Teal Triggs, MA, MA, PhD, FiSTD is Professor of Graphic Design and Head of Research, School of Graphic Design, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. As a graphic design historian, critic and educator she has lectured widely and her writings have appeared in numerous edited books and international design publications. She came in to talk to us about the subject of her latest book, Fanzines.
She started by showing us a selection of her favorite work throughout the time that she has been collecting them and then moved on to explaining what a fanzine actually is. A fanzine covers such a broad range of publications but it is essentially a magazine/publication produced by amateurs and in an independent style. The idea of a Fanzine is that it an amateur producing it so there were issues raised about whether designers producing them could ever be truly a Fanzine as the design style that they would put into the publication would take away the essential feel of a Fanzine.
This interested me as at the time of Teal's lecture I was in the middle of producing a publication based on North Korea and felt that this felt into the category of a Zine. I thought that the lecture raised some interesting points and created the sense of anti-design within publications.
