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By: Charlotte & Jane

Link to research and development of project: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Fx4K48Hh_3htUWrdHrAhKPe-LWyhPWjf

A quick site analysis of our identified site for this project

 

Below are the final presentation boards of our project with in-depth descriptions and explanations included:

Feedback for the above was that the colour palette could possibly be toned down. It came off a little way too bright and vibrant and somehow might draw attention away from some of the structures (i.e. The Main Structure) as the Main Structure was primarily going to be constructed with natural materials (e.g. wood) so the colours were going to be very earthly and brown especially with the brown rubber mulch ground cover as well. Thus with the sudden pop of colour in the space with the obstacle courses etc. the attention seems to be drawn away / there is too much contrast.

A suggestion was that we could possibly just do away with the bright colours and just work with a nature coloured palette instead since our concept was pretty much nature-liked as well.

Another superimposed image of the structures at the identified site.

 

 

Overall, it was a really interesting project for both of us as we got to look into a specific site thoroughly, coming up with a placemaking solution for our identified site within the location – The playground area. Through this project we have also learnt a lot along the way with regards to the technical aspect of things and more, how we could possibly look into our various  Also hearing the feedback from our peers during the critique and sharing sessions also provided us with many valuable insights and suggestions to improvements for our proposed idea, opening up more possibilities of the project.

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Our site visit to Labrador Park last lesson had us exploring the space within the park and doing a sensory ethnography exercise within the space. We recorded down our findings and eventually came up with a presentation deck to document our journey to and inside the park.

The route we took for our site visit that lesson had us exploring from:
Labrador Park MRT > Berlayer Creek Boardwalk > Park Trail

Here’s a reference from the circulation analysis we did of the site, mapping out the route we travelled in highlighted yellow:

 

For the first half of the walk into the park from Labrador Park MRT to along the Berlayer Creek Boardwalk had us taking turns to be blindfolded as we were guided along the path by each other – making stops along the way to feel and sense our surroundings. We made use of a lot of our hearing, touch, and smell since we were blindfolded and our sense of sight is completely removed. This exercise alone made us realise how our other senses were heightened and how more aware we were about our surroundings in that moment – it was pretty amazing.

Later on we arrived at the coastal part of the trail that slowly led us further deeper into the nature reserve where all the historical elements that made this park unique in its own way slowly made their appearance which we felt added a nice touch to the whole park atmosphere.

We spotted a variety of signs along the way and were able to make many interesting observations along the way, taking into consideration the original functions of the park how the objects/elements may have been placed that way etc.

Here’s our presentation:
 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1427G2bPtQM8DUU6Q-j1vrsWn-UOQO21c97HVadMtFbk/edit?usp=sharing 

 

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Time really flies, the end of the semester is here and so are all the final submission deadlines! For this final project, we were  really “free” in the sense that we got to explore any area of our interest, a physical product/publication etc. produced as an expansion of one of our past few projects – 2A: Vernacular Type / 2B: Organic Type/ 3A: Type As Image / 3B: Type As Pattern / 3C: Type As Emotion

I eventually went ahead with an expansion of Project 3A out of subject interest – A zine titled: Playground of Our Yesteryears and here’s my journey at arriving at my final idea:

Ideation

This final project being an expansion of Project 3A, the subject matter I based my compositions on were the iconic mosaic playgrounds in Singapore – the Dragon Playground and Dove Playground respectively. For reference:

3A: Type as Image

As mentioned in that process documentation, I was naturally drawn to these playgrounds and always had this “something” for nostalgic stuff. I wanted to explore this theme of nostalgia again for this final project. Thus I was considering to create a zine that’s a collection of typographic compositions of several popular childhood snacks or stick with the same mosaic playgrounds.

After much thinking, the playgrounds it was! I initially wanted to have the zine include a little of Project 2A (Vernacular Type) as well, coming up with quotes related or said about the playgrounds and formed with Vernacular Type as observed from the form of the playground structures to strengthen/solidify the concept further. Even with the title of the zine as well on the cover page, I wanted to incorporate the techniques of Project 2A. However after much consideration, it was not practical at all given the tight deadline that we were given for this final project – 3 weeks.

How unfortunate! But I’ll definitely keep this idea in mind if I were to ever expand further on this project 🙂

Choice of Typeface

I stuck through with the previous typeface used for Project 3A, Cochin reason being that it evoked a nostalgic vibe and I liked how it had various weights and its Italic font had a unique anatomy to it. Unlike Project 3A where our reasoning for choosing the typeface could be just as simple as this, for this final project the rationale had to be deeper. It must be related/be of significance to the subject matter that the compositions are based on. In this case, the typeface Cochin had to be related to these mosaic playgrounds – The feedback I received during the first consultation for the project.

