My name is PY and I am a birdkeeper
My name is QUEK PIN YI and I am a construction worker
My name is PIN YI and I am a police officer
My name is PY and I am a landscape architect
Revisiting the old textbooks of the 1970s-1980s period; combining these aesthetics with content relevant to Jalan Kayu and its surroundings, as well as a tribute to its heritage.
So I decided to base my new zine concept on the fact that not so long ago, there used to be a school in Jalan Kayu and of course, it was named Jalan Kayu Primary School.
Right at the start, I decided that I wanted to use a more retro style, which led me to look for imagery that I could emulate and adapt for my own zine.
I looked up old Singaporean school textbooks…
… old photos of Jalan Kayu and its environs……..
After that, I thought of a couple of potential concepts for the content of the zine itself:
I decided to use the school textbook as the overall concept for my zine and to use the style of a simple English reading book for its content.
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Some guidelines that I stuck to for this zine:
Colour scheme: A cheap colour scheme (i.e. greyscale content) with pastel colours of an 80s feel, not too clean nor minimalist
Typography: Slightly distorted by still simple serif typeface for the body text as if taken from an old textbook
Cover design: Emulate a 1980s Singaporean school textbook
Internal layout: Simple layout without too much variation, something not too modern
Remember how I wanted to complete my zine using prata as the key theme from Jalan Kayu?
After spending days and weeks thinking and thinking and thinking and thinkinggggggg, I finally came to a decision that it felt a bit too frivolous and I wanted to do something a little more meaningful with regards to Jalan Kayu as a place.
With this notion, I went on to do more research on the place and found that there used to be a school in Jalan Kayu during its kampung days – Jalan Kayu Primary School.
Unfortunately, the school closed down in the 80s, so there I was, limited to online sources as the only place for me to glean something about it.
(You can find out more about the school yourself as its alumni have a Facebook group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/19956218133/)
I decided that this was a useful place to restart my investigation (with two weeks to go…) and went ahead with it…
As described in my Research post, I would be working on the following themes: construction worker, police officer, architect, bird keeper…….
Composition 1: Construction Worker
Initially, I wanted to use aluminium foil to form the “hoarding” used in this concept. This took a lot of effort, however, and did not look aesthetically pleasing:
I chanced upon aluminium sheeting in Art Friend which looked much more realistic, although at the start I was still not sure of how to shape it… but all I needed was a steel rule to put it into shape!
The shaped aluminium sheet was then trimmed to shape and spray painted to give the texture of an actual construction site hoarding:
A smaller piece of aluminium was then covered with a printed label and then placed onto the shaped aluminium to come up with the final piece of work:
Composition 2: Police Officer
First, I made a stencil digitally and trimmed out the unwanted portions with a craft knife. Blue spray paint was then used to colour in the cordon design on a receipt paper roll.
The scene was set up outside the ADM handicapped lift to replicate a crime scene. However, I tried to use a simpler set up so as to highlight the “cordon” as the more dominant part of the image. Hence, I avoided using the more cliched imagery such as blood splatter and such markings.
Composition 3: Bird Keeper
I used cornstarch and white glue to form the white part of the bird poop, while polymer clay coloured with black acrylic paint was used to form the darker part.
The bird poop was placed specifically to form my initials but without being too obvious.
Watercolour helped to make the bird poop look a little more realistic by staining it, as well as the newspaper below and making the latter slightly crumpled and aged.
Composition 4: Landscape Architect
This composition was initially supposed to be of an architect only, but I wasn’t able to attain a suitable look and got stuck with it. With a suggestion from a schoolmate, I tweaked it slightly to change the composition into that related to a landscape architect instead.
The illustration was done using Inkscape.
For this assignment, we were supposed to create 4 typographic portrait compositions using our name, initials, or parts of those based on a probable future job or occupation.
I started identifying potential ideas by sketching out some thumbnails.
At the end, I decided on the following “occupations” for this assignment: Construction Worker, Police Officer, Architect, and Birdkeeper.
For the construction worker theme, I decided to explore making things (partially given that I am heading to Product Design as my major and that I really like hands-on work) and came up with the idea of using the ubiquitous “Danger – Keep Out” signs as a starting point:
To add on to the symbolism of this sign, I decided to include a related texture in the form of the metal hoardings commonly found at construction sites:
For the police officer theme, I decided to use the police cordon tape as an element:
I decided on a photographic method for this theme, which would then be based on a crime scene cordoned off with police tape. In this theme, I would replace the “POLICE” text with my name.
For the architect, I explored the use of architectural blueprint-like drawings to illustrate my initials as part of the building… however, this would not turn out the way I hoped it would be, and so I decided to change it….. this is further explained in my Process post for this assignment!
