Graphic Design publication Strips Club!

Graphic Design Publication Strips Club!

Project 2014-08-25 19:29:56 +1200

WHAT STRIPS CLUB HAS BECOME

Strips Club is a New Zealand-based graphic design journal for which we are seeking funding towards the production of the second issue. We, Cameron Ralston and Kelsey O’Hagan are a pair of final year students studying Graphic Design at the University of Canterbury’s School of Fine Arts. Strips Club set out to be, and has become, an active member of the arts community in Christchurch and wider New Zealand conversations on art, design and cultural concerns. The publication—designed, written, edited, published, printed, and bound in Christchurch—not only engages with the local making/designing scene but also the critical discourse expanded beyond our location.

ISSUE TWO EDITORIAL

Issue One focussed on notions of design education, and practice for the student/teacher/practitioner. An observation that emerged from the discussions and content surrounding the first issue was that we are bound by certain ‘communities’ that contextualise our work through language, conventions, and commonality in thought. Naturally, our curiosity is towards discovering what these communities are, how they affect our developing practices as students, and, should we find value in this model of thinking, where do we fit?

We feel that Strips Club Issue One entered into a specific community of New Zealand graphic design. Graphic design is often defined as existing between or on the borders of other disciplines, able to ghost between, but relying on, other things to exist first in order to function. Does this create new ‘border’ states? i.e. photography/graphic design, writing/graphic design, research/graphic design? Strips Club Issue One found itself at the junction between many of these things always searching for a critical ‘community’, but never able to engage with the entire design public… Does this imply there are multiple, separate, (co-dependant?), communities of design practice that operate for different audiences (academic? commercial? critical? cultural? etc.).

Strips Club Issue Two aims to explore these ideas of the community and how/where graphic design sits within them or on its own. From our specific community we are perhaps attempting to bridge, and thus broaden, our associated knowledge with other cultural groups.

WHY WE NEED YOU!

Because Strips Club is an independent publication, we do everything ourselves, this allows us to have an open platform to discuss and critique graphic design and arts in New Zealand. However with this freedom comes no budget… We need to raise funds to be able to cover costs of paper, printing, binding and promotional material. Thus for Strips Club to continue as a printed publication we need the help of the community.

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