It is often discussed that print is a dying business, especially to editorial projects such as magazines and newspapers, but it's more of an aspect of niche and knowing your customer (loobs, 2019). Also, in a study about the cognitive response to print versus digital advertisement (Canada post, 2015), the physical adverts take 21% less cognitive effort to process and have a much higher brand recall. Even though this project does not intend to be a campaign, we can hypothesize that the same would happen to any other low text/image ratio piece. Those two factors were influential on my choice of the Outcome's format, that developed from a coffee-table book to a zine. This choice was made based on the price versus added value because the young target audience would not be able to spend large amounts of money on "art-objects and small crafty books" (Parks, 2013) still be interested in the content.
The current situation of the Covid-19 also played a part in the change of direction of my project, zines are more flexible print wise and could be more easily explored because I would be able to use my home printer for experiments.
This research project started when I finished reading "American Gods" (Gaiman, 2005) and began to question what happened to religions and beliefs that are not practiced anymore, and why were they cast aside? What happened to their culture, text, and altars? This seems like a very distant theme, perhaps more suitable for a postgraduate archaeology diploma, but according to Pew research "the growth rate for followers of folk religions is expected to turn negative starting in 2040" (2015) even though it's the 6th most followed religious affiliation and holds 6% of the population.
Religion can be a difficult topic to approach because of the individual's attachment to it, but when it comes to folk beliefs even scholars can't agree on the theme, diverging on the semantics (Primiano 1995, p. 44) or the approach to what can be considered Folk Belief (Bowman and Valk, 2012). Nevertheless, Don Yoder (1974) developed five definitions for Folk Belief, and for this project, I'll be focusing on the third one that states "folk religion is the intersection between belief, ritual, custom, and mythology in traditional societies" (Yoder, 1974. pg. 13). As a result, we can fit in this definition "superstitions", for this project I will use the therm Folk Belief, which is an informal belief that is commonly shared by people of the same culture or folk group (Jorgensen, 2014).
The audience for this project, as mentioned before, are members of generations Y and Z. Considering that folk-religions will disappear by 2040 (Pew research, 2015) and that overall, 35% of adult millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) are religiously unaffiliated, Generation Z's are also likely to identify as atheist or agnostic (21 %)(J. MANNING, 2019). Therefore, this would divulge these folk beliefs to younger generations and could be an attempt not to let these folk beliefs die. According to WGSN (2020), in autumn/winter 2021/22, we will see a shift across design industries to a newfound appreciation "in ancient wisdom amid an uncertain world" (Taylor, 2020). This might correlate with the current world state and the fact that many of the participants of these generations are being forced to go back home, to their origins, and perhaps have started questioning what they believe in.
In order for the audience to get in contact with the zines, a campaign as the development of this project could be considered. The issue presented would be the first and then be followed by others every Friday the 13th; consequently, there would be only one issue a year. Also, a social media page would be used to divulge the zines and posters would also be made. For instance, the zines would be sold in stores like UAL's, not just a shop, Dover street market, and museum stores, a private online store could also be a sales point. Items such as tote bags, pins, and t-shirts would also be sold to consolidate the brand.
