an offline social media/networking place for creatives.

There are currently a few online creative networks out there:

These all however cater for the business person in the creative field. They are places to network with others and look at the latest news and jobs that are available.

THERE IS NOTHING THAT CATERS PURELY FOR STUDENTS LOOKING TO COLLABORATE, SHARE AND NETWORK WITH EACH OTHER!

We therefore feel that this is the direction our zine will take. Also in zine form it will be great as most creatives and students will be aware of the zine format and what it stands for - the low-fi production etc so it will be better than purely an informal website!

Abbie and Sofie xxx

Facebook and Social Media Trend

As users of social media ourselves we are familiar with the increasing trend and wanted to look into some facts and figures. This is because we have started to have the idea of including a social media theme/taking inspiration from it for our zine!

Facts:

45% of the population in the UK are Facebook users

Facebook has 25, 000, 000 users of which 50% are under 30!

Image:

We are thinking of creating possibly an offline version of a social media site through the zine. People are happy to stalk others on facebook and look at their updates, photos etc and so we want to take this user habit and translate it so that it works in the zine - people will use the zine in the same way as they would use facebook?

Abbie and Sofie xxx



Amelias Magazine Lecture

Today we had Amelia from Amelia's Magazine give us a talk about what she does and the magazine she creates.

The website:

"Amelia’s Magazine was printed biannually for 5 years from 2004-2009 across 10 issues, many of which are now collectors’ items sought after by creatives across the world. Amelia’s Magazine online is now the place to come for exclusive articles on the best underground creative projects in the worlds of art, fashion, music, illustration, photography, craft and design. Amelia’s Magazine is updated daily in four sections: art, fashion, music and earth."

She was really inspirational and I loved the fact that every issue of her magazine had a different interactive covers including one that was scratch and sniff!

She set open briefs for illustrations to include in her work and when we pitched our idea to her she suggested open briefs may work well for us too. So watch this space!

Abbie xxx

Editorial Ideas

JUST A FEW INITIAL IDEAS I HAVE HAD about content, names, logo and the zine fair...

Content:

We could see if we could feature maybe a few local creative businesses? Perhaps Style Compare or someone similar so that they would create interest for other uni people to want to be part of it - it may have a better selling point too and could generate more sales at the fair?

Names:

mEYEn Zine? (playing on mine/my?)

Logo:

Could have it as i magazine and the dot of the i is an eye?

Materials:

When talking about leather for front cover etc...we could have a different texture for every person...say one was a textile designer we could have fabric and print to that? If one was a graphic designer we could have newspaper print and print to that? If one was a video maker (not sure what you call them) we could have film strip set backgrounds?

Selling Them:

The beauty of the idea is that if people from the uni are featured in it...they will buy it and hopefully their friends?! Which means we could sell more than 7 copies!

Layout of Stall:

If it is about creatives, and 'you' as a person then we could have long-length  mirrors either side of the desk with signs saying 'who are you' / 'you decided what you want to be!' etc? We could try and get a big stall space if we wanted for the fair?

Abbie xxx

Teal Triggs Lecture

Teal Triggs, the author of the book 'Fanzines' came in to talk to us. She was really great in giving us an understanding of the history behind zines.

Her lecture was entitled 'FanZines-a DIY Revolution?'

Lecture Highlights

- Frederick Wortham commented in 1973 that Zines were "a special form of communication."

- Stephen Duncombe commented in 1997 that Zines were "little publications filled with rantings of high weirdness and exploding with chaotic design."

A zine is a way of testing out your ideas rather than having constraints by publishers - it allows for an individual voice!

Teal showed us some really lovely examples of Fanzines throughout the talk, here are a few examples:

• NEW WORLDS FAN-ZINE 1939 - cover by Harry Turner

•   SPACE TIMES ZINE 1950s

•  THE SUBURBAN PRESS



The fanzine phenomenon was really popular throughout the 1970's Punk era. Suburban Press created by Jamie Reid was a radical political punk zine of the time. The ransom-note look he used with the Sex Pistols graphics came from this magazine which some may say defines the punk DIY look.



•  SNIFFIN' GLUE





One of the most acclaimed and influential Punk zines 'Sniffin Glue' was produced by Mark Perry. The publication reflected the DIY aspect of Punk with the headlines being written in black marker pen and layout having no real order



It was really great getting to understand the history of Zines and how they have developed through the years. I thought it was a recent phenomena but apparently Zines have been around for ever!

Abbie xxx

Fever Zine Lecture

Today we had Alex Zamora from Fever Zine http://www.feverzine.co.uk/ give us a lecture on the nature of Zines.

About Fever Zine

Independent magazines and zines are a growth market and a recently successful example of this has been Fever Zine. Fever Zine is a popular quarterly zine based in London.

Its contents focus mainly on music, art, DIY culture, trends and e-culture, with fashion, music videos and other zines also featuring heavily. The zine was created and is edited, by British music and arts journalist Alex Zamora with design by Simon Whybray.

According to its MySpace profile the publication is available at a variety of cultural hotspots in London such as the Institute of Contemporary Arts, as well as around the United Kingdom, however it is mainly distributed through the Internet.

The Lecture Highlights

- WIRED - we were told of how Wired Magazine linked up with Adobe to create an app for the Iphone.

•content designed specifically for the touch screen experience

•easy navigation methods, including an innovative zoomed-out "Browse Mode"

•the ability to browse image slideshows

•embedded 360 degree object viewers

•support for video and audio content

•the ability to rotate content using device accelerometer functionality

In addition, with this digital magazine concept, advertisers have new possibilities for displaying ad content. Advertisers can develop rich-media magazine "inserts" to provide expanded information to customers directly within the magazine experience — without directing the reader’s attention away to a Web site. Publishers can also offer expanded ad formats that include animation and embedded video. Finally, as is the case with most digital advertising, this new magazine concept opens the possibility for more precise advertising performance metrics beyond the comparatively crude audience measurement/ad engagement techniques in use today.

- FLICK THROUGH ZINE VIDEOS

People are starting to promote their Zines through flick through videos. They video themselves opening each page of the Zine so the viewer can get an idea of whats inside.

This is an example below:

Overall this lecture was really useful as we can consider how to make our website interesting and how to promote our Zine possibly through a flick through video.

Abbie xxx

Interesting Book in Creative Review

I came across this article on the Creative Review blog and couldn't help but think it would be a great way to present our zine!

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2008/february/what-no-jewel-case

It is a set of CD's and a booklet in a box...

We could have a set of mini zines put together like this (above). They would be like a small booklet (see below)

And then i love this part....it all folds out into a big poster!!!

I can't help but think this is brilliant!!!


Abbie xxx