Concept
A B C! Our concept fo the zine assignment is an alphabet book on Gen Z lingo. We were hoping to create something lighthearted to balance out the heaviness of the previous assignment.
We started by researching different formats that could be compatible with our concept. See our first ideas here.
We presented our concept in class and were suggested to explore a dictionary-type format to exemplify the comedic nature of the content. With this in mind, we looked into dictionaries, yellow books, and even wikipedia to adopt a more serious look. Even though we were defining words in a serious format, we still wanted to keep the air lighthearted and playful, which helped us arrive to the idea of flashcards. The memory of tweens studying vocabulary using flashcards came in at the right time: we are going to create an ABC dictionary in a study flashcard format.
We split up the tasks and I was assigned to create the back of the flashcard, where the word, definition, and example phrase would live. By this point, we had already laid out a collection of words (primarily found on TikTok) commonly used by Gen Z. The only thing left for me was to look up definitions on urbandictionary.com.
I chose Karmina Sans as my font, a dictionary typeface popular due to its seriousness yet slight differences in letters to accommodate for those with dyslexia. I laid out the content as word, pronunciation, definition, and example sentence. View figma file here.
Lameesa and Mikayla worked on the front of the card which contained the word. Each word has a different typeface inspired by the “collage” design trends of Gen Z. The cover of the zine contains a different typeface for each letter of the title.
Printing and Assembly
Once designs were done it was time to head over to the print lab! We started out by printing a solid background on tabloid paper front and back, since we were not sure if printing on a small flashcard would work.
We then proceeded to print the spreads on top of the color paper: one side containing the word, and the other containing the definition.
After this it was time to cut our cards and put them together! We used a paper cutter to cut each card and a hole puncher to put a ring on the stack of cards.
Once assembly was done, we got to play with our cards!