Thus I had to do further research to see if I could find similarities. If not, I have to change my typeface. Thankfully there were some connections! This was what I found:

In 1977, Cochin was later adapted an expanded for Linotype that is used as a system font that can be found in our MacBooks. This 70’s period that it was adapted is the same period when these mosaic playgrounds were created around the various HDB estates in Singapore

Therefore that similarity, and additionally the typeface has an old text feel that evokes a feel of nostalgia to which I feel is an apt tone to convey with these iconic mosaic playgrounds of the past as they were part of most people’s childhood.

Reference: https://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/cochin/story 

The Zine Format
I wanted to opt for the normal staple bind zine, working with page spreads and all but I was thinking further on how I could make it less “dull”. After much digging around online I found out that there’s really a wide variety of zine formats and actually it’s really up to one’s preference, how they want their zine to look like.

Then I chanced upon the one-page mini zine template! Pretty decent and quite an interesting layout to work with. There’s a slit in the middle though.


Looking further, I came across this typography publication that was one-paged as well just not 8-page and mini. It had a poster on the flip-side (back-side) of it’s front which sparked the idea of packaging it to come with a freebie of sorts in poster form (folded). The contents of the zine and the poster would be further elaborated later on.

Cr: https://www.behance.net/gallery/33539703/Typographic-Zine 

The Compositions

THE BIGGEST STRUGGLE OF THIS PROJECT. Going ahead with the project as an expansion of Project 3A, I could foresee it was going to be quite a struggle as I already was that time during the project. This was the first version of compositions I came up with:

Went in to consultations and sure enough, I struggled. Sure the compositions came out, the respective playgrounds can be identified. However, feedback was that similar to the two that were created in Project 3A, the compositions looked quite flat and way too simplified. The reader would not be able to identify the letters used/see the typeface and the compositions could easily pass off as being drawn using the pen tool.

Shirley suggested to search online for examples of Type as Image  to get a better sense of how the compositions when formed should look like – Definitely the anatomy of the letters could still more or less be identified and that should be the way to go!

 

^ Reference Works

Thus I changed up the compositions a little by cutting up the anatomy less, some retaining it’s full form and the use of the letter’s descenders and ascenders rather than it’s stems. The list of mosaic playgrounds around Singapore is pretty long and people might ask, why feature just these mosaic playgrounds and not all of them? My reason for choosing these playgrounds to be featured is because these seven I personally believe are the more iconic ones around, I see them popping up/being mentioned in most if not all the articles/materials I’ve read about these playgrounds. Furthermore, several of these playgrounds were popular designs till they had replicas of it built about Singapore but these selected ones are the original ones that were created, the first version to exist.

Below, each revised composition labelled as follows in a gallery of its own and the process of getting to the final composition used in the zine with the colouring for some: (click on the images to enlarge as slideshow)

DRAGON PLAYGROUND

 

 

DOVE PLAYGROUND

 

SAMPAN PLAYGROUND

 

ELEPHANT PLAYGROUND

 

CLOCK PLAYGROUND

 

WATERMELON PLAYGROUND

 

PELICAN PLAYGROUND

Content

As I felt that it would be rather boring to just have the typographic image compositions make up the content of the zine, I eventually decided to include several fun facts/information that readers will not likely be aware of about these playgrounds complement the compositions.

I have to say, bulk of my inspiration on what should be included in the zine came from this digital pdf that I chanced upon while researching on the playgrounds (link): Mosaic Memories – Singapore Memory Project

From there I got the inspiration for the main content to complement the compositions:

And the poster: Somewhat like the map as seen in the Mosaic Memories project referenced, but in my own take and style. The map that the designer came up with for that project featured way more playgrounds and it was even more detailed with a  descriptive paragraph beside each playground. As for mine, I decided to have it just feature the playgrounds that I’ve created compositions for on a map silhouette of Singapore. The playgrounds placed roughly at where it’s located across the island (North, South, East, West side) with simple header text above it made up of their addresses’. The poster works as a tiny prompt/suggestion for readers to visit/re-visit their childhood while they still can (the design can be seen later on below)

And after much revising and printing…. here’s the final look of the zine 🙂

To make the background of the zine look less flat, I added texture to create a vintage rustic look that somewhat gives a nostalgic feel and also something spontaneous; a pattern like wallpaper design overlay on the already textured background with lowered opacity 🙂

HERE IT IS!!

