Following a residency at Stairwell Los Angeles, all 13 issues of loud papera Los Angelesbased architecture zine dedicated to increasing the volume of architectural discourse, published by Mimi Zeiger over an 11-year periodare now freely accessible online at the Peoples Graphic Design Archive (PGDA). Louise Sandhaus, a co-director of the PGDA, told AN that she envisioned the crowd-sourced virtual archive, which exhibits more than 10,000 graphic design documents, as a platform for showing the expansiveness of cultural representations, with the intention of hopefully inspiring people to not feel pinned down in any certain orientation or aesthetic. Sandhaus reflected back on it as an online resource as easy to use as Wikipedia or Fontsinuse, a typography-based archive.Loud paper fits into the ethos as a demonstration of late 1990s and early 2000s collage-style graphic design, heavily inspired by some of the greats of the era, including April Grieman, one of Zeigers former instructors at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Looking back on them now as graphic objects, she explained, they seem so of their time in a way that makes them useful within a graphic design history, as representative of some of the influences, whether that was other publications like Wet or Emma Gray, or even the work coming out of something like Wallpaper. The graphic treatment of text, images, and their interrelationships visible across the staples of every page are, indeed, loud.In addition to the 13 issues, the scans include a poster advertising the first call for submissions seeking work from students, architects, educators, girls about town, dear Johns, and critics. (CourtesyPeoples Graphic Design Archive)Zeiger, an independent writer, curator, and former West Coast editor of The Architects Newspaper, published the first issue by hand as a graduate student at SCI-Arc in 1997. Using the school Xerox machine, she hand-bound each copy and even hand-placed the inserts designed to elicit surprise to the hundreds of subscribers that flipped through its pages.The zine came out of a punk scene ethos, Zeiger explained over Zoom. I had been reading up on that ethos while also trying to practice it by making loud paper what we would now call open source to counteract some of the barriers to entry that I saw within the architecture profession, keeping out young writers and emerging architects, who didnt really have another place to express themselves. The first page of the first issue announces that the zine is an outgrowth of a frustration caused by the stagnation of ordinary forms of architectural dialogue, designed to challenge the failed systems of glossy trade magazines which solely publish the big gun architects and academic journals which maintain the elitism of an overly intellectual language and the slowness of book publication. By a serendipitous illustration of her cause, loud paper came out the same year that the Bilbao Effect was born, following the completion of Frank Gehrys Guggenheim Museum Bilbao that would don the cover of virtually every glossy trade magazine in 1997.In addition to musings and confessions by various authors, nearly every issue featured a book review unfettered by the unspoken limitations imposed on larger magazines, offering unflinching takes on the significant works of the time, including Anthony Vidlers Warped Space and Joan Ockmans Out of Ground Zero. The zine acted as this filter for people who just kind of got it. We didnt have to say too much, and it became this really interesting mix of voices. Zeiger recently scanned the majority of documents related to loud paper as part of her residency at Stairwell, following one of two public events held last Novembertitled Reflections on Ephemera: Zine Culture, Materiality, and the Archivewhich brought her in a conversation with Sandhaus moderated by Wendy Gilmartin. In addition to the 13 issues, the scans include a poster advertising the first call for submissions seeking work from students, architects, educators, girls about town, dear Johns, and critics.Loud paper fits into the ethos as a demonstration of late 1990s and early 2000s collage-style graphic design. (Courtesy Peoples Graphic Design Archive)Each issue of loud paper brought together a mix of familiar names and characters that seem to have fallen off the map. What is so surprising to me, said Zeiger, is who found the call for submissions and how they have moved on in their careers to be a cohort of established voices in the field that became a whos-who, including Eric Hweler, Jennifer Gabrys, and Sam Jacob (who apparently published his first-ever piece in the zine). And then theres folks like Bobby Young. Young wrote a popular essay on skateboarding, and I have since gotten many emails asking for more information about him and ways to get in touch with him. But I still cannot contact this guy. His email has long gone cold, Zeiger said.In a culture still dominated by glossy trade magazines with the added chatter of digital media that algorithmically amplifies some voices over others, we can only hope to develop more platforms for the Bobby Youngs of this generation.Shane Reiner-Roth is a writer and lecturer on architecture and urbanism.