We spoke with the Manchester based creative duo DR.ME to learn more about FIN?, the zine where all their rejected and and killed work ends up. Fin? is pure visual mayhem, and we love it. And they’re available for download for free.
TWS –Hi! Can you tell us about the idea behind Fin? ?
The idea came about after a realisation that when it came to creating work for client and personal projects we always ended up with a lot of rejected work that would sit in plan chests or hard-drives and never see the light of day or be repurposed for another job somewhere down the line. We weren’t really into this idea of using work created for something else for something else and wanted to create a place where this rejected and killed work could live and in doing so would force us to constantly make new work for upcoming projects, so we decided to put together a monthly PDF Zine of killed.rejected or forgotten work from the studio each month which would be available to download and P.I.Y (Print it yourself) Then every 6 months we would take the ‘greatest hits’ and reproduce in a printed publication.
TWS –What is that attracts you the most of sharing b-sides and discarded images?
I think it’s mostly for personal reasons so that we didn’t just sit on discarded work waiting for the opportunity to use it. It challenged us to constantly think of new ideas, new techniques therefore pushing our creative practice and keeping things exciting for us. It would of been a lot easier for us to not do this and maybe some times jobs would of been quicker but that’s exactly the reason we done it, to keep us on our toes + some time a lot of the rejected work is actual our favourite work so seemed a shame to not release into the world.
TWS –Do you feel that somehow projects like Fin? are important in terms of cutting the value of success by sharing things that somehow went wrong through the process but that can still be great? Which are your thoughts about this? What ideas of failure or success has FIn?’s concept?
I think it can be important to share failures or rejected works but I think theres two view points, one is ours that is pushes your practice, forces you to constantly think of new ideas and allows peers/students an insight into your creative practice albeit one that has been deemed wrong (in someones eyes) but by doing this you are turning your “failures “ into success, another view point taken by some artist and designers is to hold back all your work for creative integrity by sharing failures you are therefore lessening your real work, I understand this idea but I sit more in the sharing is caring camp for all the reasons I said previously.
TWS –Fin started as a free limited download zine and now you opened all your catalogue for download. Why did you decide to limit the distribution initially? And what made you change your mind now?
We decided to limit it initially because even though it was free we wanted it to still feel a little exclusive to give the work some value, I think with it being limited to a set amount of downloads for the people who received each issue it made it feel a little more special? maybe haha, but yeah after we stopped it in 2019 we had a lot of requests for random previous issues then this whole stay at home era hit and it seemed like a good time to make the entire back catalogue available for anyone who missed it first time round + with everyone having a little bit more spare time on their hands and being stuck at home maybe it might of been appreciated
TWS –Now you have shared the whole Fin? back catalogue, how do you feel when seeing the first issues?
I think the quality of work is pretty consistent throughout, so its not like shocking or anything to see the first issues, some issues are better than others some of the work is better than others but that was the point of FIN? it’s sort of unedited, rough around the edges, behind the wizards sleeve work from the studio, so it has a raw energy to it that I think makes it what it is, After putting the back catalogue together I think we were both impressed at the sheer amount of work in the issues, it turned out to be 540 print-ready artworks over 29 P.I.Y Issues and 5 printed issues!
TWS –What’s next for DR.ME in 2020?
Currently writing, designing, curating, editing, thinking about the first DR.ME book documenting the first 10 years of the studio, so pretty excited about that one, and just navigating this new world together one day at a time.
Get your FIN?s back catalogue here
And check out DR.ME’s work here
