Smashed Vinyl: Issue One

Over summer and basically for four months my friend Ewan was working on the first print issue of Smashed Vinyl and as the art director for the platform, there was a lot of content I needed to create. The first issue featured a variety of articles written from different contributors and interviews with bands such as Deap Vally, The Tuts, Dog Party and Dilly Dally.

Pullout Poster

The first thing I created for the print issue was the pullout poster. I had seen this feature in other magazines/newspapers previously and we both agreed it would be a good idea to have something that the reader could pull out and hang up as a poster. For the two page spread we had the idea that the image could be of a bar fight featuring tons of famous musicians. 

The image took a long time to create as each musician had to be individually drawn by hand in a sketchbook then composed together on top of the bar background on Photoshop. The reason for this was there was simply too much going on to create on one piece of paper. Once the image had been finalised and Ewan was satisfied with it, I was able to publicise it. Ewan was very specific with me that I should not put the full thing online until the magazine is realised which to me made total sense but as a practitioner, I also knew that I had spent a lot of time on this so needed to promote it somehow. That is when I decided to only release certain parts of the image on Instagram.

Each day I released a part of the image featuring a different musician with the description 'Bar Brawl' until we could release the full image when the magazine came on sale.

Front Cover

It was also up to me to develop the front cover. While this was not as complicated as the two page spread, this was still a complicated process. The magazine contained an interview with the band Deap Vally so we knew we wanted them to be the main focus point.

I used Photoshop to put the front cover together. This was a complicated process as I needed to make sure it looked professional and I rarely work with print. Ewan put together all of the inside pages, now he is not a graphic designer and has never used Photoshop. All the articles and imagery in the magazine was put together literally by cutting and sticking together with prittstick. While this could look very cheap it actually gave the magazine a nice grungy handmade look. When so much print I feel being produced recently looks incredibly neat and polished, I like the handmade charm our magazine has.

Marketing

Once the magazine was ready to be sold to the public, I was able to publicise all the work I had created for it. I sent the drawing I did for the front cover of Deap Vally to the band and they replied positively.

Ewan put the magazine up for sale on the website Bigcartel.com. Here, people could purchase the magazine for 2.50 and lots of other merchandise with it.

It's safe to say everyone involved with the development of this magazine put their hearts and souls into it but upon seeing the final product it was evident that it was worth it. Furthermore, while I am primarily marketing myself in the industry as an animator, I feel like this experience is a very good thing to put on my creative CV as it shows that I have also had experience with print as well and am not a one trick pony.