Regional Mexican music is an umbrella term containing different music genres, from corridos, norteñas, mariachi, ranchera, and many more. But, more recently, artists like Junior H, Natanael Cano, Peso Pluma, and Eslabon Armado, to name a few, have blown up the popularity of Regional Mexican music. To capture that popularity and what people who are fans of these artists or Regional Mexican in general, welcome to the "Next Generation of Regional Mexican Music."
Project Summary:
Create an 8 x 5 in. zine about any topic of interest directed towards a specific audience while including content your target audience would talk about if they were conversing with someone else with the same interest that would eventually be part of a huge collection of different zines all put together into one book called Tasty.
Process:
Deciding what my zine would be about:
Before I could start designing and deciding what content to include, I had to decide what I wanted my zine to be about. At first, I decided to make my zine about video games, but some problems arose. First, I couldn't really determine a specific audience or why my zine about video games would be important. Second, I didn't know exactly what content I would include.
Luckily, around this time of this project, I had been starting to listen to Regional Mexican music again after a few years of not listening, and the idea of why I have my zine be about Regional Mexican music and, more specifically, this and-coming generation of artists that are making it really popular. So, with that being said, I had my topic for my zine.
Determining who my target audience is:
Now that I had my topic in hand, next was determining who my target audience would be. I had to make sure my target audience was as specific as possible and not too broad, which wasn't too hard to think of. It wasn't because the artists I was listening to were people in their twenties or early adult life, so I decided to have my target audience be those in their early adult life or approaching it and enjoy listening to Regional Mexican music.
Determining and deciding what kind of content I want to include and how to layout it out:
Now that I had my topic and target audience, it was time to determine and decide what kind of content I wanted in my zine. When thinking about what content I want, I would ask myself, "If my target audience was in a big room together, what would they talk about related to the next generation of Regional Mexican music?" With that question in mind, deciding what content I wanted was easy. I can include interviews with fans of Regional Mexican music, some of my favorite songs and artists, my favorite genre and why, and posters of up-and-coming shows from different artists.
Now that I had my content decided, I needed to figure out the layout of my zine. I decided that the first half of the zine would be more personal in that the reader would read why Regional Mexican music is important to me and my favorite artists and songs to let the reader understand what I have to say about Regional Mexican Music. As for the second half of my zine, it would include custom design posters of different real-life shows and interviews of what fans have to say, like their favorite artist, songs, genres, and what they think about Regional Mexican music.
Results:
A book containing different zines created by my colleagues and me all riso printed.
“Tasty,” the zine where my classmates and my zine are in.
Front cover of my zine. Every zine was riso printed on color paper. On the left is the back cover of one of my classmates zine. Credit to them.
One of the spreads talking about one of the artists.
One of the spreads showing a poster I designed.
Left: Back cover of my zine. Right: Front cover of one of my classmates zine. Credit to them.
Credits goes to Jimmy Luu for printing and putting together the book.
