We wanted to design a zine on the the subject of the random/out of control/chance. We decided the format would be A2, so opening out as and A1 spread. This would avoid producing the old cliche small A5 zine witch we wanted to avoid and would give some great impact as a piece of work, giving content the maximum amount of space and sizing.
There were 6 people contributing to the zine and i was collaborating on a piece with another guy so that made 5 spreads of work. This was the official explanation for the piece of work I did for the publication:
"In an effort to remove control over the outcome of a photographic series, the participants entered a period of 5 days in which receiving an SMS message was a trigger to immediately take a picture of whatever was directly in front of them.
For our section of the project we wanted to randomly generate and layout a set of photographic imagery. To create this we would each purchase the same disposable camera including 39 pre-loaded negatives from the same shop. Starting and finishing at the exact same hour of the same day we would take a photograph every time we received a text message. It was one of the only truly random anomalies we could both rely on to use as a control by which to base our timing of photos. For a week woe would each have the camera on our person at all times. At the vibration of the text alert the camera was immediately taken our and a photo taken directly ahead of us. The idea was to put zero thought into it, to try and remove the mind and artist as much as possible and just snap straight ahead. between the timing and the execution we would basically have a controlled photography experiment and have generated a bank of 78 totally random images.
"In an effort to remove control over the outcome of a photographic series, the participants entered a period of 5 days in which receiving an SMS message was a trigger to immediately take a picture of whatever was directly in front of them.
At 00:00 Saturday 5/11/11 both participants started the process with identical cameras bought at the same store and continued until the exposures were finished."
For our section of the project we wanted to randomly generate and layout a set of photographic imagery. To create this we would each purchase the same disposable camera including 39 pre-loaded negatives from the same shop. Starting and finishing at the exact same hour of the same day we would take a photograph every time we received a text message. It was one of the only truly random anomalies we could both rely on to use as a control by which to base our timing of photos. For a week woe would each have the camera on our person at all times. At the vibration of the text alert the camera was immediately taken our and a photo taken directly ahead of us. The idea was to put zero thought into it, to try and remove the mind and artist as much as possible and just snap straight ahead. between the timing and the execution we would basically have a controlled photography experiment and have generated a bank of 78 totally random images.
This would be laid out on a grid spanning across two pages, with the time, date and text message written beneath it documenting its authenticity.
The cover was of fun as we like to try and have good humor in our work. The studio pre existed as 'The Red Room' and focussed solely on corporate work, when we inherited it from last years 3rd years and totally changed how it was run and what it produced. We took down the sign witch stated ONLY 3RD YEAR STUDENTS and invited people from across the years to join and work with us. Anyway from the name and authoritarian way it was ran we went with a red army communist leader aesthetic theme. This features a cover which is totally written in chinese and has a large photograph of Chairman Mau making it look like a government issue handbook or propaganda brochure.
Inspiration was taken from this little piece of packaging design:
