As part of an exhibition I organised for my society, The Mentally Chill Society, I decided to make a short zine exploring my experiences with Borderline Personality Disorder, which I was diagnosed with around two years ago.
I started by writing down the NHS definition, the causes, and the four main criteria for diagnosis, and began thinking about how they affected me, personally. I then made some notes, shown below, of objects/imagery I might want to use. It was at this point I decided I wanted to create the initial imagery for the zine on the photocopier, as I wanted it to look and feel handmade and erratic.
I spent about a day in the learning zone, playing around with the various objects I collected from my room on the photocopier, including- fast food packaging, smoking apparatus, my old Barbie doll, condoms, anti depressant packaging, coloured paper, patterned paper bags, doll parts, and photos of myself. These were all things I felt represented different aspects of both myself and more specifically my personality disorder. Once I had the imagery I then used various pens and crayons to create the text and some other parts (such as the mood wheel) which I then added. The original double page spreads were A3 (so once folded it would have been A4) as I prefer to work larger then scale down my work in the next stage, for better quality. The finished zine was printed on A4 paper and folded down to A5.
The next stage was to scan the pages so that I could edit them digitally on Indesign for printing, as shown below.
I printed a proof in black and white first to check that everything was in the right place, before moving on to printing in colour.
I then hand bound the book, using waxed thread for book binding, a bone folder, needle and awl, to make the holes.
The photos above are of the Zine in the MENTAL exhibition that I organised, and set up, which I will post about shortly.
KAT OUTTEN 