zine group - what should we do?

Submitted by mynweb on Mon, 02/05/2007 - 6:33am.

mynweb

Posts: 490
Joined: 2006-10-31

Alright, a zine group is going to be our first group. Here are some questions and comments to figure out what we can do.

Who here has made a zine before? Misled Youth will buy a copy...

What are peoples strengths? Hopefully lots of poetry and writing, since that's kinda integral.

We can make anything - youth related or not. So long as it's made by young people who learned things while they were making it...

who wants to make a comic? I sure as hell don't... the last comic I tried to make took me months to get one page done.

Collages are one of those all-purpose zine things. Winston Smith has always been the first thing that popped into my mind since I was 14... he's a great source of inspiration for collages.

Silk screened covers are cool and make zines seem far more important and precious. I'd be into figuring out a design for the cover...

Do people want to do columns? About what?

I'm basically willing to do any design and some illustration. Sarah would probably do the same, plus writing. I should also mention that we're also hoping to make a more info-packet style thing, which would be separate (unless people just wanted to help with that), because our previous info-packet is getting outdated and there are some conferences coming up that we want a spiffy new one for.

We tried to do a collaborative zine back around June but it fell through. I could dig through old meeting notes for more ideas... but only if others express some interest.

this is exciting... I'd put one of those smileys here if they weren't so hideous.

Wed, 02/07/2007 - 4:45am

mynweb

Posts: 490
Joined: 2006-10-31

nobody wants to join my group...

I'm glad everyone's excited about the idea of the zine... maybe no one saw that I created a group so that we could get started, or no one figured out how to subscribe...

I don't wanna pester people... I know it's only been a day but, if you really do wanna do a zine, just click this link to sign up... that way I know how many people really want to be involved.

I have no idea what it's going to be like collaborating on a zine with people on the internet... this is exactly the kind of experiment we need to do to see how effective this site is going to be. Thanks!

--nick

Thu, 02/08/2007 - 2:29am

kid_prototype

Posts: 126
Joined: 2006-12-17

i'm in your group

more people should get involved
there's a great image of a poster nick made on the group home page
it says, "photocopy and fold, distro and destroy".

don't you wanna slave over a hot copy machine in a 24 hr kinkos covered in toner and paper cuts and burns from touching the fuser module every time the machine jams???

c'mon folks...

--sarah

ps -- check out the promotional material thread under general misled youth discussion for more zine talk

Thu, 02/08/2007 - 2:57am

mRg (not verified)

Posts: 29
Joined:

fell asleep

at the wheel. You know I'm down brotha man.

-Michael

P.S. ahhhhhh, copy machines and all nighters at the office. memories of an editorial intern.

Thu, 02/08/2007 - 3:41am

mRg (not verified)

Posts: 29
Joined:

Jesus!

Nick...you are my fucking hero. That poster is so freakin' sweet.

Anyway, structure:

1.) never done a zine, although i have spent my fair share of time on the 2nd floor of ABogados Con NOtaRIOs.

2.) I try and write stuff. I'm getting better at my name.

3.) I see the first issue as an eclectic and entertaining hodgepodge of ocular and cerebral expansion...whatever that means.

4.) collages do indeed kick the ass. we should brainstorm a couple ideas such that any collage(s) done has a central unifying theme or idea.

5.) A silkscreen cover would be cool. cover designs would be best done after we have all the material together for the zine and can take a step back and look at it all together.

6.) I could do a column on some political issue, or on mental health. we could have a point/counter-point piece or pieces. we could do a "recycle bin" where we give our take on any big story or stories recently covered by traditional print media.

-Michael

Sun, 02/11/2007 - 3:46pm

SWAMI

Posts: 66
Joined: 2007-01-25

no doubt

i'm down for whatever. but since i'm a musician, i'd prefer to do anything musical/lyrical related. but then again, i don't care too much. i'm not good at planning this shit out though; you guys are more at the helm there and i'll write shit/distro it.

Thu, 04/26/2007 - 11:39am

HannahBarbarian

Posts: 23
Joined: 2007-04-09

-I've written a couple

-I've written a couple zines, one on gender identity and related issues that I'm fairly proud of, several comics that fell through, and some random stuff about the local music scene. I also distribute other people's zines around here.

-I write and am a halfway decent artist, and am really working on my planning and organization skills.

-I like the idea of collages and silkscreens, although I've never really done either of those.

-I could do a music column or something, and I really like Michael's point/counter-point suggestion. The recycle bin idea is also awesome and I would be very willing to work on both of these endeavors.

