Growing up in San Diego in the seventies and eighties, it was hard to avoid zines... if you had the right friends. I admit it. I spent most of my hard earned dish washing dough on artsy import albums, and bought the occasional Euro-punk rock rag for a Suzie and the Banshees poster, latest on the Damned or GBH. My friends, the avant garde of SoCal dorks - getting their asses kicked for their clothing and hairstyles - preferred dirty American punk. They brought Thrasher, Search and Destroy and dozens of short-lived handmade photocopied fanzines to the park where we smoked bongs made from tin cans and drank Mickey’s Bigmouth. These were black and white affairs, printed on newsprint, with a thin glossy cover, lots of photos opining and spelling errors.

Many zines were devoted to Punk Rock and Skateboards, but some covered traditional rock and roll. Trouser Press was still kind of a zine back then. I got the Iggy issue - or one of dozens of Iggy issues. Trouser Press was cool because it covered bands that bridged rock and punk rock, like the Dead Boys and Stooges. Crawdaddy was a rock zine, with a very seventies look, if I recall correctly.

Apparently this zine Giant Robot was the first local media publication to turn its attention to a lot of contemporary fads, like music and Japanese culture. I’d heard of it, but by the mid nineties I was a bit past my youth culture prime. Not that I was ever so on top of things. Culture experimentation was something I waded into. I bought one band’s records and then all their records.

So about 20 years after my graduation from high-school I find myself standing in the Sawtelle Giant Robot asking Eric Nakamura about his fascination with cultural fetishism and his feelings about the corporate capitalization of cool. No American teenager growing up today can ever experience culture the way my friends and I did. MTV, Nike, and Geffen changed the face of American cool. My fellow students at Art Center buy faux vintage clothing at Urban Outfitters, listen to alternative music that is mainstream and get cool T-shirts and ephemera at stores like Giant Robot. Twenty years ago my friends were ridiculed for listening to the same music and buying their clothing at the Salvation Army.

Kids growing up today don’t even know what a flipside is.

Giant Robot is a transmedia enterprise: zine to store to gallery and beyond. They’re DIY beginnings are admirable but hardly unique. Surfer, Thrasher and Flipside all started from meager beginnings. Flipside began as a skate/punk rock magazine, started producing videotapes of concerts, records and eventually had a logo designed by Tolleson. So where are they now?

The lesson of Flipside and Giant Robot, for designers and anyone else for that matter, is to do what interests you and follow up on opportunies. Neither company set out to become a transmedia organization. They followed their passion where it led them. That doesn’t mean one shouldn’t make plans based on the experiments of these publications. You need a good idea first... something you care about and want to pursue. Don’t work backwards with the goal of creating an entertainment empire. Follow your bliss. DIY.