Case Study - Hoodie Mag

This case study examines how a publishing project’s collaborative and joint authorship dynamics support young artists in building artistic agency and status. It specifically references the 2017 edition of Hoodie Mag.

Hoodie Mag is a collaborative youth arts magazine. It combines literary, visual, interactive and digital creations within a group presentation. It is published in both printed and electronic format and has been in development since 2010. This case study begins by historically contextualising magazine design and publication, focusing on the zine and little magazine. This is followed by a brief account of Hoodie Mag’s foundation story. A discussion around the collaborative and joint authorship dynamics that are mainly responsible for the building of artistic agency and status, in this case, completes the study.

The magazine is a form of communication and an art medium incorporating various social, cultural, political and creative forms of expression. One of the earliest examples of the magazine is Erbauliche Monaths Unterredungen (Edifying Monthly Discussions), a German philosophy periodical issued from 1663 to 1668.[1] Edward Cave, who founded The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1731, was the first to use the term magazine, a term derived from the Arabic word makhzan, which means storehouse. A storehouse is a repository or container that makes space for numerous items or components. Cave saw his literary magazine as a container for multiple written works.[2] Modern-day magazines are viewed as containers for an eclectic array of visual, literary, social, cultural, political and experimental content.[3]

Many artists have experimented with magazine publishing, often making do-it-yourself zines or little magazines, both of which are characterised as small, often hand-made, outsider publications. Zines and little magazines are published irregularly and generally have short life spans. They are known for what author Gwen Allen describes as innovative and idiosyncratic design and culturally meaningful content, which attracts the interest of receptive communities and counter-publics.[4] Although primarily seen as outsider modes of communication and presentation, zines and little magazines are important alternative spaces for conceptual art and social action,[5] generating valuable discourse and creative practice. The accessible format of the zine and little magazine has seen the two forms develop into powerful sites for the production and reception of contemporary art and the building of community, identity, and solidarity.[6] One of the most ardent supporters of zine and little magazine culture is Melbourne’s internationally renowned Sticky Institute, operating since 2001.

Hoodie Mag is a little magazine. It isn’t hand-made, but it is self-published. Little magazines are often circulated for free or with small cover prices. Hoodie Mag is a free publication, printed irregularly (when funding permits) and distributed throughout a growing network of young artists, community and industry supporters. Its main distribution goal is to ensure that its youth audience has free and easy access to it. It eschews advertising, preferring to present itself as a dedicated arts magazine rather than a more commercial publication.

Radical publishing practices are often associated with self-publishing and zine culture, as artists and authors become creators, designers, producers, printers, publishers and distributors. Underground feminist punk movement Riot Grrrl[7] once proclaimed, “[w]e must take over the means of production in order to create our own meanings…”[8] A comparative example of radical self-empowerment through self-publishing can be found in Emily Roydson’s LTTR art journal project, produced in the early 2000s. LTTR, or Lesbians to the Rescue, was a New York-based feminist gender-queer magazine whose aim was not simply to document or chronicle artistic and activist work but to “bring it into being.”[9] Hoodie Mag has a similar self-empowerment agenda. Instead of just documenting or chronicling the work of young artists, Hoodie Mag brings artistic agency and status into being via its edgy, united front approach to production and presentation. The title of this collaborative publication also advances this edgy tone and united front approach. The hoodie (slang for a hooded sweatshirt) is often worn by and associated with young people. This association is not always a positive one. Using the name in a provocative but affirmative way helps reframe its negative implications. tbC also embraces the concept of ‘the hood’ as a provocative but affirmative characterisation of its members as a ‘gang’ of young artists united in making and presenting art. The deliberately subversive tone established by the magazine’s name extends throughout the design, content and presentation of Hoodie Mag, attracting attention and interest well beyond the community it emerges from.

While individual artists and their artworks are identifiable within the metaphorical storehouse or container of Hoodie Mag, this collection constitutes more than a group of individual artists authoring and presenting artworks within the collective space. The concept of the gestalt more accurately characterises the communal effort behind the making of Hoodie Mag and the artistic agency and status it delivers. Gestaltism[10] provides a framework for understanding critical thinking (and, in this case, making) at the group level.[11] It describes something that is more than the sum of its parts. Hoodie Mag’s gestaltian spirit supports the publication’s united front approach to making and presenting art. Collective power results from this collaborative production and joint presentation of artistic work, leveraging the young artists involved an agency and status they have trouble building alone. The recurring, evaluative, creative and dialogical data found within the making and publishing of Hoodie Mag verifies this claim. The making, thinking and dialoguing that goes on during the creation and subsequent presentation of Hoodie Mag reveals specific knowledge about what it is like to be a young artist and how a collaborative arts publishing practice helps them build artistic agency and status. This data amounts to what academics Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire and Maria Tamboukou call valuable “routes to understanding.”[12] These routes to understanding service the ongoing creative development of the young artists involved and those interested in learning from the Hoodie Mag experience.

