Page Layouts
For visual artists, composition is a means of arranging visual elements in a certain way to create a roadmap for their thoughts. In turn, the compositional elements chosen by the artist determine the path a viewer’s eyes follow to explore that work of art. Early in the zine making process, an artist must make many compositional choices such as what will be the size of the zine’s pages or the method of binding - foldout, tied or stapled. And how will text and image be presented on a page - multiple images per page with text, no text, one-page spreads, double-page spreads, and so forth.
Exciting Places for Boring People
Andy Rementer in Exciting Places for Boring People uses one-page spreads to express both his text and image ideas. Rementer also works without margins on his pages. For his cover page (left), Rementer develops his less than idealistic view of city life through text statements that present contrasting meanings – exciting/boring, perfect/funeral, buy/empty - each text written in varied, large graphic fonts allowing the viewer’s eye to quickly take in the boldly printed text and make what they will of the artist’s tongue-in-cheek irony.
In another image, his cityscape (below), Rementer totally fills the page with a crowded group of black and white city-life snippets. The viewer is effectively blocked from seeing back into space and confined to the bustle of the city street.
Bite Marks
In contrast, Rick Myers in his zine, Bite Marks in Paper, decides to work with his own teeth and the impressions they leave as he “bites” down on sheets of paper over a one-year period. In this zine Myers uses dramatic cross-lighting, as he does with the image on his cover (left), to create light and shadow “teeth” readings, these teeth marks appearing like a mountain range, separating the title and author names. In another image (right), Myers chooses to leave blank space on the page around his teeth marks to further emphasize the three-dimensionality of the impression, using the double page.