On Sunday I went to Publish Or Be Damned, which is an annual zine fair in East London.
Loads of zine folks came together to hang out and sell their wares (the magazines, mainly).
I went hoping to meet loads of excited kids making funny zines about things they like, but honestly, the bulk of the people there were mid-thirties graphic designers with really well groomed mustaches who were just selling really long essays about art that were really well laid out on expensive paper. The bulk of the whole thing was a total whatevz, but there were a few gems among the boring old men there. Here are my faves that I found:
Preston Is My Paris are two nice guys who haven’t made a zine about how they hate their weird Northern town and instead made one about how they really like it. They’ve done three issues which are basically collections of things they’ve found and photographed in and around Preston, they just did an exhibition at somewhere in Preston called the Avenham Park Pavillion, which was probably pretty interesting, and they also run a blog.
Here’s what their zines look like:
Famicon Express
Famicon are a collective from Loughborough who all moved slightly as I was taking their photo. They had a lot of zines on their stand, mostly ones they’d made themselves, just my luck that I picked up one from them that was actually an Italian zine featuring the work of Famicon member Leon Sadler instead of one of their actual zines. I’m a dumb dumb. I’m reliably informed, however, that of all the art/illustration collectives in the country at the moment, Famicon are the best one. So, below is Leon’s stuff in the zine I got and here, here, here and here are some links for Famicon.
Pink MinceMy favourite and most fun zine of the fair was called Pink Mince, a self-published periodical “For the confirmed bachelor of exceptional taste”, as the tagline goes. The second issue is a photo issue that features pretty full on man on man action between 11inch Action Man poseable figurines. It’s pretty compelling viewing. The Pink Mince website is here and more poseable action can be found here.