The amount of pictures I’ve been accumulating is slowly becoming a problem. My girlfriend was asking me why my entire camera roll is full of freight trains & monikers. I said I was documenting all of the awesome artwork that rolls into town. Both good artwork & chicken-scratch! I like the term “Civilian graffiti” because its people doing graffiti, but they have no formal training or practice to make it look semi-decent. I kept asking myself what am I doing with all of this content? I can’t possibly upload everything to my Instagram! I would lose my self-identity & narrative I’ve created for my online profile. What could I do with all of these that would tell a narrative on the amazing artwork that comes into Western Mass? Then it hit me, why I don’t make another zine?!
My first zine was a product of my environment & how I found the passion & hobby of freight trains. I love painting them, seeing them, hearing them, & weirdly enough the smell the comes with it. I would walk the tracks to find the latest & greatest in my area. I was seeing a few trains a week & slowly compiling pictures to use for a zine. At the rate I was collecting pictures, I would only have enough pictures for a small zine & I would have to hand-select the ones I liked the most. I wanted a product that could be sold & used by people in the community. I didn’t even know if I would be able to fulfill orders! I just shot my shot & would figure it out as I went along.
I did research on the types of paper I could use & the different weights. Which ones looked the best when folded in half & what would the overhead cost be to make them. After a little bit of trial & error, I was hitting the ground running & promoting my zine on every social media platform I could think of. I sold a good amount of copies & tracked which copy went where. I wanted to have a catalog that I could show potential publishers & other writers that I have a record of selling the products I make. It wasn’t the best produced, it wasn’t super fancy, & it didn’t feature written words from anyone else but myself. It was only $3 but I sold more than I thought I would. The concept works & people can be interested if I tweak a few things & look at other zines for inspiration.
Download my FREE template of blank freight trains (Here) practice & create on real backdrops of the urban environment
I saw people supporting other zines that had more pages & content/interviews from graffiti writers. I purchased a couple of zines myself to see if there were ideas that I could use. The biggest piece of content that I want to use is the involving other graffiti writers to partake in the making of it. Whether it be an interview or pictures from other people, the number one piece of information I took from my research is collaboration. If you want it to work & you want to build an audience, you have to collaborate with others. This is when I started asking people to write for my Substack. I knew other graffiti writers that have a voice & a irregularly shared their writings online. I wanted to give them a space to build a new audience & share their stories.
So far only Humn has taken me up on this offer, but his two posts have done tremendously well in terms of views. From the feedback that I’ve gotten, people loved the older pictures of graffiti. They loved seeing stuff that isn’t around anymore & gave them a sense of nostalgia. They got to see pieces from writers who have since passed away, breathing new life into their names & legacies. As someone who is in the process of documenting graffiti in Western Mass, his albums of pictures are one of the most valuable sources of history I own. He’s gone through the legwork of archiving tons of pictures & labeling most of them by artist name. I would love to make a zine dedicated to all of those pictures & host an interview with Humn as a way of saying thank you.
While I understand collaboration is a key to success, I find the ability to make things yourself, a gift & a talent. These two newest zines, Freights in Flight 1 & 2, are strictly pictures of freight trains for the purists. No words or other content, just trains by various artists spotted here in Western Mass. These zines are printed on double-sided glossy 32lb paper, pictures on the front & back pages printed with a white border. Photographed, edited, printed, & stapled by me. Only 75 of each zine will be made. Each order comes with 2 custom USPS Label 228 stickers & 1 blank version to experiment on.
Just dropped the latest 2 zines on my online store! Freights in Flight 1 & 2 available for only $5 a piece: (Here)
All proceeds from these zines will be recycled into the next project! Support an artist attempting to break free from the struggles of working a 9-5 job for a corporation that only sees dollar signs & employees as a means to an end. I have 2 more zines in the works, once solely focused on the moniker culture & the next Freights in Flight zine. Once I work up the courage from the fear of rejection, I will be reaching out to other artists with the hopes of getting insight into their artistic journeys & endeavors.
Please feel free to reach out to me via email or in the comments section. I wish success & mental wealth for all of you.
Peace & Love from the 413