(click on images to enlarge as slideshow) 

References:

Overall, I’ve learnt A LOT from this project and module. Not just applying the usual typography concepts that we’ve learnt so far, but in this case to even analyse how the choice of typeface can affect the readers’ interpretation of the work. Also, layout and almost every design aspect needs to be taken into consideration. In fact, all the projects we had throughout this module had its own learning points. But if there’s one biggest learning point/takeaway at the end of the day, I would say is that my observation skills and appreciation for typefaces/fonts have really grown 😀

Looking forward to what Typography II has to offer!!

 

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Yes progress! Moving on, more about the banner layout. As mentioned previously, I wanted to have a central one-eyed goblin figure in the largest scale whilst the rest of the background be just repeated motifs of the various Korean food monsters and food randomly placed around the central goblin motif. I went ahead with this arrangement in mind and surprisingly it was turning out well until… consultations/peer review week happened before recess break. Ina gave feedback on how the inverted goblin motif at the bottom came off as a little distracting and confusing, that I could perhaps do something about it:

Suggestion by my peers was to have it tilted a little/change its colour/add a bit more elements to it to distinguish the motif from the one above  so that the idea of having a central motif is still shown. Those were really valuable feedback!! In the end I went ahead with just having one of the one-eyed goblin motif placed in the centre and upped its scale to further bring out the idea as seen in the following images in the media gallery below.

Another issue that came about for the banner was that since it was rather carefully planned (in terms of which motif should be placed where) the remaining fillers for the background proved to be a problem as I did not know what else to add. To which Ina suggested that I could try overlapping my layers to see if I could figure out a way to have a more integrated background on the whole rather than just following my initial idea of having the bowl of noodles joined to the goblin and it’s noodles spilling out to just flow everywhere across the banner; the wavy organic lines of the noodle spilling about I felt would help create a feel of movement throughout the banner as well rather than it looking too stiff and rigid.

Here are two variations I came up with – One with more of the noodle waves as the fillers and one with less. Eventually I went ahead with the one with less noodle waves (right image) as fillers as I found the one with more (left image) to be more messy:

Subsequently, I played around with the colours of the background. To give it a background little dimension I added a filter/texture of sorts:

 

 

FINAL CHOSEN BANNER LAYOUT

Below is the final composition and background colour that i went for reason being that I felt the dark teal background colour acts as a good contrast to the pastel-coloured motifs in the banner composition. The dark blue background came out way too contrasted, the teal way too subtle. I stuck with blue hues for as the background as I somehow felt it was a cool colour that complemented the vibrant pastel-coloured motifs.

Also, rather than having the organic waves of the noodle fill the background and make it look messy and distracting, I opted to use the egg bread motif  instead as fillers rotated and scaled in various angles and sizes which I think worked out better:

Now to bring the file over to Illustrator, vectorise and refine it so that resolution and file size for printing wouldn’t be a problem! But if all else fails… I suppose the Photoshop file still works as all these motifs were kept as its original quality with no merging of layers/flattening of image. We shall see! Finally, I’m back on track 🙂

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I’ve really been lagging behind this whole OSS posting of our process but now that it’s recess week… time to catch up!! Definitely way more progress since the last post! So picking up from where I last left off: My motifs. They’ve evolved quite a huge bit. This was how it looked like back in Week 4 and I ought to have updated about it after consultation with Gillian but…

Anyhow, here’s what went down and how the motifs have progressed since then:

From the consult with Gillian a few weeks back, I solidified my concept further with the idea of having food monsters and food distributed /peeping/playing hide and seek in the background in different scales based on different types of Korean foods (sticking true to the Korean essence as the inspiration was heavily influenced from the Korean mythology of the one-eyed Dokkaebi and how it has this characteristic in which it likes to eat.

Other than the food motifs, I was thinking of coming up with my own interpretation of the one-eyed goblin as the central motif, the largest in scale and centralised as the main motif/element of the banner composition. The idea came about after seeing Gillian‘s banner in class that week – Hers had a central motif (I liked that aspect!) and the composition flowed down nicely with the other motifs complementing the flow .

Layout aside and back to the motifs, Gillian said that they could be more simplified in the sense that currently there’s too much sketchy linework going on (as seen above) and that they could be as simple as placing the eyes and body parts at just random places. As I was sharing how I observed the food form and identified possible spots that for example, where the eye could be at – replacing the egg in the ramen, etc. she said that actually creating the food monster motif can be as simple as  just adding body parts to the existing look of the Korean food.

