About
Pandemic Punk is a Zine series. It is an account of one person’s personal experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, through the lens of punk design and DIY culture. The zine was created using both analogue and digital design process, directly influenced by punk DIY design. The timeline of the zine is from March 14, 2020 to March 20, 2021, the beginning of the designer’s quarantine to her second Pfizer vaccination shot.
When this project was proposed, it was a study of the intersection of punk design, DIY culture, and analogue and digital design processes. The proposal was approved in Summer of 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. While I was certain of the processes I wanted to use and create, the content itself was not one hundred percent.
On March 14, 2020 I started my first day isolating with my husband, or as most would say “quarantine”. When the pandemic first hit, many of us were operating off of pure necessity. There was an infamous shortage of cleaning supplies and paper products (toilet paper, paper towels, etc.) and people were scrambling to acquire the basic necessary PPE to keep themselves safe.
While doing my thesis work, I began having overwhelming anxiety over my ability to complete it within the COVID-19 situation. Our resources were limited, we were home 24/7, and people were at their wits end just trying to keep things afloat day to day.
In my conversations with the head of my thesis committee (Kyle Meikle) we discussed how, similar to the punk design movement, the pandemic had us all operating purely out of necessity. Things began to come into focus, and “Pandemic Punk” was born.
I owe a lot to this project, and look forward to continuing the series. It not only provided me with the content I needed for the MFA thesis, but it also allowed me to process the last year.
The Process
Process is a massive piece of this project. My age positions me perfectly between a childhood of new technology and digital access and one without. As an adult I work as a graphic designer, but I also manage a print shop. I have always seen myself as someone who hugs the line between the digital and the analogue.
This process’s failures taught me just as much as its successes. There are certain processes that are not impossible to replicate digitally, but take far more effort to do. I spent hours on a piece that I eventually did by hand, I wanted to show that I could create the piece fully using my digital assets, but I couldn’t get it to my expectations.
Below, you can take a moment to learn about the processes used within this project, through case studies of pieces from the zine.
The Future
Pandemic Punk Vol. 1 is the first iteration of the Pandemic Punk series. My plans for continuing the series will include additional elements.
I plan to incorporate a submission process. While I chose to keep the first one a personal reflection, I would like this to be an outlet for others as well. In order to make this a series that is inclusive, diverse, and open space, it cannot live with a single person. My wish is for Pandemic Punk is not only for it to be a way to help people process their time in the pandemic, but to also be something that reminds us of the events and change that occurred during it. This includes not only health related events but those of massive political shift.
The timeline of the first volume ranged from the beginning of quarantine to the day of my second vaccination, I would like at least the next two to cover from vaccination to the return to “normalcy”, and a third to cover an aftermath/reflection of life post-pandemic. I have seen that some of our day to day distanced actions seem that they may carry over well into an in-person environment, I am interested to see what habits we have now that will persist.
