Michael Sun is a writer and designer from Sydney who loves beautiful dogs and ugly fonts. He’s currently the Voiceworks designer, and his work on the intersection between pop culture, race, and queerness has been published in VICE, Overland, Junkee, and Hello Mr. Currently, he’s trying to remember the username of the One Direction fan Instagram he managed at the age of 15. If you know it, tweet it to him @mlchaelsun.
When and why did you start making zines?
I’ve always, always loved zines, but ‘In the Coromandel’ is my first one! It arose after a trip to New Zealand this February, where I expected (probably too naively) to find inspiration in the natural surrounds of where I was staying, but instead I felt weirdly empty, like there was a strange fog over me the entire time. I made ‘In the Coromandel’ as an attempt to understand and memorialise that mood.
What is your favourite thing about zines?
I’m obsessed with how little rules there are to zines…they’re one of the only creative outlets left ungoverned by anything except individual imagination! Some of the most innovative/wild/rebellious/deeply moving work I’ve seen has been from local zine-makers on a shoe-string budget; their accessibility is what makes them great.
Do you have a favourite zine (aside from your own!)? What is it and why do you like it?
Okay, definitely cheating but I have 2 tied favourites: one is Slow Dance by Joyce Cheng and Nicole Ho, a zine that doubles as an ode to THE most satisfying time of day — golden hour. It’s so soft and warm and sunlit and beautiful and lets me believe in a perpetual state of sunset. The other is Sweaty City, an upcoming publication that’s already one of the most exciting things to come out of Sydney (and it hasn’t even been released!!) It’s all about traversing Sydney’s terrain in terms of climate change, returning a very human view to an increasingly soulless city.
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