Thus I went to make the changes, drew more motifs and picked out the colours I wanted to use for the banner. The colour palette and drawing styles I referenced:

Overall I was going for a more cute-grotesque look. What i did next was to sketch out the food items/monsters and traced over it using the Wacom tablet over in photoshop which I managed to achieve a cleaner finish. Here are some of the original sketches and it’s final look after blocking in the colours:

Refined food (monsters) motifs

More about the banner layout in the next post!

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Project 2B on the other hand had us exploring freeform type. Sounds fun but at the same time a little daunting… Similarly, we had to think of a phrase/quote/memory/lyric and create our very own organic typeface in relation to the quote and we could only use traditional medium. After creating the type, we have to apply it onto something tangible.

PROCESS
WEEK 2: In-Class Experimentation

The following week after getting our assignment brief we did some in-class typeface exploration with a wide range of materials we brought from home and found in class to create our typeface. Ideally, we had to come to class with a quote in mind so that we could start exploring and creating a typeface that suited our chosen quote. However I was still undecided (just like Project 2A, my ideas just refused to come easily…) so it was really just freestyle exploration for me that week. I experimented with ink, creating thick and thin strokes with a brush/felt marker, blocking letters, writing in cursive etc. and below were some of the outcomes:

While exploring, a quote ‘Take Heart, Be Kind’ suddenly came to mind. It is more of a catchphrase that was used by the host of a YouTube series that I’ve been following. As I wanted to go for a “spread positive vibes” kind of feel I was thinking that this could be a possible quote to use.

However after exploring with various original typefaces for the quote I realised that it was hard to create one that exudes a “positive vibes” feel. Possibly by playing with colours, but I felt that the shape of letters of the typeface had to play a part the sense that for instance: If the type had to be created in black and white, the vibe of the quote should still be visible too. Also, I did not help that the typefaces from the experimenting was all leaning towards the now commonly seen calligraphy look. It did not come off unique:

WEEK 3&4: Slowly Getting There…

Thus I gave up on that quote and went online to search for more. Another challenge faced was that we had to limit our quote/phrase between 15 to 25 characters. I was still leaning towards to the idea of creating an organic typeface for inspiring quotes and I kind of wanted to play with the idea of incorporating flowers since it was my kind of ‘thing’/aesthetic.

By chance, the quote ‘No Rain, No Flowers’ came up and I felt it was a really simple yet powerful quote that I think everyone would resonate well with, even myself. I feel it speaks of how everything is cause and effect and life’s not all rainbows and butterflies, just like the flowers, we will definitely experience the “rain” – the bad days in order to grow as a person. And they key to overcoming these ups and downs is to embrace it. It felt meaningful. Additionally, I realised that I could incorporate flowers in the organic typeface too 🙂 Here were some of the works I found online and got inspired by / referenced a little:

I then proceeded to experiment on the typeface for this quote at home and came up with a few ideas:

Then came the problem, I could not seem to execute my idea of having the flowers line the sides of the letter while retaining the visibility of the letters (as seen in the image below). The flowers seem to overpower the letter instead of my intention of having it complement the typeface in the sense that it subtly depicts the meaning of the quote as well of how without rain there would be no flowers, the flowers will not bloom. I wanted the letters in the organic dripping-looking form to stand out more than the flowers reason being that it is the rain is the cause of the flowers. It allowed the flowers to grow.

Brought my experimentations to class for the following week of consultation to see how I could tackle this problem and the suggestions given by my peers were really helpful!! They suggested that I could perhaps melt wax crayons / use the glue gun to create give the letters more dimension so that it stands out from the flowers. As for the flowers, I could perhaps do paper folding or another technique I thought of – paper quilling.

WEEK 5: It’s Finally a Work-In-Progress!!

Now that my final execution direction was clearer, I went into creating the typeface based on the suggestions received that week. For the letters, I tried out the Glue Gun method eventually as I already had the materials at home but unfortunately it failed to create the depth and I did not like the uneven texture it created as I had to layer the glue over and over again because of its little output each time.

Managed to resolve the problem by using some leftover styrofoam I had at home from past projects (perks of being a hoarder after each art project haha)

And it worked!!! YESSS. As for the flowers to surround the typeface… due to the little time I had left to work on the typeface, realistically it was not possible to continue with my initial technique of folding /paper quilling the flowers as both techniques required quite a bit of time and cost of course.

Hence I went with the idea of using of fake flowers instead. It was a much cheaper and faster alternative too!! I got them from Daiso and boy their selection of flowers was huge! I was initially at a loss to which kinds of flowers I should choose, which would actually complement the typeface. I eventually went with a vibrant mix of flowers since anything colourful doesn’t hurt right!! Especially since the letters were white in colour.

