// design system //
A design system for the DIY underground. No rules. No permission. Just a photocopier and a bad attitude.
High-contrast xerox black and white as the foundation. Accents come from whatever was lying around the copy shop -- safety-pink highlighters, yellow markers, red spray paint, and strips of blue masking tape.
Six wildly different typefaces crammed together like cut-out letters glued to a page. The deliberate mismatch IS the system. Creepster screams headlines, Special Elite hammers out body copy, Permanent Marker scrawls notes in the margins.
The core zine aesthetic: every word cut from a different source and pasted together.
Even chaos has a grid underneath. A 4px base unit keeps the entropy just structured enough to hold together, like staples barely holding a 40-page zine.
Every button is a call to action scrawled on a flyer. Rough edges, hand-drawn energy, and a satisfying mechanical snap on hover. Click it like you are slamming a stamp down.
Data entry with typewriter grit. Every field feels like filling in a photocopied order form at a record swap. Heavy borders, sharp focus states, hand-written labels.
Content containers that look like scraps of paper taped and stapled to a corkboard. Each one slightly askew, slightly different, like pages torn from different zines and pinned together.
The whole point is that nobody gave you permission. You took the photocopier, you wrote the words, you stapled the pages together yourself.
When the content is too raw for daylight. White text on black, like a negative exposure or a redacted government document.
Layered backgrounds, angled text, fragments of other things peeking through. Nothing is clean. Everything is intentional.
Cards can also serve as miniature concert flyers or event announcements, using the full zine aesthetic toolkit.
Friday Feb 21
w/ Minor Threat + Bad Brains
The Mab, 443 Broadway, SF
Doors 8pm / $5 / All Ages
Saturday Feb 22
w/ Circle Jerks + Descendents
Whisky a Go Go, LA
Doors 9pm / $3 / BYO
Messages that refuse to be filed away politely. Thick left-border accents, typewriter text, and the unmistakable feeling of a note slipped under your door.
Info
Next issue deadline is Friday. Send submissions to PO Box 1977 or slide them under the door at Gilman Street.
Success
Your zine has been accepted into the distro. Print run of 200 confirmed. Pick them up Saturday after the show.
Warning
The photocopier at the community center is almost out of toner. Bring your own or prepare for faded copies.
Danger
Show cancelled. Venue shut down by fire marshal. Meet at the backup spot. You know where. Tell no one.
Scrawled Note
This variant looks like someone scribbled a warning in the margin of your zine with a red marker at 4am.
Scraps, cut-outs, and fragments arranged on a surface like a collage board. Some taped, some just lying there. Hover to see them shift -- nothing is permanently fixed down.
Small labels, tags, and status indicators. Like the stickers slapped on a guitar case, a laptop lid, or the back of a bathroom stall. Hover to peel them off the page.
The ultimate test of the zine-punk design system: a complete concert flyer built from all the components. Black border, dashed inner frame, stacked type in clashing fonts, a big price badge, and that unmistakable xeroxed energy.
Gilman Street Presents
Flyer design: photocopied 200x at 3am. Quality may vary.