| |
How did you get involved with design, illustration and publishing?
NB: Pretty much through Nozone. Publishing my own magazine was my school, and it was a trial-by-error experiece. I made lots of mistakes along the way, but that was part of the process of learning design. I also got my education by looking at other magazines and zines. A lot of Xeroxed magazines were being sent through the mail during the late 1980s and early 1990s. There was never a real sense of, “I have to know graphic design in order to do this,” or “I have to go to school in order to do this.” It was all just, “This is how I feel, this is what I want to say, and let’s do it.” My father was a cartoonist [R. O. Blechman], and he always loved graphic design, so that was my education, too. I was brought up in an environment where I was surrounded by illustration and graphic design. I was always aware of it. I was also influenced by posters and fliers for punk bands, like the Dead Kennedys. The people who were making those posters were not commercial artists. And it all looked cool. In a weird way, the worse it looked, the cooler it was. Any polish or any kind of formal design aesthetic was almost viewed as a hinderance.
You work as an illustrator, designer, art director, and an editor. Do you consider yourself more of one than the others, or are they all interrelated?
NB: They’re really all interrelated. One of the elements of doing-it-yourself is that work isn’t broken down into different professional categories. You’ll end up doing a lot of different jobs to make a project happen.
What moved you to create and publish Nozone?
NB: At the time, I was feeling politically desperate. I was motivated by a genuine concern with the state of the planet, and I wanted to find a graphic outlet for my anxieties and frustrations. Doing my own magazine was my rallying cry. It was a way to express my opinions and to involve others.
Given the power of the Internet, why does Nozone continue to exist in print?
NB: I’m sure I could reach a larger number of people on the Internet, but I feel that if I devote so much work to the project, I want it to result in a book that I can hold and carry around. There is something important about the weight of a book, the texture, and how it feels. Would the Communist Manifesto have had the same impact if it had been published on the Web? Because it’s a book, because you can hit somebody over the head with it, it has physical presence. The Web has a temporary, transient quality, whereas books are permanent. Books stay on your bookshelf and they stay with you.
|
|
