In my “ENGL 3030: Rhetoric” class at ABAC, I was tasked with designing a zine mockup – the idea was to conceptualize a zine based on pre-existing literature and finalize a single page, front and back, as if it had been torn directly from a copy of the zine. I chose to create Punkzine, a zine evoking the DIY feel of 1976’s PUNK created by cartoonist John Holmstrom, publisher Ged Dunn, and music journalist Roderick “Legs” McNeil. My goal was to incorporate the classic feel of the late-70s, hand-made, hand-written zine into a 21st century format that utilizes household technology.

Punkzine is conceptualized as a zine covering the latest in indie punk rock and pop-punk. This first page is the latter half of an interview with Chris Wilder, one of the two founders of the Albany-local indie band Cancer Machine and is a portion of a real interview focused on an existing band whose work can be found on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music. The text was intended to look hand-written and utilized the same triple-column style used by Holmstrom in the original PUNK issues. Holmstrom often liked drawing on the photos he took to make light fun of the bands and band members he interviewed, so to evoke the same fun-loving creativity I did the same using actual, silly discussion topics heard during the band’s play sessions.