OUGD603 - Research Brief - Development

As punk culture involve such a diverse array of ideologies, fashion, music and other forms of expression, I want this to be shown within my final outcome. Having already decided with Ben that the work we will be producing will be part of a black and white photo zine series using coloured covers, it is important that the content is interesting and stands out. My zine should keep the reader interested throughout and be appropriate for the WYS target audience. To do this, I will experiment with how I can make the content interesting and produce a layout in tune with the research on punk and zine culture.

Noting how many different areas there are within punk culture, I decided to focus on the different aspects looked at within research and use this as content for each spread within the zine. The topics chosen are important as were often covered within the original punk zines. The collated research will help inform the layout of each page. The chosen names for spreads include:

Music
Punk culture originated and has evolved around music with prominent bands such as The Clash and The Sex Pistols being idolised by their fanbase. These were usually the focus of punk zines and the inspiration behind this project.

Politics
Many punks were heavily involved with politics often inspiring music produced within the genre. Ideas of anarchy and rebellion were strong within the community and were often voiced. Many photographs of punks at protests and rally's are seen online as punks often had a strong voice against fascism.

Fashion
This was an essential part of becoming a punk and took up a large part of my research when looking into the visual aspects of punk culture. Because of how broad this part of the sub-culture is, I decided to split it up further and across further pages (seen below). Within fashion, I'd like to include brands that have been inspired by punk such as Vivienne Westwood who brought it into the mainstream. 

Hairstyles
Whilst researching I came across a lot of imagery of punks, I took interested in the varying hairstyles which were often attention grabbing and an important way for those within the sub-culture to express themselves. Because of this, I felt it would be an interesting thing to show within the zine.

Accessories
Similar to hairstyles, accessories were often extravagant and were used to personalise and express oneself. The imagery I found showed this well and was collected for later use.

As previously decided, this book will be photo based. I made the decision to include as little text as I could meaning the book would be ambiguous, helping to inform the reader about the sub-culture in a more visual sense. To show the chosen aspects of punk within the page spreads without using text, appropriate and eye-catching imagery must first be collected to later become part of the zine layout. I created mood boards to help gather the imagery into the chosen spread titles and eventually pick which photos will be used in the final outcome. Images were collected from a variety of sources including scans from books used in research and from the internet.

My research on punk zines showed how their layouts were often experimental and had a DIY look about them. I want to show this within my own publication whilst also relating to how the design of zines has progressed. I decided I should do this by placing my collated images onto the page in a more experimental way. Although wanting a DIY look, I opted to use a simple grid system to help introduce the contempary ideas I decided on at the start of the brief. Before producing initial layout ideas on indesign, I sketched out m preliminary ideas to bring to a critique.