Fact or Folklore?

Alongside my illustrations in the zine, I want some form of language or text to be used in the publication.

I mentioned my interest in doing this in my learning agreement that I published some time ago now, and a snippet of the agreement can be seen below.

The image below is a good example of how illustrations and text can work alongside each other, however, bear in mind that my zine will no where near include the level of text found in the image, it just acts as a good example.

https://aniwu.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/book-page-design2.png < image reference at this link.

I could perhaps wrap the text around the illustration, which may make it easier to follow, and allow for the eyes to be forced/drawn to look at the illustration.
it is also a more interesting way of displaying text.

Now, there are two main options that I could go down in terms of which theme I could base the text around.

The first one is fact, and I will display the pros and cons of using this theme below.

Fact:

The theme of fact is very straightforward, and also to the point.

It acts as a means to provide educational information, and can be engaging to the reader if done in the right way.

Pros:

• Easy to understand
• To the point
• Educational

Cons:

• Doesn't lead to the imagination
• Quite a basic idea
• Perhaps less exciting/interesting to some?

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The second theme that I could use, is that of Folklore.

Folklore:

Folklore is more on the side of fantasy, and also mythological.
Folklore has had a long social history within the arts and literature, and for example, a lot of Japanese, and old european artwork contains elements of folklore.

Pros:

• May be more interesting than fact?
• Leads to the imagination
• May attract more to the younger part of my 16-24 target audience.
• Big market for fantasy

Cons:

• Is non-educational
• Provides inaccurate information

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There is another route that I can go down, and that is the route of highlighting various features of each creature.

Features:

All animals have various features.
Squirrels have bushy tails, mice are curious and small, snakes look very cunning, and sometimes evil/scary etc.

Pros:

• Straightforward
• May be more interesting than fact?
• Perhaps somewhat educational if used correctly.
• Leads to the imagination, although not as much as pure folklore.
• May attract more to the younger part of my 16-24 target audience.

Cons:

• Quite a basic idea

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In conclusion, I really do express interest in the theme of using folklore inside my zine, as I feel that it will benefit appeal to my relatively young target market.
Fact is fact, but folklore is weird, strange and very interesting, and it has been a large part of our culture for millennia.
I feel that using the theme of folklore, and fantasy may make my zine more interesting, unique, and also more fun to create.

I have also decided that in any case I cant seem to find any folklore on a particular animal, I will just fall back on highlighting any traits, or features that I feel would be interesting to document to the reader.

Thomas.