As with tbC, the broader community often sees Hoodie Mag as the artist, reinforcing the project’s collective identity and collaborative manifestation. Artist Charles Green writes about this in the context of his artistic collaboration with Lyndell Brown, describing the duos group process as producing an independent force that emerges through collaboration.[13] Green calls this independent force the third hand, one that both comprises and transcends the two of them.[14] Educator Loris Malaguzzi theorised a similar independent force within the context of his Reggio Emilia approach to learning in the classroom. For Malaguzzi, the teacher, the student, and the learning environment itself (what he refers to as the third teacher) combine to produce a welcoming, aesthetically pleasing and culturally supportive educational environment that promotes relationships, communication, collaboration and exploration through play.[15] Hoodie Mag’s collaborative environment operates like Green’s third hand and Malaguzzi’s third teacher. The independent force that emerges from the embedded, durational and collective experience of making and publishing Hoodie Mag delivers young artists an agency and status they claim they can’t find in more structured, one-off or short-term arts programming or when working alone.

The following comparative example sets up a more nuanced discussion around how and why Hoodie Mag’s embedded, durational and collective approach to arts publishing supports the development of artistic agency and status.

There are few comparative examples of Australian publications like Hoodie Mag. One of the few is the Melbourne-based youth literary magazine Voiceworks, founded in 1985 by Express Media. Voiceworks creates a space for young writers (twenty-five and under) to develop professional creative and editorial skills and publish their work. It also views its young writers as valuable creators and participants within the larger arts community.[16] The publication is produced and edited by a group of young interns and volunteers. Together, this group assists in the reading, editing, and proofreading of submissions and the writing of feedback and planning of launches. The inclusion of young creatives in the organisation of the publication (as opposed to just the content) is similar to Hoodie Mag’s mode of operation. However, despite this extended involvement, what distinguishes Hoodie Mag from Voiceworks is that at Voiceworks, the contributor is often only connected to a single edition, not necessarily embedded in the project long-term, and they generally submit work that is already made. A formal review process also determines the success of submissions. At Hoodie Mag, young artist members are encouraged to embed themselves within the project for extended periods, driving and developing its ongoing publication. Moreover, participation does not involve formal review and selection processes. tbC artists generally make the works that go into Hoodie Mag together in the studio, or in the case of the magazine’s international contributors, through regular online contact. Either way, creative content makes its way into the magazine via collaborative and durational studio practice. Successful works are identified through this practice, with those resonating most with the Hoodie Mag cohort making their way into the final publication. The distinguishing feature of this content development and selection process is its in-practice modus operandi. Artists enact this process themselves – together– from within the Hoodie Mag project itself. However, although more structured and edition-based, Voiceworks’ collaborative tenets and commitment to developing the young writers’ artistic agency and status are comparable and the most closely aligned youth arts publishing project to Hoodie Mag.

Artists embedded in the Hoodie Mag project also collectively decide on the publication’s style, layout, presentation, format, and distribution. One of the project’s original members, Sonya, became a trained graphic designer during Hoodie Mag’s early years and is now the publications lead designer. One day, she mentioned in the studio that the most exciting part about leading the design of Hoodie Mag is the significant freedom she has to contribute to the publication’s overall look and feel. She also noted that she enjoys the opportunity to mentor other young designers in the process. Hoodie Mag’s design is a critical part of the prestige and interest the publication attracts. This design process includes significant experimentation in a bid to find different ways to connect with young artists, youth audiences, and cost-effective publishing solutions. This experimentation has led to all three versions of Hoodie Mag exploring digital design and production methods.

The first edition, produced in 2011, took the form of a more traditional, perfect bound book. The inside pages were glued together at the spine with a wrap-around cover made from heavier paper. Despite this conventional design, many readers reported that they dipped in and out of the pages in an informal, non-sequential way. The same principle applied (even more obviously) to the accompanying digital version – a website designed as a visual shelf from which the viewer could randomly choose articles. Sadly, the group forgot to archive this first web iteration. However, around this time, Hoodie Mag artists began to realise the importance of the companion website. This accompanying digital format reflects the group’s increasing interest in the online world of publishing. It also extends the project several additional benefits: the inclusion of digital and interactive content; updates outside a limited print run;[17] content creation and presentation in the absence of funding; wider distribution and audience engagement,[18] as well as the building of an archive of practice.

