OWT came in to give a lecture today on their work. I had heard of them beforehand, I follow them on twitter and have seen the zines in Magma a few times. I find zines very interesting and have collected a few over my time at university. I even made one for the Salford and Leeds zine fair last year which I enjoyed, but found the printing process to be very off-putting.

I find most zines to be very strange a bit like Conceptual art, where the meaning is not obvious and is open to interpretation. But that’s what makes them so interesting. I love the design process of creating a zine, it’s so free and experimental with hardly any restrictions. I like the tactility and overall style of zines, as OWT explained it would be hard to translate that in to digital versions.

The last zines I bought were No.Zine’s #4 #5 and #6. Each issue is centred around it’s number and uses 1 key colour. Each of OWT’s zines are based around a single topic/word and rely on artist submissions. They admitted it wasn’t bringing in loads of money but with each issue they put money back in to improve the format of the next one. To advertise they use the power of tweets and blogging, building friendships with shops like Magma and selling at print fairs.