Brand Names
Brand Names
Billy McCall
I'm obsessed with language and how it weaves in and out of our culture, and one aspect I find interesting is when a brand name product becomes a generic term. There are a lot more of them than you might think. So I started looking into them and giving a brief history. I love educational zines!
I did all the writing, and then a rad new friend of mine, named Sully, did the illustrations. Check out their stuff here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/kaijucabal/?etsrc=sdt
It turns out that weeks of writing and drawing was the EASY part of this project, because then Sully and I decided to print this on a Risograph! For those who don't know, a Riso is similar to a copy machine, but uses a slightly different process. So here you go, a 2-color educational Riso-zine!
This zine is half-size, 16 pages long, with red and black on every page. It tells a brief, but true, story of 11 different products whose names we commonly use as generic terms. Things like Rollerblade and Xerox.
The first print-run was 300, back in Dec of 2022. We sold out of those in about 3 months. This is the second printing, of an additional 300. For $4 it's all yours, a great price which includes shipping. Enjoy!