Here’s how the typeface turned out:

Look of the typeface before digitalising

Thanks to the styrofoam that created the dimension for the letters, the flowers were able to be placed around its sides without overpowering it as initially if both letter and flowers were on the same level, the flowers would definitely have stood out (as seen earlier).

As another requirement of the project was to have the typeface applied onto something tangible, I had to have the typeface digitalised in order for that to happen. Scanning was not an option for me as the typeface had dimension. It was not fully flat and some details of the typeface would have been lost. I did try to scan though! But as anticipated, some details were lost. Thus, I had to take pictures of the letters individually against a black sheet of paper/background and then manually photoshop erase the background of each letter and rearrange them on a blank canvas thereafter. Individual letters reason being that I had to create large letters of the typeface in order for the flowers to surround each letter nicely without looking too crammed or sparse.

The editing process after shooting the letters individually:
It was a rather strenuous process of zooming in, removing the black areas bit by bit and arranging them thereafter on a blank black canvas to achieve a clean finished typeface. And voilà!

APPLICATION TIME!

As mentioned, part two of the assignment was to have this typeface be applied onto something tangible and I came up with a few ideas! It being kind of like an inspiration quote, the options were endless. Here were some ideas but I eventually went with the poster 🙂

Tote Bag Design

 

Notebook Design

 

Poster (Final Selected)

 

So glad the ideas finally came through! Being a person who really enjoys doing craftwork, creating the typeface was an extremely fun process and I would love to try my hands at such a project again in the future!!

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For Project 2A we’re tasked to head down to a favourite area of ours and create a typographic composition that reflects the spirit of the chosen area. The typographic composition should be a phrase, quote, memory or lyric that we would associate with the area. When I first heard about it and when examples were shown to us in class, it looked like a lot of fun! Especially if we took up the challenge to identify letters of our selected quote through the structures, objects, almost about anything and everything that can be found at the place to capture it’s essence instead of just looking out for found letters on signs.

RESEARCH & IDEATION

The following week after getting the assignment brief, we dived into our first week of consultations for the assignment together with Project 2B which I will share more about in a separate post so as not to confuse.

Back to Project 2A here, I went in still unsure about my choice of place and the quote to resonate/capture the essence of it for the assignment on the day of consultations but somehow after the consult with Shirley, I managed to lock down my idea!  I was deciding between two places and it was funny how they suddenly came to mind – Botanic Gardens and Haw Par Villa.

Botanic Gardens reason being how I really like the flora and fauna there, the quiet yet scenic view I get every time I am there; healing. On the other hand Haw Par Villa, a place that I have never been to but heard so much about as it is known for featuring giant dioramas of the Chinese folklore, mythology, history and more. The theme park used to be bustling with visitors in the past but have now resided to a quiet place of visit in Singapore. It’s most famous attraction would probably be the 10 Courts of Hell which features gruesome depictions of Hell in Chinese mythology and Buddhism for various kinds of sins committed by people, how they would get punished for it.  I guess the colourful dioramas and mystical vibe of the place overall was what eventually led me to deciding on this place for my project.

The quote I had for the typographic composition of this place was largely inspired by it’s famous attraction (stated earlier) and also because growing up, my parents and grandparents would occasionally share with me stories of these mythologies so I already had vague ideas of it prior to visiting and researching. Especially when we were much younger, they would scare us off us with these tales – telling us not to lie and all if not we would end up like what is depicted in the 10 Courts of Hell.

Hence the quote: “Do Not Commit Sin”

PROCESS


Off to shoot the typographic composition that same weekend on a Saturday morning. First thing that caught my eye about the place or rather the first impression I got of the place was: Colourful, majestic, yet scary. The sculptures and architecture were really vibrantly coloured and intricately crafted!!

These were the few images that I took eventually to use for cropping to form the letters of the composition (click on image to enlarge and view):

The biggest challenge while shooting at Haw Par Villa was to avoid continously shooting and using the organic wavy looking forms there for the composition as they were just everywhere since most of these forms were used as decorative elements to complement the sculptures and structures or used as platforms to raise them up. But I went ahead using some anyway as the wavy organic design it had helped with wavy letters like ‘S’ in my quote. Otherwise, it was really fun trying to spot letters for the quote through observing the form, structures and sculptures at Haw Par Villa 🙂

Now that the shoot’s done, time to get started on the typographic composition and put the quote together! As I was doing, I realised that some of the objects that I shot did not exactly show the intended letter of the quote and I had to fall back on other images taken. Luckily, apart from only shooting forms for the letters for my quote I was shooting everything and almost anything I could spot at Haw Par Villa from various angles – That meant I had other pictures to fall back on. Phew!!