Fri, 04/27/2007 - 12:46am

nick

Posts: 13
Joined: 2007-01-28

all those things sound good...

do anything you want. a music column would be great, but you should definitely try your hand at collages and silkscreens. a comic would be very cool too. I sorta trailed off and forgot about the zine group, and eventually some of us decided to make a zine that was an extension of all the other groups. I was originally in charge of the zine group, but I'm not much of a facilitator or leader or anything, and I got distracted with some other stuff.

anyway, the best thing you can do is post something you want to put in the zine. once there's any actual material on this thread it will start to grow. I look forward to seeing your work...

Fri, 04/27/2007 - 11:51am

kid_prototype

Posts: 126
Joined: 2006-12-17

local zine group

hey Hannah
i saw in a post your point about how not everyone who uses the site can get involved in NYC, so i was trying to think of a way for you all to do in-person stuff. It occurred to me that you could start a local group to do a project such as zine, in Boston. You could start a club at school if possible, or just have friends go over to each other's houses to do things. Then you could document it on the site and inspire others. I think that would be really cool...

--sarah

ps -- with the zine, i am still really excited about it and i already started my article about gardening. I've just been too busy to work on it lately. We're started a writing circle soon, so i may get to work on it then.

Sat, 04/28/2007 - 3:47pm

HannahBarbarian

Posts: 23
Joined: 2007-04-09

local zine group

Yeah, I work in zines with a number of my friends- I run a distro and occasionally write for Drink Fight And Fuck. I'll definitely post our goings-on here though, next time we have an opportunity to work on the projects.

Sun, 02/11/2007 - 9:45pm

nick

Posts: 13
Joined: 2007-01-28

a class without the school...

first things first...

Michael -

Glad you liked the poster! I was flattered when someone else replied to my idea with "Genius!" as the subject, now its "jesus!" cool...

1) first time for everything... you've definitely got a solid foundation

2) writing is great! what do you wanna write? (aside from the column)

3 & 4) I see it as a hodgepodge too. I never heard any use that word before, but it sounds like what it is. I think it would be difficult to get everyone to work in some kind of theme... especially for first-timers. It gets sorta constricting. But, if people want to try it, we can.

5) yeah, good point. I always tend to get carried away with the cover before the content. we released 3 different info packets, with only a few minor adjustments and abridgments inside, but with entirely new cover designs for each. The cover should probably reflect the inside, so it should probably get made way later.

6) You can do a column on any of those things... whatever you're into at the time you site down to write.

SWAMI

Lyrics/musical stuff is cool. Are you in a band? Maybe we can do an interview... or you could interview other bands you like... or you can always do album reviews and stuff... we're not too musically knowledgeable here, we don't really listen to any new stuff, but music and zines are like peas and carrots, so it's good we have you.

writing + distroing = great!

Everyone

I have a quick point/question I've been thinking about. We tried this before with a different group of kids but it didn't really happen. My theory is it's more difficult to collaborate than Misled Youth would like to believe. It constrains your creativity some, adds to pressure/stress, and sometimes alienates members. Obviously, collaboration has a lot of positive aspects too, but it has to be done wisely. Basically, while collaboration can definitely add more variety and open people up to new things, it always makes things more complicated.

So, my proposal is to separate this into steps. First, we all make our own zines. We study zines we like, share our favorites with each other, ask for critiques when we want them, etc. Then, when we're all done with our own zines, we make a compilation of them as a misled youth zine.

This is sorta the difference between "collaborative projects" and "learning groups" we've been hinting at. A learning group is like a class (but without the school), a collaborative project is like a project within that class. It's not separating learning from doing (because both groups involve both learning and doing) as much as it's separating a heavy focus on the subject (zines) from a heavy focus on the product (our zine).

If people think they can handle this level of collaboration right away, we can. Just a suggestion.

Oh yeah, another benefit of this method is everyone gets to try their hand at multiple things, instead of just submitting stuff to us and us laying it out, collaging and drawing all over the margins.

I write long posts huh? it's time-consuming for me and I bet most people don't want to read so much at once. I'm gonna try to break them up in the future.

Mon, 02/12/2007 - 1:47am

mRg (not verified)

Posts: 29
Joined:

co-labs

My theory is it's more difficult to collaborate than Misled Youth would like to believe. It constrains your creativity some, adds to pressure/stress, and sometimes alienates members. Obviously, collaboration has a lot of positive aspects too, but it has to be done wisely. Basically, while collaboration can definitely add more variety and open people up to new things, it always makes things more complicated.

Totally

The graph about the difference...marvelous.

