Giant Robot Store and GR2 News

Mountain Dew is in the hipster business. Making their drink cooler by branding their bottles with kids who make art. Here’s some Q and As about it. I’m not sure if I like this entire project. It’s great to reach out to the artists, but is this the right project for the drink? Will this get what they want out of it? Obviously it’s not just brand awareness, they want to sell more of these drinks. I liked Mountain Dew a while ago, especially when it had the outdoors type of appeal because of it’s name. Now it’s the urban drink? I’m not quite buying it. But it’s still another example of the power of art in the advertising and marketing landscape, and I’m glad the Dew put it into some artist’s hands over more athletes. This all comes in a neat spinning caddy.
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Mountain Dew is in the hipster business. Making their drink cooler by branding their bottles with kids who make art. Here's some Q and As about it. I'm not sure if I like this entire project. It's great to reach out to the artists, but is this the right project for the drink? Will this get what they want out of it? Obviously it's not just brand awareness, they want to sell more of these drinks. I...
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You zinesters out there never see proofs. This is equivalent to making photocopies and looking at them and deciding if you’re really set to go. In zine world, I don’t think making photo copies help much, except to know if photos will repro ok. Our proofs are about having that last look, whether it’s bleeds, really bad typos, design flaws, bad paths, etc. Bad things can happen, and this is your last line of defense. This is what the big boys use. The bad thing is you have to pay for these pages, and it’s not an ink jet deal, these are real proofs from a printer that’s probably expensive, because this shit costs. We do also get an ink jet version that’s laid out as signatures of the magazine, so you can get an idea of what the mag will look like page after page. Imagine a couple of years ago, you had to make film, a velox which is a 4 color proof (imagine how much that was!), and only later did we get single sheet proofs, but it was all short lived after PDF and direct to plate came to town. Technology actually made making a magazine cheaper than ever. One last great commend is that with zines you can do anything, anytime, and you can spend 5 seconds on a page, or take as much time as you want. Magazines have restrictions, you can’t do either of the things you can do with zines, unless you want a super strange mag or a really late one.
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You zinesters out there never see proofs. This is equivalent to making photocopies and looking at them and deciding if you're really set to go. In zine world, I don't think making photo copies help much, except to know if photos will repro ok.


Our proofs are about having that last look, whether it's bleeds, really bad typos, design flaws, bad paths, etc. Bad things can happen, and this is your last...
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ryan said… it’s true– the idea of starting a magazine (or small press) can be really persistent, even after tons of smart people say that it’s emotionally/phsyically/mentally killer and painful but… but, doing a mini zine on the cheap with friends is LESS painful… right? Good question Ryan. Let’s start off with the top part. The idea of starting a magazine, it’s a tough deal. Sleepless nights, figuring out your place in the world of print, getting the cash, meeting flakes, finding out you got ripped off here or there, a page doesn’t bleed right, copy edit errors, photo isn’t high enough res, miscounted the pages, have an ad missing, distributor does under, people complaining about their subscription, and this is maybe 1/1o of the things you need to deal with. Maybe one day, I’ll compile more, but for now, this is a start. Doing a mini zine can have equal headaches. Things can go wrong there too. Even though it’s supposed to be more punk rock and loose, what’s your cutting line of “POS” to being decent? Will you exceed that level? Can you live with being under it? If you take even “just” a zine carefully, there are other sets of issues to worry about. Printing a zine is always more money than you think. Pages can’t bleed, layout issues, and much more. It’s easier, but doing a good job is always tough.
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