Here’s the first version of my typographic composition:

The problem about some of the letters not being that visible in the composition as mentioned above was addressed during the second week of consultations as well by Shirley when we showed her our progress for the composition. She shared about the Gestalt principle, how when seeing things we tend to group them together by colours to for easier and quicker viewing. Hence if there are too many things going on in that cropped frame, it will be hard for the viewer to identify the letter as compared to a frame with only probably two colours involved (less details/a contrast in the background and foreground).

She pointed out that these two Letter ‘O’s in the composition were cropped well and good examples of that because of the clear contrast/distinction between the letter and its background in terms of colours and little details:

Bulk of the advice given for the first version was either to crop the image of each letter tighter,  make the background/foreground of the letter’s cropped frame lighter/darker to help better distinguish the letter form. Also, it was mentioned that the image used for the Letter ‘T’s were unable to stand out based on the same principle. There was just too many things going on so it would be good to use other images for those letters. Probably just working with images that are made up of subjects/objects that uses just one to two main colours. These were the changes made:

And here’s the the revised version done based on the previous week of consultation (a week before submission):

Shirley and my peers’ feedback helped! I do get the feeling that the letters of the typographic composition looked way clearer than it was before now! Just some slight amendments, a bit more cropping to be made for some of the letters and I was good to go 🙂

FINAL

Here’s the final look of the typographic composition for submission:

I was a little reluctant to repeat the image used for letter ‘m’ but eventually I guess I did not have a choice as some letters were really hard to picture. Some letters that did not make the cut as seen below:

Overall I enjoyed working on the project and it really trained my observation skills, to constantly be aware of my surroundings while at Haw Par Villa in order to identify my letters for the typographic composition. Also, thanks to that trip, I now have a better insight of the place too!

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Moving on from last week when we had to present our concept(s) together with our moodboard and collection of images to reference for our designs, it’s on to designing the motifs based on our concept! So over the past week, I’ve been sourcing further for more reference images and ultimately narrowed down to the Korean mythology I would like to develop my project concept from – The Dokkaebi.

The artwork below is by Korean illustrator Dayoung Cho was one of the reasons why. It was one my reference images for my moodboard with colours that stood out and also one with a unique take on the particular Korean mythology, portraying it to be fun/quirky instead of scary – what I intended to achieve for my concept for this project.

Dokkaebi Food Truck by Dayoung Cho

 

Starting with an exploration of the original form of the Dokkaebi: Based on reference images of the mythical creature that I found online, I tried adapting it into my own design to make it look less scary than its original look. What I did was to round the edges of its features, making it rounder in volume and reduced the details to make it look more simplified. Colours wise I used more colours and upped the vibrance of it. However I realised that it was hard to tone down the scariness of the Dokkaebi with this features.

Image Source: http://aminoapps.com/page/mythology/9450197/focus-korean-mythology 

 

Hence I decided to take another approach. As mentioned last week through research I found out that there were different types of the Dokkaebi and one of the ideas I had was to come up with my own interpretations for some of these types of Dokkaebis while referencing existing imageries of them online as I thought the end product might look quite fun and interesting.

Types of Dokkaebi

  1. Kind (참도깨비)
  2. Evil (개도깨비)
  3. Dumb farmer-looking (김서방 도깨비)
  4. Daylight (낮도깨비)
  5. Good at fighting / handling weapons – especially arrows (고도깨비)
  6. One-eyed that eats a lot (외눈도깨비)
  7. One-legged that likes to play Ssireum
    (folk wrestling) (    외다리도깨비)

I looked through the various types and decided to explore the Dokkaebi type that is One-eyed and eats a lot and this was partially because I was really drawn to the Dokkaebi artwork as mentioned at the start of the post which happens to be an illustration based on this Dokkaebi type – the Dokkaebis are one-eyed and the artwork is food themed – a food truck.

To start off the exploration, I brainstormed a bit for ideas on how to approach this characteristic/type of Dokkaebi in a way so that I can make my motifs fun and quirky, ridding the idea of scary and to follow Ina’s feedback last week of going along the lines of traditional/grotesque yet cute. After much brainstorming, the idea of the Dokkaebi eating a lot made it closely associated with the theme of FOOD. And from food I thought it would be cool to have the food Korean (Korean food), making it stay true to the mythology’s cultural roots – Integrating the features of the Dokkaebi being one-eyed into the particular identified Korean food to form a character-liked motif.

