📙 #052 - minimum value newsletter, a zine and the least amount of ink information possible.

In which I detail three things I've started. It's a short one this week, and I mean actually short!

Kitty, checking in on me via the Vestaboard

Way back in issue #20 I wrote “Three Rules for Newsletters” - which you don’t need to go back and read although it certainly helps my stats if you do.

The short version is that; often artists set up a newsletter for a “behind the scenes” view, which is fine ‘cause everyone likes to peek behind the curtain a little. But, unless each newsletter offers some nugget of wisdom, or “value”, people quickly tune out; it’s only so interesting for so long.

My Three Rules for Newsletters, basically says this: newsletters can have varying amounts of “value”, sometimes they’re small snippets, other times a whole slab of helpful stuff. Then, when you’ve offered enough value you can drop in an “ask”, you can draw back some of that value for yourself.

Or, you can cash in some of that value, to get away with a value-free newsletter!

I’m sure you can guess by now where this is going, because dear reader, since the last newsletter I’ve basically done fuck all, and have no advice or help to offer. I’m cashing in my built up value chips to get away with a short newsletter.

Here we go.

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# NEW JOB & TWO OTHER THINGS

More on this in the next newsletter, but yes, I’ve started a new & different job. It’s doing something I love, which isn’t pen plotting (but is something else I’ve been doing in the studio), so sits nicely along with everything.

It does however take up a perfectly reasonable amount of time, so I’ve just had to get more efficient and less slack.

Which has boiled down to deciding what not to do each quarter and picking just two or three projects instead of all the things.

A quick example, I am not working on my online shop this quarter, even though I need to. There’s actually a lot of things I’m not doing this quarter, and somehow deciding that has been somewhat freeing.

So now I’m spending the next 11 weeks doing my job and two other things.

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# STUDIO OPERATING MANUAL, WINTER 2025 EDITION

Planning zine pages

Thing one!

Over the holiday a friend (hi Laura) suggested that as my studio was now pretty much how I wanted it to be, it could be a great time to do a traditional “[insert current year] Studio Tour” YouTube video.

But, I’ve already covered bits and bobs of that in my #Weeknotes videos already, so I figured I’d reframe it a little.

Instead of pointing at various areas of the studio and saying what they do, I wanted to flip that around and say “here’s what I/we do in the studio, and those things are facilitated by those areas”.

Saying “I ship plots and prints out on a Tuesday & Thursday, and that happens over there”, rather than “That’s the shipping area of the studio”.

A change so subtle that the moment I thought “Oh, I could make a zine about the function of the studio, a ‘studio operating manual’ if you will” and started writing notes I immediately went back to describing what various bit of the studio do rather than why.

Oh well.

But, now that I’ve decided that I’m only doing a couple of things a quarter, and those things take about 12 weeks, I figured I should do a better job of documenting those things as I go along, even if I haven’t yet done much and there’s not much to show.

So, shown above; me figuring out how many pages I’ll need for the zine, and which page goes on which side when printing because it’s super confusing.

Partly inspired by Tom Sachs’ Caprice Owner's Manual, and Ten Bullets Zine (this isn’t my version of Ten Bullets, but rather a different set of ten rules than can be run in parallel, apart from rule five).

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# THE SEA HOWLS FROM THE WEST

The other project only has a name, a vibe and one ink test (shown above) so far.

The name is “The Sea Howls From The West”, and the vibe is; dark grey seas, dark skies, fog, Welsh coastlines, and words.

It’s going to be a series of pen plots of various sizes, some generative poetry, and a zine.

Although the zine isn’t going to happen this quarter, I’m using this quarter to make a test zine where I can make a bunch of mistakes (see project one), before I do it “properly” next quarter.

Once again though, the idea is this isn’t going to be a quick thing where I go “hey, look at this thing I’ve made”, but rather a longer thing where I go “hey, look at this tiny amount of progress I’ve made”.

So we’ll see how that works out.

More next newsletter (or maybe not) and on the social media.

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# THE END

I said this one was going to be short and here we are already, delightfully at the end, go us! I shan't take up any more of your time, because let’s face it, we’ve both got to get on.

I will see you again in the next newsletter with MORE zine, MORE pen plot project, and MORE value, on the 23rd of January.

Love you all, and stay awesome,
Dan
❤️