The second edition of Hoodie Mag, produced in 2017, was printed as a poster folded down to A5 size. Each A5 panel presented an artist and their work. Folding the poster in and out also felt like engaging with a tourist map. As young people often use public transport, the group felt this was a fitting association. The design also encourages a horizontal engagement with Hoodie Mag’s content, reinforcing the collective and egalitarian arts practice from which it emerges. This design idea was also motivated by limited print funding. The fold-out poster/map format is less expensive to print than the traditional book format. Moreover, the fold-out poster/map format feels more like a zine. Young artists are keen to link Hoodie Mag to this radical publishing genre as it reinforces the publication’s arts action around artistic agency and status. Like the zine, the poster is associated with radical ideas and causes. From its inception, during the 1870s, the poster has been viewed as a persuasive form of communication, action and protest, reflecting and shaping societies social, political and cultural mores.[19] Hoodie Mag’s connection to the political characteristics of the art poster further reinforces the publication’s arts action agenda around building artistic agency and status for young artists. However, while well-received, the 2017 edition of Hoodie Mag was not as successful as the first one, with anecdotal evidence pointing to an enduring enthusiasm for the traditional, hand-held and printed book format. Young artists also reported that their peers preferred the style of artistic content in the first edition, which focused more on artistic works than artist profiles.

The third edition of Hoodie Mag was smaller and presented entirely online. Limited funding was the key reason for this decision. Although the young artists involved in this edition were well received, presenting edgy, creative identities and accomplished artistic practices, the fully digital approach proved less successful than the combined printed and digital presentation format. Readers confirmed that they missed the hand-held paper version of the magazine. Despite this feedback, the visual, digital and interactive potential of online publishing is likely to be part of the solution to Hoodie Mag’s sustainability. Like magazine makers worldwide, Hoodie Mag has been experimenting with how digital design tools and techniques can support a more sustainable publishing future. However, while “e-books are rapidly challenging the traditional publishing market globally,”[20] most publishers are not ready to completely abandon the more intimate, material experience of the hand-held printed publication. Designer-researcher Thaís Cristina Martino Sehn supports this belief, noting that while the contemporary reader welcomes a combination of digital and paper publications in their lives, their desire for printed books is still strong.[21] Shona Martyn, a reporter from The Age newspaper in Melbourne, concurs, declaring in the headline of an article she wrote about publishing trends of the last decade that “[t]he print book has survived and the e-book has plateaued.”[22] Martyn also reported growth within the small book publishing sector here in Melbourne.[23] Publishers have been engaging in the print versus digital publishing debate for years now, with the pendulum swinging back and forth as the two forms of publication are pitted against one another in a never-ending examination of which is better.[24] Hoodie Mag hosted a forum to explore this contemporary debate publicly and plans to host more in the future. This forum and Hoodie Mag’s ongoing experimentation have reinforced the benefits of a combined print and digital approach to magazine design and publication and the idea that print and digital publishing can co-exist.[25]

tbC is in the process of developing the fourth edition of Hoodie Mag. While the group has not yet confirmed the final format of this edition, a return to the traditional book format is likely. Limited funding has been secured for this edition; however, its success will depend on prudent design decisions and a smaller print run. A smaller print run will be offset by a companion website that ensures the publications wider distribution. This return to the original format will see Hoodie Mag presenting young artists’ work instead of their profiles. Early discussions centre around the idea that the companion website will include artist profiles and the stories behind the making of these artworks, as well as extended digital and interactive content.

Over the years, Hoodie Mag has developed into a visible arts publishing project, challenging the boundaries of its outsider status. This visibility is evidenced in the public accolade and publishing award nominations the publication has received. The inaugural edition of Hoodie Mag was shortlisted in the 60th annual Australian Publisher Association’s Book Design Awards for Best Designed Specialist Illustrated Book 2012. It also received a finalist nomination for Best New Publication For and By Young People Under 30 in the Express Media Literary Book Awards in December 2011. Readers applaud the publication for its intelligence, the heart-warming social and cultural content it delivers, and the more ambitious conceptual elements it experiments with, like the minimalist front cover of the first edition, which has been likened to the Beetles White Album. Other endorsements come from the many people who note they have a copy of Hoodie Mag on their bedside tables or in their ‘loos.’ tbC artists find the fact that people are reading Hoodie Mag while on the toilet highly amusing and strangely complimentary. (Interestingly, there is academic literature around the subject of TR, short for Toilet Reading).

