Zines
A strong part of the branding of our festival will be through different interactive and informational zines. I feel this creates an attractive and interesting approach to the festival, with many of the people in my group making up different forms of zine to acknowledge different aspects of our pitch. We have an over all festival zine which gives information on what we are about and with some space for interactive participation, engaging the audience to partake in the festival from the very beginning. On top of this we have a zine on the canal bombs, hear your city, seed bombs and gorilla gardening, a how to on origami boats and crowns, with some of these aimed also for children but of course could be used by all ages.

I have been creating a zine upon the unexpected in the city, focusing in particular upon the unexpected use of plants, surprise in the city. I am really enjoying making it, using the scanner and printer to build up different images and texts. Something I am really keen on in terms of my practice is a contrast of textures and a balance between technology and the hand made. Making a zine seems like something that really relates to that. Where I have used a combination of different papers such as newsprint, tracing paper and layout paper. On top of this printing a variety of scanned in photographs, texts and drawings. It has been a process I have really enjoyed. I have kept it quite simple as more of a piece of design than an information booklet including seeds within the book encouraging you "to grow your own beanstalk".

I think this use of zines is something quite relevant and accessible and is something that I myself would be intrigued by upon visiting a design festival. As well as being useful at the time, they are also something quite intriguing to collect and keep afterwards. Today we visited the Zine Library in Nexus Art Cafe in Northern Quarter and it was fascinating to see so many different variations of zine together, therefore we would be encouraging people to begin their own. One thing I am a little worried about in terms of our festival, is that we have so many which are all completed in quite different manors that people might get a bit lost in there purpose.

For our exhibition we are keen to display these zines, with many of them having more than the one copy available, in a Zine Library like format, using hexagonal shelving to showcase them.