Following which I started searching more indepth and specific reference images of the various Korean food (as seen in the following two images below), analysing their forms and look to see how the features of the Dokkaebi could be incorporated to come up with this motif that captures the essence of this Dokkaebi type entirely.

Image Sources (corresponding to the number labelled images):

  1. https://www.dramafever.com/news/korean-food-12-different-varieties-of-kimbap/
  2. http://xihanation.tumblr.com/post/67631472243
  3. https://evydraws.blogspot.sg/2016/07/korean-summer-survival-makeup-favorites.html
  4. http://heegyum.tumblr.com/post/75659750811/old-drawing-i-did-for-school-project-did-you#sthash.twDCaHia.qjtu
  5. http://xihanation.tumblr.com/post/70297486954
  6. https://m.blog.naver.com/PostView.nhn?blogId=xihanation&logNo=70184489013&proxyReferer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2F

 

Below is another Korean artist apart from the already mentioned who worked on a Dokkaebi art project and this was how he interpreted and came up with a character for the Dokkaebi type.

Image Sources (corresponding to the number labelled images):

  1. http://www.para-young.com/Dokkaebi-Food-Truck-1
  2. https://www.behance.net/gallery/11266477/DOKAEBEE-Korean-monster-identity-character-design 

 

Apart from exploring the appearance and forms of some of the various/more common/popular Korean food, I also went into searching for reference images on how to draw some monster/creature-looking features as I had to figure which eye or mouth feature would best suit and integrate with the chosen Korean food. (some sketches and exploration done on the right hand side of the image)
Image Sources: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/How-to-Draw-Monsters-917949 

 

So,,,, after a few hours of developing and sketching out ideas, these were some of the motifs that I came up with! (as labelled)  Not sure if these motifs are kind of finalised, but I think that this is the style that I’ll be going for and that I’ll be playing around further with the explorations if any!

The one-eyed feature and several other prominent features of the Dokkaebi (devil horns/sharp teeth/mischievous look) integrated into the Korean food.

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KOREAN MYTHOLOGY

Being interested in Korean culture, I was drawn to start my research for the project in the context. I found quite a few mythologies and the three that caught my attention or rather those I heard of before/the more popular ones is the Gumiho (Nine-Tailed Fox), Dokkaebi (Korean Goblin), and Haetae/Haechi (Protector Spirit) and the one thing in common among these three Korean mythologies that their subject matters are classified as supernatural monsters.

Reading up on these three mythologies sparked a thought and idea for the project. At the mention of the word ‘monster’, most if not all. Even I myself at times would associate such beings with the idea of ‘scary’, ‘evil’ and ‘terror’ especially if one were to search up images of these mythologies online. What if all these supernatural monsters in the Korean mythology are seen as scary only because of the way their are portrayed/depicted through image? Would cute and innocent imagery change the immediate association that people have for supernatural monsters?

Thus for this project, across all three concepts/mythologies that I am focusing on, I am looking to apply techniques like watercolour or illustration together with the use of vibrant colours to re-create the subject matters of these mythologies and hopefully convey the opposite conceptions of what people might have about supernatural monsters. They need not necessarily be all that scary.

Concept 1: Gumiho 구미호 (Nine-Tailed Fox)

This mythology originates from the Classics of Mountains and Seas, an old Chinese text; before it was introduced as a Korean mythology. It tells the tale of how a fox that lives a thousand years is able to turn into this form and it’s able to freely transform, often into a beautiful woman out to seduce boys.

 

Image Sources (corresponding to the number labelled images):

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumiho
  2. https://saraais.deviantart.com/art/Nine-Tailed-Fox-355026288
  3. https://seandonnanart.deviantart.com/art/The-Nine-tailed-Fox-at-the-Changing-Tree-Oji-432454219
  4. http://jonlaustudio.com/Kumiho 
  5. https://www.etsy.com/listing/224328863/print-from-my-original-watercolor-page?utm_source=OpenGraph&utm_medium=PageTools&utm_campaign=Share
  6. http://genevrabell.tumblr.com/post/120665596302/ok-one-more-little-fox-before-bed-fox
  7. http://liekeland.nl/latest-work/

Concept 2: Dokkaebi 도깨비 (Korean Goblin) 

Dokkaebis are monster supernatural beings that are formed by the spiritual possession of an inanimate object or objects stained with human blood. Interestingly enough, what I found out was that there are various types of them, some of which I found rather amusing. I tried searching online but apparently no physical appearance has been given to these types. The most common depiction of how a Dokkaebi looks like is based off ancient roof tiles that had Dokkaebi patterns on it. I feel that it would be interesting and fun to come up with my own interpretations for these types of Dokkaebis while referencing existing imageries of them online.

