Evaluation

There were many reasons as to how and why I made my zine the way I did but here is some backstory to the meanings behind it which may explain some of my reasons: my final zine is about my Dad’s journey with music, in particular his journey through his life with his guitar and where he is today. My dad has play the guitar since he was 13 years old and today he is now a professional guitar teacher as well as a musician that gigs as often as possible. He has been in multiple bands and is currently in a duo called Acoustic Shock with another guitarist called David Ashurst.

Whilst my Dad was travelling around the world to places such as New York, Florida, California, Canada, Africa,Australia and many other places he was in a professional band called Cruise Control and played in many famous pubs and stages. Eventually he came from Canada to Jersey in his 30’s to settle down whilst the other member of the band, Jim, carried on trying to be successful as a professional guitarist.

Overall, everything went correctly whilst making my zine and it told the story accurately and clearly of what my dad’s life was like when it comes to music.

My Final Zine and the Experimentation

I used this photo of my dad’s old band as it’s quite an iconic image of them and has a good composition. The photo was taken from when Cruise Control was becoming popular around Nashville in the early 80’s. The picture clearly represents what my dad as a career also which is why I also thought it was a good fit. The title on the cover is meant to represent my dad’s journey with his love for music. I thought Heart Strings was a good fit for the title of my zine as it can also be heard often as “pulling someone’s heart strings” representing someones emotions and admiration for something.

For most of my layouts for the pages in my zine I used the pipet tool to match a colour or shade from the photograph so they made a nice comparison next to each other. The older photos look nicer next to a dulled out yellow tone as if it was an old piece of paper from the day the photos were taken. This photo was taken in Jersey above the Pulente Pub where he started his job as a bar tender fro over 10 years.

I chose this photo, as the place where I positioned my dad contrasts nicely with the backdrop with the red sound proof foam panels and his guitar. I chose to put the photo over the two pages as it fitted better as it was a landscape photo. The writing also fitted better in the top left hand corner in comparison to an other place on the two pages. I kept the writing format as it was as they are lyrics and although they may have fitted somewhere better on the page if I changed the layout, it may not have been as easy to recognise that they were lyrics.

I’ve laid out the page similarly to one of the older ones above. I’ve used the pipet tool to add similar tones from the photo to the other page, again to make the page look older as well. My dad was living in Australia with his friends Kevin and Nigel at the time. He gigged at multiple place and worked many labour jobs on farms and building sites to be able to afford to travel to his next destination.

I again chose this photo, as the place where I positioned my dad contrasts nicely with the backdrop with the red sound proof foam panels and his guitar. I chose this photo to go in my zine because I liked the composition and the way my Dad is looking into the lens because it makes the photo feel interpersonal as if he is staring at the viewer.

This photo was also taken in Jersey above the Pulente Pub. I liked the composition of this photo as my dad is placed in the middle casually posing and the objects surrounding him add to the narrative of what is happening in the photo.

I decided to choose this photo of my Dad, Jim and his wife as it was one of the last photos of them together. The words ‘Like A Rolling Stone” is the title of the song that was written through out the zine. I chose that song as it is my Dad’s favourite song that he has loved for many years as well as the lyrics having some correlation to his life a the time. I also chose to just put the title underneath the photo with nothing else as I think the simplicity ends the zine nicely and rounds everything up. I’d like to think as well that my Dad’s Journey with music relates to this title for many reasons. One of them being that he was similar to the band; The Rolling Stones, in the sense that he travelled around the world as they did playing music and doing what he loved for a very long time just like they did. In a metaphorical sense he is like a literal rolling stone and he goes through his life taking different paths and rolling with the punches along the way. I also added the white around the photo was chosen to blend nicely into the front page.