Zine Interview with Matthew Murray Part Two

The first part of this interview went online yesterday.

6. You have made a lot of zines yourself, what inspires you? How do you decide on a subject matter?

My recent zine series (Oblast) is pretty scattershot in what each individual zine is about, but if you look at my zine history as a whole the overarching theme is one of travel. I love travelling, and a lot of my zines take the form of rewritten diary entries of my trips to various countries.

More recently (over the last year and a half) I've been doing zines on more random stuff (YouTube, potato crisps/chips, etc.), and I think a reason for this is that I haven't been writing for magazines and newspapers as much as I have in the past. I used to write for magazines and newspapers in university and afterwards when I lived in Asia. This really helped me use up my creative juices (for good or ill), but my crisp review zine is a pretty clear successor to some of the articles I wrote in South Korea where I reviewed types of soju (a Korean alcohol) or weird ice cream flavours.

I just write about what I'm interested in at the time and hope other people will like it too.

7. How would you describe the style of your own publications?

All of my most recent zines have been laid out using a computer design program. I use a free program called Scribus, but I have experience using Adobe InDesign. I guess my style is slightly more "polished" than some creators, but at the same time I'm clearly going for a different aesthetic than people doing cut and paste zines (though I've made those in the past).

(Edit/addition: Also, my handwriting is terrible!)

8. What do you find to be the positives and negatives of publishing your work in this way?

The work gets published and is out there. I mean, I could make a blog, but I'm not sure how well the haphazard and random things I write about would go over.

I like having a mini project to work towards, and when I'm done I can hand it to someone and say "Here, I wrote and made this". That's something I couldn't do with the print articles I've written (where once the issue it's printed in is gone, it's harder to show people).

Since I have a physical object that I created I can also swap/trade/sell it to other people. They can even act as a sort of business card, providing my contact info and an example of what I'm capable of doing.

9. Do you have full control of every step that goes into creating your zines, from concept through to printing?

Yes. Well, you are limited by the amount of money you have to spend (ie. colour printing is expensive), and the quality of the printers/copiers you are using. It's frustrating to photocopy a bunch of stuff and have it all be slightly crooked, but I can't let it bother me too much.

10. What advice would you give to someone who would like to start creating their own zines?

Just get out there and do it! Zines can be photos or drawings or collages or comics or essays or poetry or stories or reviews or any combination of the above or anything that can be printed on paper. You don't have to make hundreds of copies of your first zine if you don't want to, you don't even have to make any! (I have numerous zines in various states of completion that I gave up on.) However, my friends have been excited to see my new zines, and it's nice to get feedback on what you've created from people you know.

And that's the end of the interviews! (Well, I was also interviewed on video recently, but that was for something not zine related. Proper reviews should return on Monday.

(This interview was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)

Zine Interview with Matthew Murray Part One

Shortly after the last interview, another girl asked to interview me about my site and my zines for her honours project at Liverpool John Moores University / St. Helens College.

I'm going to split this interview into two parts, with the second one going online tomorrow.

1. When did you first become aware of zines and where did the initial interest come from?

I don't remember exactly, but I'm guessing it would have been around late 1998/early 1999 during my first year of high school. I would have been fifteen at the time and remember going to parties at a punk house in which my friend was renting a room. I recall a couple of zines from that time period, though exactly when I picked them up I do not remember. I think the first ones I read were actually by people I vaguely knew (ie. friends of friends), but it was a long time ago. I didn't make my first zine until about four years later when I was in university.

2. You're clearly passionate about the zine industry, what attracts you to it so much?

I'm a big fan of DIY, and the idea that you can just make your own magazine and sell/give it away is something that really appeals to me. I enjoy the way it sidesteps the mainstream, and find it interesting how literally anything can be the subject of a zine. The only thing that really unites them is that they're printed on paper.

Going back to the DIY aspect I like to encourage people to make stuff and do things. I really enjoy making and trading artist trading cards, and it bothers me sometimes when people say things like "Oh, I'm not an artist" and don't want to create something. I can't draw anything, but everyone has skills doing something. I really wonder what the education system is doing to kids that stops them being creative and wanting to learn.

The same applies to zines. Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has something they're passionate about. I want to encourage everyone to create more, though I don't know how good a job I do of that.

3. You feature a wide range of zines on your blog, where do you source them from?

I get a lot of zines from zine events. I was recently at the Brighton Zinefest and got a bunch from that. I also go to a lot of comic book events (this one was the most recent). I usually try to trade/swap with other people at the events (I am bad at capitalism), but I also buy them sometimes.

People also send them to me in the mail. I usually get one or two emails a week from people asking if I could review their zines or comics. I always agree! I pretty much always send them a zine back too.

4. How do you differentiate between a 'good' zine and a 'bad' one?

Woah, how philosophical! How do we differentiate between good and bad anything? Or even the very concepts of good and bad?

Reviews are very personal things, and I know there are zines that I don't particularly like that other people really enjoy. I've also learnt that putting a robot or a monster into your zine is probably going to make me like it to some degree.

But I think the most important thing is care and effort. Some people equate "do it yourself" with "do it quickly and badly", and while there is certainly a place for 24 hour zines and similar projects I find myself incredibly frustrated when I come across zines filled with spelling, grammar, and layout mistakes. Just because you want to hand write your zine and use a "cut and paste" style doesn't mean the content has to be a first draft.

