DESCRIPTION Ziegler Family Newsletter CLIENT Ziegler Family DATE Ongoing DESIGN CREDITS Nicole Ziegler TYPE CREDITS Brothers, Thyssen J, Cairo, Gloucester MT Ext, helvetica, Hoefler Text, and some of the headlines are scanned from old books and papers.

QUANTITY PRODUCED 8 per issue PRODUCTION COST $30 PRODUCTION TIME 3 hours DIMENSIONS: WIDTH × HEIGHT × DEPTH 10 in × 12.5 in PAGE COUNT 6 PAPER STOCK Newsprint NUMBER OF COLORS CMYK BINDING Sewing machine

It has never been as easy as it is now to be an up-to-date, spread-out family. I speak from experience, as my immediate family resides in three different countries, and those family members that follow are found in five different continents. Yet, it is amazing to see how easy it is to fall out of communication and not know what is going on with brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, parents, grandparents, grandchildren, etc. Nicole Ziegler opted to use an old trusted via of communication to fix the problem she found in her spread-out family.

My grandparents, specifically my grandfather inspired me to do this. For years when visiting family, whenever my grandparents were asked how a relative was doing or what’s going on with a cousin, etc, my grandparent’s favorite response was always “I don’t know anything honey I’m just a mushroom” (meaning they, like mushrooms, are kept in the dark about what’s going on). So last Christmas when I was home visiting, the phrase of the week whenever family news was mentioned was “put it in the mushroom Gazette”. So after returning home to Chicago from visiting family in New Jersey, I decided to bring the Mushroom Gazette to life as a way to keep all of our family informed and updated about what’s going on in everyone’s life. I sent out a postcard a while before the first issue announcing the Mushroom Gazette and asking for submissions. Family members could submit news stories, birthdays or anniversaries, upcoming events, wanted or for sale ads, pretty much anything they wanted. Once I received all the content and added my own, I assembled the newsletter, printed them and sent them out to each family member.

I produce these entirely by hand. Each issue only needs about 10 copies (so each family household gets 1 copy) I cut newsprint down to size, print the pages on my epson printer at home. Then I run each copy through a sewing machine for the binding.

I’d like for the newsletters to allow our family to be connected a little more — we don’t get to see each other as often as we’d like so this hopefully is a way to keep up to date with what’s going on.

The best part, in my opinion, is the ability family members will have to consult the “archives” to check dates, remember certain events, recall photos, and all those things that have a special sentimental value in each individual.