However, regarding your proposal, we will no doubt encounter "inconveniences" as well. The main issue that comes to mind is people may feel overwhelmed at the thought of creating an entire zine themselves, rather than contributing materials to someone who knows what they're doing. OK, so before you hit me over the head with a ball-pin hammer, I know that this is precisely our ultimate goal and part of our philosophy, i.e. the DIY and teaching yourself. I only mention it in this way in regard to practicality. If we are on a rigid timeline (not necessarily meaning the one you posted), people could encounter any number of problems that would serve to delay a finished product. Just think about yours and sarah's various zines and zine attempts. Now multiply that by 10 different people all with different ways and personality's and how these things will manifest themselves 10 fold when someone is left to work alone.

I think you said it right when you said it has to be done wisely, rather than a complete new way that kind of side steps the issues. As for me, I've always enjoyed working creatively with others. So many things are done this way, in group settings with people staying up all night conversing, discussing, debating, arguing, laughing, reading, researching, running naked through the streets covered in lime green jello singing I'm an oscar meyer wiener, and of course writing. Magazines, newspapers, book publishers, T.V. and sit-com writers, screenwriters. Anyway, I realize that would also be difficult for practical reasons. So, it's about finding a happy medium. Will get back to yous on this.

-Michael

Mon, 02/12/2007 - 6:15pm

nick

Posts: 13
Joined: 2007-01-28

excuse my rant...

it was just a suggestion... I only came up with the idea because we did try this before with a group of kids who never wrote a zine before, and it was a complete failure. There are plenty of other factors and possible reasons why it failed (school-stress and life-stress are probably the biggest) but I sorta got the idea that if these kids had done a personal zine before, they would've been more into it.

I definitely am biased toward solitude, which I understand is different from how many people think. If people want to collaborate, great. And yes, magazines, newspapers, book publishers, etc... are all based on working in a group. Comics is something you left out, but that is totally a group effort. One person pencils, another inks, another writes, another does the lettering... it's probably the most collaborative creative thing I can think of, and they're great.

But what all these things have in common is the people are specialists, and I can't think of really any greats in any field who started out working collaboratively. Many comic book inkers tried penciling, wrote their own comics, have at least some lettering ability, but they found that what they really excelled in was inking, and after a certain amount of inking their own work they felt confident enough to ink others.

I can tell you that if me and sarah collaborated on a comic by me penciling and her inking, or vice versa, it wouldn't work. There's a point where collaboration becomes really difficult. You can't be struggling with anatomy and perspective on somebody else's work.

You would probably know more than I would, but I would imagine that many people who write collaboratively began writing by themselves, did a lot of writing, got through many of the particular problems a novice writer has to overcome before they went out to do it with others.

Or, I guess a great example would be a band, which is collaborative and creative. But if you can't play your instrument that great yet, it's probably gonna cause friction with the other band members, so you practice alone until you are good enough to collaborate.

I 100% agree with you that great things are done in groups, I just want to stress that, at least for some people, it is easier to work alone first. But if that's not true for the small group involved in this zine, then let's get started.

Well, with that said, I have already done my first zine, so has sarah, and Michael is comfortable with his first zine being collaborative. SWAMI, it's up to you I guess.

hmmm... now that I think about it, maybe the "happy medium" could be each person gets a certain amount of pages that they have total control over, and then there could also be some parts that are collaborations?

Oh, and in regards to what you said about it being difficult to layout a zine, I am pretty convinced everyone is capable of it. There are a few tips I could give people, but it's mostly a matter of aesthetics. Many people are overwhelmed by the idea of design, but the only real criteria is legibility, everything else is just inspiration and creativity. And there are no deadlines so far for this project (nor do we intend on making any, although others might want to), so there's all the time in the world to learn other stuff. I'm not going to hit you over the head with a ball-pin hammer about the DIY thing because there's definitely value in "Doing It Together", but I would like to say that this is a zine group, for people to learn how to make zines, not for people to submit material to me and sarah and us to make a zine out of it. It's a fun, great, easy skill to learn that will pay off and be applicable to many, many other things you want to do, but it requires, like everything else, some interest and investment in learning something new.

(there's more I could say, but that's it for now...)

Tue, 02/13/2007 - 2:00am

mRg (not verified)

Posts: 29
Joined:

OK OK OK

You make a very good point about these collaborations being between specialists and people learning on their own at first. BTW: I knew it was just a suggestion, mine was even less than that. I hope I didn't come off the wrong way. You're my pal man, I would never come at you wrong.

Anyway, you're also right about being overwhelmed by design. Honestly, that may have been what prompted my initial response, I always freaked out about that end. Also, I didn't know we weren't on any kind of timeline. Of course, that totally changes everything, because much of may response was based on practicality. With no timeline, that's all void.

One final note:

I would like to say that this is a zine group, for people to learn how to make zines, not for people to submit material to me and sarah and us to make a zine out of it.

