Teal Triggs

A few weeks ago Teal Triggs was invited to give us a talk about Fanzines. Teal Triggs is Professor of Graphic Design, Course Director of MA Design Writing Criticism, and co-Director, Information Environments, at the London College of Communication. As a graphic design historian, she has written extensively for the international design press and authored several books on design including The Typographic Experiment and more recently Fanzines. Hearing about this lecture got me excited as I was told to make my Static work into a Fanzine and at the time I was too sure what a fanzine was exactly.

A fanzine is a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre) for the pleasure of others who share their interest. During the lecture she showed us mainly the covers of fanzines but she explained what exactly makes a zine, and referenced a lot of really interesting pieces during the lecture.

Fredric Wertham a German-American psychiatrist and in the 1970s he focused his interest on the benign aspects of the comic fandom subculture; in his last book, The World of Fanzines (1974), he concluded that fanzines were "a constructive and healthy exercise of creative drives" he had also said that fanzines were a 'special form of communication.'

I really like the idea behind fanzines and will defiantly be creating my own...considering that I still want my static work to be created into a fanzine as all the images are currently in separate books.