# Riot Grrrl Zine (ライオット・ガール・ジン)

> Cuts and pastes handwritten and typed words, then copies them as they are, keeping the photocopier's crushed blacks and the crooked page.

- IndexStyle No.116 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/riot-grrrl-zine
- Kind: Style · Family: Publishing and Editing · Era: 1990s
- Mood: Rebellion, Intimacy, Play
- What this family collects: Work that bets on the bound and distributed page, from monastery manuscripts to stapled zines, where the scale of the maker varies but editorial judgment shapes the object.

## Defining characteristics

- Handwriting mixed with typewriting
- Shadows along the pasted edges
- Crushed blacks and coarse grain
- Pages copied while still crooked

## Best used for

- Writers inside a punk scene setting down what happened to them in the first person and handing it out themselves
- Claims no commercial magazine will carry, put into manifestos and calls to action and passed out at shows

## Composition recipe

- Typography & lettering: Write the declarations in large capitals by hand and paste the rest in as typed pages
- Layout & structure: Treat the spread as one sheet and favor filling it over leaving margin
- Material & texture: Coarse photocopy tone, staple binding, the shadows of cut edges left in

## Colour

Read off the reference works below, so a direction rather than a fixed palette.

- Ground: #ece8dd
- The colour it is remembered by: #c9403b
- Text and outlines: #171615

## What to avoid

Copying the coarse photocopy look alone gets nowhere without the writing itself, in which the maker gives a name and speaks in the first person.

## Application checklist

Work through this before calling a piece an application of this style.

- [ ] Visible in the piece: Handwriting mixed with typewriting
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Shadows along the pasted edges
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Crushed blacks and coarse grain
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Pages copied while still crooked
- [ ] The layout follows: Treat the spread as one sheet and favor filling it over leaving margin
- [ ] The lettering follows: Write the declarations in large capitals by hand and paste the rest in as typed pages
- [ ] The material and surface follow: Coarse photocopy tone, staple binding, the shadows of cut edges left in
- [ ] The colour relation holds: #ece8dd as ground, #c9403b carrying the style, #171615 for text and outlines
- [ ] At least one reference work below has been studied directly
- [ ] The caution above ("What to avoid") has been addressed

## Related styles

- **Punk (パンク)** — A DIY objection to the authority of the tidy, made by cutting, pasting and dirtying. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/punk
- **Risograph (リソグラフ)** — Keeps the per-color plates and their happy misregistration, giving each copy its own body heat. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/risograph

## Compose it with something else

The dictionary can put this entry in a structural role and another in an accent role, and report where the two fight: https://indexstyle.org/compose?ids=riot-grrrl-zine+punk

## Further study

- Bikini Kill
- riot grrrl zines
- self-publishing

## Reference works

- UK punk fanzine — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A%20Selection%20of%20UK%20Punk%20Fanzines.jpg
- 1970s fanzine (CC BY 2.0) — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1970s%20fanzines%20(21224199545).jpg
- LA Zine Fest 2017 (CC BY-SA 4.0) — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LA%20Zinefest%202017.jpg

## Source of record

- Barnard Zine Library, Barnard College — https://zines.barnard.edu/

## Machine surfaces

- JSON: https://indexstyle.org/api/styles/riot-grrrl-zine
- Image-generation prompt (legally clean): https://indexstyle.org/styles/riot-grrrl-zine/prompt.txt
- MCP: https://indexstyle.org/mcp (tools: search_styles, get_style, compare_styles, compose_styles, find_related_styles; prompts: image-prompt, apply-style)