Studio Practice- Zine

Zine

BACKGROUND

This project was done in less than two weeks in early February.

At that stage, I was doing my MA Project research, reading theory and collating information and case studies.

my situation was, I was rejecting the Western theory - 'Orientalism', on the other hand, because of too much research collection, I do not know how to narrow down and how to choose a point to do my experiment.

THE PURPOSE OF ZINE

This small project is to collect, sort and edit the key viewpoints of one of my classmate’s research outputs and communicate this as effectively as possible into a small printed/hand made zine publication.

I did my partner Jinny’s project which is ‘Dream and Artificial Intelligence’.

At first, we discussed each other's project and gave some advices. It is really easy to find what the problem in other's project. On the contrary, I was so confused about my owns project.

It was a good opportunity to stand on each other’s point of view to treat project and inspired from other classmates idea.

Then I choose one point to do zine. Because my partner did not do a lot research about AI. So, at first, I wanted to do something about AI. But I was failed by drawing many different robots to represent dream, just like wire frame.

I just think to illustrate what I thought. I did not chose one version of the sequences to develop visually, and I did not considered scale, tone, rhythm and aesthetics. The result frustrated me so much. In the day workshop show, I suddenly found that I was not put myself on the role of “Graphic Designer” to design a zine.

THE CONCEPT

So I started to rethink again after the class seminar.

I choose ‘Brain waves’ to do my booklet, because ‘Brain waves’ is an interesting point to develop. I did some research on the brain waves working when sleeping and awake.

I focus on ‘Dream Waves’, to give people a better understanding of brain waves fluctuate during the day and night.

Different person have different dreams. Every dream has its special wave and signal. Human’s dreams can be constructed by memories and universe energy and also can be deconstruction. It is like dimensional barcode.

I used white and black page to represent the day and night respectively.

I thought about the zine’s form and typeface according to the brain waves waving. I tried to deconstruct and reconstruct the typeface to combine with the graphic. At the same time, I was thinking about the layout, paper stock and materials.

Materials

I chose transparent paper combined with flash paper, on behalf of everyone's dream is different and gleaming.

Zine Fonts

The zine cover, re-deconstruction of the font  ‘DREAM’ and  ‘AI’, which exactly tally with the combination of the project Dream and AI.

Whole zine font is a combination of graphic and the brain waves.

The back cover of the zine is a combination of the deconstruction of two-dimensional code  and the construction of the font, to stand for the uniqueness of each person's brain waves.

THE HIGHLIGHTS

The whole design thoroughly implement a combination of content, graphics, fonts and materials.

THE FAILURES

Suggest from Ben and Chenhao Lee.

Sense of rhythm is not good enough.

Why not to make a line all through the zine?

Consider too much black, white and gray elements, not pure enough.

THE INSPIRATION

This font design video is excellent.

It gave me great inspiration about  the combination of the change in font and graphics.

WHAT I HAVE LEARNT

KEYWORDS

Switch / sort / key question / focus

When the project encountered a bottleneck, stop for a while, look back to the starting point to sort out all of the research, and then stand on someone else's point of view to look at my own work.

Listen and accept to my audience's comments and opinions, to get advice and inspiration from them.

At last, critically think about my work , then choose my own way to achieve it.