At first glance, Tiong Bahru has a neighborhood like any other in Singapore. At a glance.

Upon closer inspection of its facade, a whole new assortment of visuals and perspectives open up to you. I found my eyes drawn to every crack in the sidewalks, every vein on leaves, and every scratch on rusted metals.

Showcasing these textures is thus the main aim of my zine’s de-zine.

 

For the cover page, two images were used; a location shot and a close up on a rusted metal plate. To emphasise the theme of textures, I teared paper and photoshopped the texture to fit jagged outline.

 

 

As for pages in between, each spread was used to show textures of different materials; plants, metals, and concrete. Each segment also has a colour theme to give the zine a more vibrant look (green, yellow, and blue respectively). The texture images take up almost the entire page, leaving a thin border around the. A layer of a stained piece of black paper was added beneath them, which helped better frame the images. Asymmetry was applied to emphasise the hierarchy of images. For instance, for the plant textures segment, eyes will first land on the left image, then to the grassy part of the image on the right, and finally down to the text.

 

 

I also tried playing with diagonals while arranging the images. For example, the stem along the leaf cuts across the image from top left to bottom right, and through the gutter in between, links to the next image where the direction of the lines on the pavement reflect that diagonal. Though a reflection, it is also off center, giving that off-balance look.

As for the metals spread, I went for a complete diagonal split across the two pages. Instead of just having two images with a crisp line down the center dividing the two, I added an image of rusted chains in between to segment them.

 

 

For the concretes, I used a symmetrical layout. The image on the left page is of a tennis court corner, and to reflect it on the other page, I tore another piece of paper to create the shape. I then masked a cracked stone texture to fit within that frame, and for contrast, added a plain pavement texture underneath it, keeping to the segment’s theme.

 

 

Finally, for the back cover, I used the same layout as the cover, reflecting the metal texture and using a new image showing a different angle of the building. The map of the location is also added, using the same circle background as the title’s. And with the social media handles added at the bottom of the page, the zine is done!