I had never heard of zines before watching a YouTube video explaining how to make one. This moderately successful creator started talking about how she, herself had been exposed to zine culture and why creating zines had become something really therapeutic for her. There was something about these pamphlets that really interested me and I figured that if there was anytime to experiment with something completely new then now was the time.
One of the benefits of picking zines for my project was that they have a rich history. I was fascinated by the different types of people who’d created zines in the past. While learning about them, I did get a sense that I was very different from the average zine creator. Although I really enjoyed the research portion, I did find myself getting more and more nervous about the actual creating of my own zines. I didn’t really know how to create something and relate my message to an audience with the chance that they may not understand what I was trying to accomplish. I needed a way to make zines applicable to the kind of artist that I am because I wouldn’t be proud of anything else. My classmate, Lauren suggested that I take inspiration from something already close to me, something that wouldn’t feel so foreign putting my creative energy into. That was really the catalyst for me creating my personal zine. I pulled inspiration from my bullet journal- a personal organizer I use to calendar, mark my to-dos, and generally journal. By using the ideas that I’d already incorporated in my journal I was able to make zines, which had become something really intimidating to me, and bring it down to my own personal level.
When it came to collaboration, I knew that I wanted to dedicate an entire zine to working with others. I knew that that in itself was going to be a challenge because I tend to procrastinate in general, but specifically where other people are involved. For this group zine I wanted to go even further and try to stay away from getting other Freestyle students involved. My main idea was to talk about what these non-Freestyle people were most proud of. Ideally I wanted to showcase things that they’d actually created, but not surprisingly, non-artists aren’t usually proud of something that they’ve actually created. This forced me to change my idea for the zine and head in a new direction. I did manage not to include Freestyle students, but I did end up using a lot of my own family members for convenience sake. Ultimately I’m really happy with how the zine went and I think the experience was overall more impactful because I had other people involved.
If I had to do the project differently I would change the timing in which I did everything. This is a common trend in my work and it’s something that I still want to try and get better at. I scheduled out all my checkpoints really evenly throughout the 2.5 month long calendar, but I ended up doing the bulk of my work in 2 different blocks of time- one in the middle of the project and of course, one at the very end. The first major block of work went fine and I got a lot done, but I ended up getting really sick during the weekend before presentations and had to do another big chunk of work while feverish. Procrastination is something I’m always going to try to get better at, but it’s something that’s really difficult for me.
I think the 21st century skill I improved the most on was risk-taking. Throughout the entire project I was really nervous that my zines wouldn’t be received well. There was a lot of myself that I had put into my zenith project and I was nervous about sharing that with all of Freestyle. I’m not normally one who enjoys sharing my art with others and this entire project was all about that. I had a moment where I was able to turn this attitude around when I finally admitted to myself that after studying all of this history about people who’d risked with their zines, that I had nothing to worry about. I was presenting in one of the safest places and I needed to get over myself. I think the 21st century that I improved on the least was high productivity in the sense that I just wasn’t putting the work in at a steady and consistent rate. I am happy with the end result, but I could have saved myself a lot of stress had I put more of an emphasis on this aspect of the project.
I think that this project was the perfect thing for my final project at Freestyle. It took me by surprise how much this project touched me personally and how I think it really pulled together the best things I learned at Freestyle together. I like that it was something I’d never tried before because I think that that in itself is very representative of my time at Freestyle- basically just giving my all at something I never thought I’d do. I’m very grateful for my time at Freestyle and the tools and people who’ve helped me accomplish what I have in these two years.