Friday, February 28, 2014

On Creating my very first zine

My very first zine:
I wanted my first zine to be simple and provide a foundation for future zines. Originally, I anticipated that this zine would be a complete introduction to the equity and content branches of feminist science studies, however, as the focus of my first semester research is on the equity branch, I figured it may make the most sense to break the zine up into two separate editions: the equity edition and the content addition. This makes the most sense for the flow of my zine series as well as the first couple of zines explore the equity branch. 

Creating scigrrrl:
I struggled with the creation of the image of scigrrrl for my zine. I wanted her to appeal to all kinds of women interested in science with all kinds of backgrounds (with respect to ethnicity, field, and gender performance). In order to do so, I thought of changing her image/look in each of the zines I create to represent that anyone can take on the identity of scigrrrl. I also thought of attributing the title of scigrrrl, not only to the image and myself, but also to my readers and women who I look up to in the field. In the process of making my second zine, I decided the latter may be the best way for me to go about making scigrrrl inclusive. 


In creating the image of scigrrrl for this particularly zine, I had a lot in mind: I wanted her to look sciencey but also feminine to go against the most prominent image of women in science - reserved, masculine, dorky. With this being said, I also did not want her to look over feminine, or be wearing something you would NEVER see a women wear in a science/lab setting ( so no intense make-up, open-toed heels, or over-the-top dress). 


Zining process: 
While this cover does not look like much, I can assure you it took hours on hours for me to create. I included a diverse range of scientific images to represent math, biology, neuroscience, physics, chemistry, and medicine. I did so because I wanted my zine to appeal to a diverse group of scientists and not only those in a certain field. 

I also decided on using bright colors and cartoonish drawing to make the text more appealing. Since the original intent was to distribute the zines across my college campus, I believe that bright cartoons screamed “pick me up and read me” more than any other format I could have chosen (feel free to disagree or give me feedback on this!) 

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