This is our Pen Profile for the target consumer we want the zine to be aimed towards. It gives a small insight into their life.

Ideas and Inspiration---

-free badges with illustrations in relation to our subject matter.

-small, landscape layout to be in fitting with a small witty booklet.

-consider if we were to name our zine 'Spring Clean', how we could make our visuals support this name.

Illustrator- Sarah Douglas

I really like Sarah's gentle illustrations she has created, she's managed to get a message across in a simple drawing so it's nice and easy on the eye. The way she's used block text and only coloured in a few letters also looks very effective and fitting with her illustrations.

Possible Cover?

If we decided to stick with the idea of the bird and cage, with the birds acting as peoples feelings caged up inside a cage, the front cover of the zine could take a similar look to this.

Instead of having black ink on colour, white offers a more crisp and clearer image i think and would stand out much more.

Layout and Design inspiration

I think a landscape layout is the minority layout chosen for zines, so to take this layout, it would give the zine an individual layout. I also think it's a nicer layout for our content too, as it's smaller, more compact and a fun size which all mimicks our zine.

The first picture of the neon pink zine really inspires me to print our cover similar to this.

It gives it a stunning industrial effect, we could design our cover first and then transfer onto a stamp, then stamp black ink on a variety of neon covers.

Samples of Zines

From looking at these zines, i can see that every one of them stands out for their unique and individual appearance. Personally for me, i don't think i would be as persuaded to purchase the A3 black and white zine (far right) as for me it would be too big to just have a quick flip through on the train or bus home for example. We want a size that our readers are able to pull out anywhere for a quick, humorous read!

From this image, i'm really inspired to perhaps do our front cover on a different media from paper.

The bottom left zine is my favourite on this, i specifically like the hand drawn rough border going down the left side of it, and although it's not perfect, it gives the front cover a much better structure and clearer image than the others.

This is a lovely idea for any zine i think. It could be adapted to our zine in that we could have a cage of 'annoying creatures' that have BURST out and into the world travelling the country getting opinions of other people on what annoys them, allowing them to share their thoughts on our website, which we can then run features on every issue updating people on where they've been and what opinions they've discovered.

BRIGHT

This zine grabbed my attention next to about 10 other zines immediatly because of it BRIGHT, NEON cover.

Definitly a colour trick to consider when designing our cover.

Shoes, Shoes, Shoes

Ghetto Stiletto is a zine which shows an array of women's footwear for pure enjoyment and viewing only, in comparison to naff catalogues out there that try to increase brands market share!

I think this is a lovely idea for a zine and really personal to the editor. If i was creating a zine solely focused on my personal interest, i would create a zine based on dresses or hairstyles. :)

The Joy of Public Transport

This zine, a comedic yet artistic documentation, documents ones travels on the public transport system.

It's a combination of text and drawings and one that is out there to entertain its readers.

This zine is similar to what we're considering for ours, a witty document on things that annoy us, with specific attention to fashion, culture and the arts.

Notes and Errata

This zine comes in a variety of colours, red, yellow, blue and green.

This is an idea we could consider for our zine, perhaps having the same image and font on the cover but a variety in colour, to give the zine a collectable connotation.

Bird in the Hand Zine Shop

An online shop offering a small collection of zines, mini zines, mixtape zines and typewriters.

This website was extremely helpful in giving me some inspiring ideas as to what content i could base my zine around.

Adventure Time

Adventure Time' chronicles the search for fun in everyday life. From the observatory to the graveyard and on to group nudity, this zine asks the crucial questions: what to do for pleasure?

This magazine has made me think about my personal interests/ hates/ passions that we could create our zine on.

I tend to have a stronger passion towards things that annoy me and i think this would make an interesting zine, as it would offer something new and different compared to peoples positive interests.

People would also be able to communicate with the magazine more by reading about annoying things that they too share a passion towards hating.

The zine could be fun, witty and entertaining and one definitly to have an active communication with it's readers through its own website where readers can share their personal annoyances, which we can then run features on in the zine.

Birds

Using this zine as a prime example, zines can literally exist on anything, they are totally personal to each and every individual that makes one.

The mini zine is called Birds and explores the different characters that our avian friends might have.

'Imagine if we knew just what that little chirping song meant - a sorrowful story of hope or despair? We just don't know.'

Birds is told through comical drawings of birdies drawn by both The Fetus and to a lesser degree Susy Pow! The drawings are explained by text boxes on each page.

Again, i am very drawn towards the hand made touch of this zine through the pen drawings and writings and offers a more artistic look to it.

What is a Zine?

Having not really heard of 'zines' before this project, we set out to shop '45' in Nottingham and found this book 'Watcha mean whats a zine?'.

It provides us with all the help, tips and advice we could possibly need for creating our own zine, from how to lay the zine out, to what content we could include and finally how to make sure are zine sells at the end and isn't a failure.

From the layout of this book (a mixture of hand drawings and a little but of computer type), i really found it interesting to read and was never bored whilst reading through it, the hand drawings also gave it a much more personal touch.