Damn man, I went back and read that part of my response, and it does sound like I'm suggesting that, but I'm so totally not, and I didn't mean it like that in any way, shape, or form. 1000 pardons my good sir. It seemed to piss you off and I can't blame you.

Oh and, I had your same idea about the happy medium.

-Michael

Tue, 02/13/2007 - 11:57am

mynweb

Posts: 490
Joined: 2006-10-31

I just got carried away...

I initially was going to say "ok, it was just a suggestion, whatever floats your boat", but then I kept coming up with more and more examples... I wasn't that irritated about any of it, that's just the tone I acquire when I start rambling.

Yeah, I hope that happy medium will work. I see no reason not to do it like that...

-Nick

Sun, 03/04/2007 - 12:05pm

nick

Posts: 13
Joined: 2007-01-28

The zine group's back!

That's right. We're all stressed out trying to get our promotional material ready, and I'm bringing back a super time-consuming project. The way I see it, if misled youth doesn't have groups or projects, we might as well not exist.

Well, here's the first step...

Call out for submissions - if you have (fairly short) things you want to publish on a small scale, post em here. The material doesn't have to be youth-focused but it should be by young people. It would be nice to focus on self-education in some form. How-to's are especially cool, but also stories, poems, articles, band reviews, interviews, comics, or anything else are more than welcome. Just give us everything you've got and we'll collaboratively try to come up with a way to put it together.

I'll try to get some stuff together myself over the next few days...

I'll put the call-out on the homepage too.

Tue, 03/06/2007 - 12:45am

nick

Posts: 13
Joined: 2007-01-28

hmmm

OK, new idea (or actually just an expansion of an old idea). what if we have a theme of diy learning and teaching. To submit something, it can't be something you already know, it has to be something you learn in order to submit it. It can be in the step-by-step format, but it can also be in the form of a narrative, a comic, diagrams, interviews, whatever. This can be applied to poi and silkscreening, for instance, so it doesn't really interfere with the other groups, it enhances them.

I'll change the call out for submissions if we can reach consensus on this... me and sarah think it's cool, what do you think?

Tue, 03/06/2007 - 1:00am

SWAMI

Posts: 66
Joined: 2007-01-25

i agree again.....

but.... how is this any better than like.... e-how.com?

it just seems like we're making a zine about how to do shit thats more accessible online.

Tue, 03/06/2007 - 2:07am

nick

Posts: 13
Joined: 2007-01-28

good point

true, there's lots of websites and books that are focused on how-to related things. I knew I didn't want to repeat their efforts, so I figured if I added in the part where you have to learn something new in order to put it in the zine, it would make the zine less focused on a bunch of cool things the reader can do and more focused on the learning process of the writers.

In terms of why we don't use the internet, we can. there's this site called misled-youth.org... but if you want to be able to really express yourself visually, zines are way easier to use than the internet. And they look cooler. And, seeing as how we want to be DIY, zines are a better medium for that than websites (though websites can be very diy). Plus, when we're done we can make a pdf and put it online, and in the meantime all the content will be online because we'll be using the forums to coordinate it.

Finally, any format we chose has probably already been done, what matters is that the content is new and we don't try to tackle the same how-tos that other people have already been done a thousand times. everyone knows how to sew a patch, for instance.

Wed, 03/14/2007 - 5:41pm

xcriteria

Posts: 92
Joined: 2006-12-04

I'm going to write an

I'm going to write an article about learning photography, with a focus on taking pictures at punk shows.

Who else is thinking of writing something for the zine?

Fri, 03/23/2007 - 3:19pm

SWAMI

Posts: 66
Joined: 2007-01-25

hmmm

I think I'll write something about home recording for bands. Or something related in that spectrum; I've been looking at a lot of different methods of recording.

Thu, 03/29/2007 - 6:21am

AnarchistAlice

Posts: 26
Joined: 2007-03-28

I think I'll

write a story/how-to guide on surviving at the mercy of your friends and skills. It's not difficult but it requires some know-how to be able to make it couch-surfing and dumpster diving for a month's worth of food at a time. Smiling

H=F

Sat, 04/28/2007 - 12:18pm

xcriteria

Posts: 92
Joined: 2006-12-04

damn, I forgot about the zine for a while...

Cool, it sounds like there's some interest building up. We'll have to see how the zine project can tie into the learning groups we're planning. As we've talked about, it could follow from work done in learning groups like writing over a period of time. Maybe one thread of the writing group could be thinking about a topic to write on, then writing and editing it for inclusion in the zine.

Thu, 05/03/2007 - 12:21pm

HannahBarbarian

Posts: 23
Joined: 2007-04-09

Yeah, I really think some

Yeah, I really think some amount of collaboration between the groups would be a good thing. Everyone has something to share, might as well use that and learn from each other, eh?