5.1 Research Findings

CHAPTER FIVE

Fanzines are independently published magazines that are mostly made in the bedroom, kitchen or workplace. It was started by the Science Fiction fandom back in 1930. The publishers mostly used cheap methods to duplicate the copies such as mimeograph and photocopy. Most of fanzine publishers are non-professional writers or artists and publish for fun, love or passion. They are constructed mostly using conventional ways such as cut and paste for the layout and hand-writing for the texts. Very few people publish fanzines for money or fame.

Music is one of the subjects of fanzines among others such as arts, comics, horror films, sports and real life stories. Its conventional methods in layout and text construction produce spontaneous, eye-catching and intimate looks. Examples of these methods are cut and paste and hand-writing lettering. They also explore other print techniques such as silk-screen, block printing and other types of bindings such as stitch binding, rubber band binding and some are not even bound at all. Fanzines are unique in a way that it is up to the publishers’ creativity and wildest imagination how to design, print, bind and distribute them.

Most of the music fanzines are sold at concert or gigs, at fanzine events and some who are more optimistic send their fanzines to be sold at record stores, book stores and even toy stores. Fanzine tours and events were organized for fanzine publishers and readers to meet up, sell their products and exchange products among themselves. In such events, normally readings were made where fanzine publishers read their latest issue to the crowd.

Printed mainstream music magazines are facing a slump mostly due to the rapid increment of internet technology application. A lot of music websites and blogs were created to write and review about the latest music releases and news. Most music lovers nowadays prefer to read on the net. But most of the websites and weblogs are using template designs, so they look quite the same with each other.

They can even download the music straight to their computer and they no longer need to read reviews in printed music magazines to know about the latest music in the market. They can review it themselves after downloading the music and keep them if they like it or delete them if they feel otherwise.

In Malaysia, there are magazines that choose to change their revenue to online media such as Junk  music magazine which stopped publishing the printed version of their magazine. But there are also music magazines that have a target market for people who buy hardcopy music magazines such as ROTTW magazine. They have to repackage and redesign their magazines to give it a fresh look and life before the market value drops totally.

With the eye-catchiness and intimate sense of fanzine graphics, it could be used to be incorporated into printed music magazine designs. This will enhance the aesthetical value of the magazine and the readers would be compelled to buy them. Just like music compact discs where musicians and the record company spend on designing the cover booklets, it will attract people at first glance on the record store shelves or see the image online. The more unique the design, the more people would want to buy and keep it.

A survey was carried out to find out the response about incorporating fanzine graphics into music magazines and also which fanzine graphics are most preferred by music listeners. The respondents gave a positive feedbacks to the questionnaires distributed to them.

The fanzine graphics that they think readers will like the most in a music magazine is the cut and paste look. For typeface, most preferred hand-lettering as opposed to typewriter lettering. The most preferred size is A4 size and perfect binding stands out as the most popular compared to other types of bindings. The most preferable cover mount is poster. The music listeners did not vote for music samplers as a preferred cover mount possibly because they can download the music they want while for posters, you need the hardcopy to paste it anywhere.

It is hoped by incorporating fanzine graphics into professional printed music magazines, people will keep on buying them and the survival can be prolonged.