Art party to make Slingshot issue #127

Slingshot is an independent radical newspaper published in Berkeley since 1988. This issue will mark the 30th year in print.

Spend an hour or all day Saturday and Sunday (noon - late) making the layout, writing headlines, and creating art. Slingshot makes the paper by hand, meaning that each page is physically pasted together by cutting up the text, graphics and hand-drawn headlines and gluing them together with sticky wax. This gives the paper the Slingshot look but also makes the process more collective and accessible, since you don't have to know particular computer programs or have other special skills to make a page. In a world choking on standardization and computerization, making art by hand is personally liberating and embodies the world Slingshot is creating.

During layout weekend, people take one or more pages to design, which they do individually, but everyone is hanging around together at the Long Haul while it is happening. We eat together, take turns being DJ, gossip and joke, and people come and go throughout the weekend. Meetings to decide what colors to use and other topics happen around mealtimes. Layout is kind of like a party with pens, rulers and razor blades.