Final Project Progress

I have teamed up with two other members of my seminar group to create a project about love and heartbreak letters. I’m glad that I’ve grouped with someone with a strong idea of what literary content they want to publish so I can focus on the style and form of the project.

Gathering Responses

As we are choosing not to publish our own writing, we have to find writing to publish elsewhere. In order to do this, I have created a google form that I can send out online via email and text to people to gather responses in which we can use for our project. We toyed with other ideas of gathering responses, such as leaving a box in the FAB or SU where students passing by could write out a response and drop it anonymously in a box, however, the google forms method seemed the most economical and reliant method, as well as the method which would seem to produce the most responses.

Accordion Fold

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was interested in using the accordion fold for my final project. I think this style lends itself to be extremely effective in portraying the duality in the nature of our project’s theme – that being love and heartbreak. As we are collecting submissions for each topic as separate responses, I was thinking that one side of the accordion fold may feature the love responses and the other half would feature the heartbreak responses. We have not decided yet if each side would correspond to the person of whom the responses originated, or if the love and heartbreak responses would be matched up through similarity of theme.

Digital Publishing Run

I anticipate that all those who participate in the submissions aspect of the project will want to view a copy of the book, however, sending physical copies to every participant will be extremely costly and time-consuming. In order to satiate this want to widely distribute the project, I believe that doing a digital publishing run alongside the physical publishing is a good idea.

Marketing and Advertising

As I am planning on releasing a digital run of the book, I think that marketing it quite publically will be a good idea. As we don’t have a massive budget for it I was thinking that maybe printing out posters with a QR code on them and putting them up around campus would gain a lot of traction as you simply only need to hold your phone up and scan it to access the website, a lot quicker than just putting the website up and having people type it in to google.

Final Project Provesioinal Ideas

During my time with Small Press Publishing, I became very interested in the idea of small press as a physical object. I was interested in how authors and presses choose to present their literature in creative and boundary-pushing ways, such as the postcard project we saw in class. For this reason, I have decided to focus on the physical aspect of small press publishing for my final project and will pair up with a group that has a strong idea of what content they would like to publish so I can focus more on my preferred part of the project.

Accordion Fold

I like the idea of the accordion-fold style books as I think the double-sided nature of them is extremely interesting and with the right literary material can be exploited effectively. I think it would be a cool idea to have one piece of literary material on one side of the accordion fold, and then another piece on the flip side that juxtaposes the themes of the former side.

I think one issue with accordion folds is that they don’t lean themselves to contain a large number of continuous paragraphs, so it would be difficult to implement in a project that uses prose. It would, however, work quite effectively with a project that uses poetry.

Another benefit of the accordion-style fold is that it’s extremely easy to incorporate a traditional front cover and blurb to the book. However, it is a time-consuming form to print and assemble as opposed to other forms, which may prove an issue depending on how long and complex the project turns out to be. This fold would also keep the book size relatively small, most likely capping it at around A5 in size, which could be an issue if the project entails a large amount of prose as it could prove too small to easily read.

Embracing Cheugy: A Manifesto Poster

Design for Dreaming: An Unusual Book Object Review

During my small press class I came across this zine entitled Design for Dreaming. It was amongst many more visually interesting unusual book objects but for some reason this zine called to me. Bound by two staples and size A5, the entire zine is in black and white and with its bricolage-esque approach to collage it evokes a look reminiscent of Riot Girl publications.

Despite the perhaps old, or even more so arguably traditional, nature of the paper publication that the zine takes on, its contents are much more modern. As illustrated by the cover which features a picture of Mark Zuckerberg, the contents deals with contemporary issues and even takes on a sort of post-modern feel to writing, juxtaposing the punk-inspired photocopier collage style it presents.

After some digging I discovered the publication costs only a humble pound*, which in my eyes only adds to the counter-institutional accessibility that the social commentary centred content focuses on.

All in all, I think the zine is an extremely interesting, but also particularly illusive, read if you can get your hands on one. It’s visually striking without the need for colour of 3D objects, with enough prose to warrant a second read.

*http://includemeout2.blogspot.com/2016/10/design-for-dreaming-zine-communication.html

Embracing Cheugy: A Manifesto

Cheugy (/ˈtʃuːɡi/CHOOG-ee) is an American internet neologism coined in 2013. The term is commonly claimed to have been popularized by Generation Z, as a pejorative to describe lifestyle trends associated with the early 2010s and millennials. This aesthetic has been described as “the opposite of trendy” or “trying too hard”. (The definition of cheugy according to Wikipedia)

We have been terrorized for too long! The loud minority need to be silenced! I call up all to embrace cheugy and become a cheug like me.

Why do you care if someone enjoys a popular TV show? Are they not popular for a reason?! I bet you enjoy it too behind closed doors. Whatever happened to nonchalance? Isn’t it cool to not care? Why should you care what I do and like? Worry about yourself! I would worry if I felt like £120 coat I bought two weeks ago was already out of fashion.

We, the silent majority, need to rise up and defeat this evil that is plaguing our lives. It is time to stop caring how cool you look to strangers on the internet. It is time to stop being chronically online. No one in real life knows or cares. I am an adult with a job and a water bill, I do not have time to have an opinion if mid rise is the new low rise this week.

Perhaps I am a girlboss. Maybe I do enjoy pumpkin spiced lattes. If you do too you need to join rallies with your fellow cheugs and rise up against the hyper consumerist, overly trendy social culture dominating our digital screens.

It is time to Fight back.

Wear what you want, do uncool things, drink the god damn coffee – all while posting it online! Flood these trend following, tv show shaming sheep with feeds full of cheugy. May the wrath of the cheug gods rain down on them like judgement day.

Hi I’m Jess.

Who are you? Why does your blog have a dumb name? When can I see your cat?

My name is Jess and I’m a second year undergrad studying film and literature. This blog is a project for my Small Press Publishing class. It’s called what it’s called because I am a big alphabetti spaghetti soup enjoyer.

Here is my cat.