Hoodie Mag’s growing success assertively positions young artists within the arts publishing sector, subverting traditional boundaries to artworld respect and recognition. The agency and status that develops from this positioning result from what academic Wouter de Nooy calls the “dynamics of artistic prestige”[26] – dynamics that Malaguzzi argues link artistic practice and presentation to artistic agency and status.[27] tbC created Hoodie Mag as a platform to collaboratively present and position the young artist, showcasing the merit of their work and the potential they have to contribute to the artistic landscape. In this case, agency and status emerge from the interplay between young artists’ creativity and their opportunities to express this creativity. The group dynamic behind the design and presentation of Hoodie Mag provides added momentum to this building of artistic agency and status.

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[1] Jack Lule, "History of Magazines Publishing," in Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication (Boston: Flat World Knowledge, 2013); Andrew King, “Magazines, History of,” The International Encyclopedia of Communication, ed. Wolfgang Donsbach (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008) vol. VI: 2748-2752, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andrew-King-9/publication/259338585_International_history_of_magazines/links/5f1adebda6fdcc9626ad4b62/International-history-of-magazines.pdf.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Elinor Ochs, "Narrative," in Discourse as Structure and Process: Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, eds. T. A. van Dijk, 201 (London: Sage Publications Ltd, 1997), https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446221884.n7.
[4] Gwen Allen, ed. The Magazine: Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art, (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2016), 14.
[5] Ochs, "Narrative." 201.
[6] Allen, The Magazine, 15.
[7] Riot Grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that began during the early 1990s.
[8] Kathleen Hanna, "Riot Grrrl Manifesto." Bikini Kill Zine 2, 1991.
[9] Emily Roysdon, "Lesbians to the Rescue," LTTR no. 1, published 2002, http://threeletterwords.org/programme/.
[10] Gestaltism is a school of psychology that emerged in Austria and Germany in the early twentieth century based on work by Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka (1935). See, Robert J. Sternberg and Karin Sternberg, Cognitive Psychology (Belmont: California Cengage Learning, 2012), 113–116. ISBN 978-1-133-31391-5.
[11] Orlando Olivares, "Collaborative Critical Thinking: Conceptualising and Defining a New Construct From Known Constructs." Issues In Educational Research 15, no. 1 (2005), 86-100, http://www.iier.org.au/iier15/olivares.html.
[12] Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire and Maria Tamboukou, eds. Doing Narrative Research (California: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2008), 5.
[13] Charles Green, The Third Hand: Collaboration in Art from Conceptualism to Postmodernism (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2001), 179.
[14] Ibid., 1 and 179.
[15] Reggio Emilia, "The Environment as Third Teacher," accessed April 26, 2019, https://reggioemilia2015.weebly.com/environment-as-a-third-teacher.html.
[16] "About Voiceworks," Voiceworks, accessed January 23, 2020, https://www.voiceworksmag.com.au/about-voiceworks.
[17] Print runs usually amount to 1000 copies.
[18] Hanna-Kaisa Ellonen, Anssi Tarkiainen & Olli Kuivalainen, "The Effect of Magazine Web Site Usage on Print Magazine Loyalty," The International Journal on Media Management 12, no. 1 (2010): 22, https://doi.org/10.1080/14241270903502994. According to a recent industry report (International Federation of the Periodical Press, 2007), magazine websites often attract significant new audiences.
[19] Margaret Timmers, Power of the Poster (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003), abstract.
[20] Chiang-nan Chao, Niall Hegarty and Abraham Stefanidis, "Global Impacts and Challenges of Paperless Books: A Preliminary Study," International Journal of Business and Social Science 3, no. 11 (June 2012): 115, http://ijbssnet.com/view.php?u=https://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol_3_No_11_June_2012/14.pdf.
[21] Thaís Cristina Martino Sehn and Suely Fragoso, "The Synergy Between eBooks and Printed Books in Brazil," Online Information Review 39, no. 3 (2015): abstract, https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-01-2015-0006.
[22] Shona Martyn, "Book Trends of the Decade: Erotica, Colouring Books and Aussie Noir," The Age, December 27, 2019, 2:23pm, https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/book-trends-of-the-decade-erotica-colouring-books-and-aussie-noir-20191226-p53mxz.html.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Christine Mokoginta, "Print Vs Digital Magazines: What do Readers Prefer?" MagLoft, July 16, 2018, https://www.magloft.com/blog/print-vs-digital-magazines-what-do-readers-prefer/.
[25] Chao, et al., "Global Impacts and Challenges of Paperless Books: 115. A comment inspired by this source.
[26] Wouter de Nooy, "The Dynamics of Artistic Prestige," Poetics 30, no. 3 (June 2002): abstract, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-422X(01)00044-4.
[27] Reggio Emilia, "The Environment as Third Teacher."