Nineteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

This paper is based on ‘Unscene Un-zine’- a design research project examining the plurality of zines as a design medium enabling design educators & students to think, learn and execute editorial design processes from the lens of ‘Gen-Z’ social constructs like ‘situationships’, ‘FOMO’, social quotient, ‘ghosting’, ‘YOLO’, gender expectations, gender roles, etc and how they impact the affordance of zines as a design medium. The research methodology in this project leverages learning from Gen-Z’s unconventional sources like physical zines, digital webcomics, meme channels, and online communities from diverse cultures, age groups and gender roles to examine how the design of zines has a multi-fold impact on society to drive user behaviours like liking, creating content, ‘trolling’ engaging in comment wars etc. The pedagogy in this project deconstructs the plural nature of zines to demystify design concepts like progressive disclosure, word pictures, tone of voice and intuitive typography through quick ideation, and ‘yay or nay’ exercises. It includes teaching experiments from a series of zine workshops urging students from diverse demographics to acknowledge their own Gen-Z struggles, and release them by designing zines using blind typography and word pictures to analyse how Gen-Z’s social constructs influence zines; thereby analysing how society impacts the design of zines transitively. The project outcomes analyse the plural ways of designing for zines serving as a product of society impressions; and at the same time highlight the affordance of zines as a design medium to create social impact.