The last three days have felt very hectic. On Monday morning before uni officially started at 10am I made a list of everything I wanted to do towards the deadline in order to finish. As I've been exposed to so much feedback being back at uni from both peers and Dom it feels like everything has turned upside down and I know no longer have that security blanket list of things to do. This is okay and necessary though - as reflecting, I understand that things needed to change, and I'm feeling motivated after the slight bump in the road. I can now look at what I need to do in the upcoming days and still feel good about it, even more so because it's a development of what I already had.
I'm specifically talking about how I planned for my zine to have three elements: poster zine, bookmark, coasters. But now everything has changed and through feedback I've realised that I need to to edit! It's making so much sense in my head because really I was just making life too hard and complicated for myself. I've taken a step back and sketched out what I need to do and what Glad Print actually includes. Dom said in my chat with her: be confident in your concept and I feel much much more confident now that I've refined it. There's less to explain - it makes more sense, everything is relevant.
The key elements are:
The poster zine (which includes:
- An introduction/ explanation page
- An article
- A crossword
- A QR code link to the Instagram page
- A foldout poster)
A mindful item
(this item will be different with each edition, the first will include two coasters, I have a lot of ideas of mindful items for future editions too that I'll put on my design boards)
A mini pencil
(for the crossword)
Stickers
External application of Glad Print include:
The Instagram Page
The Instagram will be the online platform which will share even more positive news articles. It will also be a place where people can choose to purchase Glad Print. It will also be a place for discussion about positive topics.
Mindfulness Events
I'm yet to think of an appropriate title for this yet except something along the lines of Glad Print X Mindfulness which is a bit broad and lacks excitement. The premise is that Glad Print can collaborate with events spaces to put on events surrounding mindfulness like yoga sessions or topic discussions.
Obviously this is hypothetical, but I'll be showcasing the idea for my final submission through a poster advertising Glad Print's collaboration with Headrow House, putting on rooftop yoga sessions where everyone receives a copy of Glad Print.
Ideally Glad Print would start as a non-profit and then from these events, it can start to be funded more.
One thing that I've thought about after deciding on this refinement is that before, the Glad Print zine would publish three articles in total. Now, there is only space for one. At first I wasn't sure what to make of this but now I think that it makes perfect sense. Before, Dom would ask about the link between the printed matter and the online element. I think that before this definitely was not very strong, but Dom said that the zine could be a 'teaser' to the online element. I remember being against the idea of having only the headlines or first half of an article published in the zine, as it's making information inaccessible to a lot of people. However, having only one article means that people who don't have access to the internet can still read the full article, and it's not giving too much away at the same time.
COASTER SOURCING:
Obviously my first mindful item is coasters! I really like the intent behind it: encouraging people to sit down and take a break, as well as engaging in discussion, I think it's so important and it's something that the traditional news doesn't discuss so I'm happy that Glad Print is a news publication that actually encourages it!
I contacted James in the print room about getting them sorted and he came back to with the good news that they have mount board which apparently would be great for coasters! I keep calling them coasters but I think realistically they will have more similar qualities to beermats. That's okay though!
One thing James mentioned was that unfortunately we can't print on the mount board double sided. This would have been great because one of my intentions for the coaster was to have an article printed across both of them: this encourages discussion between two people because to read the other half of the article they have to exchange coasters or discuss etc. There simply is not enough space on just the front of them to do that, but that's okay - the premise still stands!
I gave James a diameter of 94mm and mocked this up against my A5 zine dimension just to check it was all good. The coasters come up just smaller than the zine so I'm really happy with it and can't wait to see it all packaged up - of course I have to get all my supplies ordered and the zine actually finished first!
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