5. From your time reviewing zines, do you have any favourite or stand out issues that you could highlight?

I've reviewed over four hundred zines and minicomics by this point, and going back and making a short list would be incredibly difficult...

But! I really enjoy Peach Melba, a monthly list zine made by a 13 year old girl. She's already up to issue 19! I've read/reviewed more issues of PM than any other zine, so it kind of sticks in my mind.

I just read a zine (Loserdom #21) with a massive (over twenty pages!) series of interviews with four or five different punks who lived in a small town outside of Dublin in Ireland in the early '80s. It's a fascinating look into a subculture, a time, an the people who lived during them.

There's a lot of comics I've really enjoyed, and some artists I've enjoyed are Philip Barrett, Will Kirkby, Nich Angell, Nikki Stu, Isy Morgenmuffel, Steve Rumlad, and I could go on listing all day really.

Come back tomorrow for part two!

(This interview was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)

The Last Ten Videos I Watched on YouTube Interview

It turns out that moving continents can be more stressful, anxiety causing, and crazy than I had anticipated. You'd think I'd know better by now. Reviews will be back in a few days, but until then I'll be running some interviews I recently completed.

The first is an interview about my zine The Last Ten Videos I Watched on YouTube that I completed for a girl who attends the London College of Communication (apparently my zine is in their library!). Her project was about how video sites effect how people interact with art, and apparently my zine was interesting to her. Amazing! I still have copies of this zine available, so if you'd like one just let me know.

What made you choose the videos you did for inclusion in the zine?

It was literally the ten videos I watched in full on YouTube in chronological order after I decided to make the zine. It was just after the Lady Gaga Telephone video came out, and the internet was filled with people talking about that, so I choose that as the starting point, and over the next few days I screendshotted (what an awkward word) and wrote about every video I watched. I didn't include videos I didn't watch all of (and there was at least one I stopped so I didn't include it in the zine, I can't remember what it was or why I didn't want it though), or videos I had open in the background so that I could listen to the music.

I thought it was an interesting look at what I actually watched on Youtube, and kind of showed how random some of the stuff up there is.

What made you choose YouTube as a zine subject?

I think it was a combination of several factors, primarily being people not understanding what a zine was and when you told them wondering why you didn't just do it as a blog or a website. I'd recently made a zine in the same format (sideways quartersized?) and realized that an image of a YouTube video would fit on the page pretty well. So I thought "Why not make a zine that _would_ make considerably more sense as a website?". YouTube comments (and many comments on websites in general) are generally thought of as stupid and things that you should ignore, so I found it amusing to write some and print them in a zine, "forcing" people to read them.

You might not be able to tell now (or from the quality of the zine you read), but I really attempted to make the zine look as much like YouTube as possible. It has the same fonts, style, and images as the website did at the time. Funnily about a week after I finished making the zine YouTube revamped the design of their website so that my zine now also functions as an archive of what YouTube looked like in March
2010.

Why make this zine in the first place?

Why make any zine at all? Why make anything at all? Because I thought it was a funny thing to do, and because other zine projects I was working on where getting bogged down as I got fed up with them. I like to have a new zine ready for each zine event I go to (even if I don't always manage!), and I made this one in less than two weeks before a Midlands Zinester meetup I helped organize. I can spend ages on zines that I care about a lot, but I seem to get more response from the silly, funny ones that take less time to make (my guide to last year's Eurovision song contest, a zine that reviewed various flavours of crisps). One of the best responses to this one have been people telling me that after reading the zine they've gone out and searched for some of the videos I "reviewed". I don't think this zine could be more successful than that.

I started making a second issue of YouTube videos, but I stopped about halfway through grabbing images. I've got about five videos screenshotted (and some of them are pretty good!), and another one bookmarked, but somehow it would seem weird to specifically go out and watch videos that are wierd on purpose. I liked the mundanity of some of them. I am currently working on another zine about the internet, which is a story/history inspired by a Wikipedia page. We'll see how that one goes.

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And just because I can, here are a couple of quotes about the zine from some people.

Jimi Gherkin (one of the organizers of the London Alternative Press Fairs, and who I reviewed last month) said "I really enjoyed [the] zine [...] [I] wish I'd thought of it!!".

Lights Go Out (a UK punk fanzine) said "Genius! [...] Seriously such a fun and unique zine!".

(This interview was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)

Potato Maze

Written by Matthew Murray and Lux Chell.
Illustrations by Lux Chell.

Hey, hold on a minute. That's my name! I made this zine!

Inspired by my friend's candy review zine Sugar Needle and general insanity I decided to make crisp/chip review zine. I even managed to corral a friend into helping me out by reviewing some flavours and illustrating many of the reviews! Amazing!

This long and skinny zine features reviews of twelve different types of chips/crisps, hand coloured images throughout, and a fully functioning maze! (That logo took me forever to draw.)

Contact either Lux or I if you would like a copy. I'll be at Brighton Zine Fest this weekend if you'd like to get one in real life. You should go to the fest anyway, it's sure to be loads of fun.

(This post was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)