Types of Dokkaebi

  1. Kind (참도깨비)
  2. Evil (개도깨비)
  3. Dumb farmer-looking (김서방 도깨비)
  4. Daylight (낮도깨비)
  5. Good at fighting / handling weapons – especially arrows (고도깨비)
  6. One-eyed that eats a lot (외눈도깨비)
  7. One-legged that likes to play Ssireum
    (folk wrestling) (    외다리도깨비)

Source: https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Dokkaebi

 

Image Sources (corresponding to the number labelled images):

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Devils_(supporters_club)   
  2. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/arts/design/silla-koreas-golden-kingdom-at-the-metropolitan-museum.html?ref=design
  3. https://espressocomsaudade.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/honest-mythkorean-dokkaebi/
  4. http://aminoapps.com/page/mythology/9450197/focus-korean-mythology
  5. http://www.para-young.com/Dokkaebi-Food-Truck-1
  6. http://www.myseoulsearching.com/2013/10/korean-ghosts-goblins-gumiho.html
  7. https://albinogoth.com/category/stories/meet-dokkaebi/

Concept 3: Haetae/Haechi 해태/해치 (Protector Spirit) 

This is a mythology that originated from the Classics of Mountains and Seas (an old Chinese text) before it was introduced as a Korean mythology. It’s about this mythical beast that protects Hanyang (now Seoul) from natural disasters and it maintains law and order among the people.

Image Sources (corresponding to the number labelled images):

  1. https://www.flickr.com/photos/38635642@N00/3050733114 
  2. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/9b/7b/e99b7b78963dce97cdbd30796b2b38f1.jpg 
  3. http://m.kenterin.net/article/3921e
  4. http://terms.naver.com/entry.nhn?docId=3574483&cid=58840&categoryId=58854    
  5. http://blog.naver.com/39270613
  6. http://www.blogto.com/city/2012/10/what_if_toronto_got_itself_a_mascot/   
  7. https://www.behance.net/gallery/23767305/Haetae_mythical-unicorn-lion 

So all in all, I would say that my concept is fuelled by the intention of portraying these supernatural beings (in particular, monsters) in a different light, setting them apart from their usual association with words like ‘scary’, ‘evil’ etc. but I definitely feel that there’s room for further exploration and that better ideas can and derived from these mythologies identified.

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Concept: An informative guide to bring out the best of Everton park, its quaint charm and how it boasts a mix of old and new businesses. The purpose of the guide is to entice people to come visit Everton Park, showing readers what they can check out there, do there and also some facts about the place so that they will have a better understanding of the place as well.

Art direction: Overall I took on a consistent pastel colour scheme for the zine and the original colours were inspired by the architecture colours of Everton Park. However, the original colours of the architecture seemed a little too bright and a bit of mismatch as a publication look thus I took to playing around with the intensity and colour harmonies and went for a more pastel and warm colour scheme eventually. (see image below)

Apart from the use of a consistent colour scheme throughout the zine, you will notice later on that I have also used speech bubbles on most of the pages and spreads for some of the headers and subheaders to bring out the personal touch even further.

Content – I felt that the mix of old and new businesses in this quaint neighbourhood, Everton Park was definitely one of it’s unique charm and I wanted to feature it in my zine so I brainstormed a little and listed down a few things that could be worth including in the zine prior:

  • Ji Xiang Ang Ku Kueh Confectionery
  • The various cafes
  • Unique stores
  • Anecdotes from the residents (for that personal touch)

Curation – I decided to go from broad to narrow after consults and finalising the content I wanted to have in the zine. As for imagery to complement the content, I decided to go for a mix of digital photographs to retain the textures of the food features and used illustrations for the rest.

Typeface – For the typefaces used, I was going for those that were more nostalgic/handwritten to complement the warm colour scheme of the zine.

 

Inspiration (aka Moodboard)

These were some of the inspirations i got from pinterest to help with the designing of my covers and design layout of the pages and spreads:

The above are some examples of illustration styles I wanted to try out in my zine and the image on the right was an early inspiration I had for the cover design – something simple and minimalistic. Riding on that idea, I came up with a cover design as seen later on in the next section.

As for the above inspiration, it was for the layout design in particular the background. Since I was going for a illustrative look I felt that the background should be left simple and I happened to chance upon this inspiration – geometric looking borders and dual-colour background fills which you can see appearing in my zine later on.

Some more inspirations for the colour and design. I initially wanted to go for a risograph feel you can see but after hearing how it costs a bomb, maybe not. But I really like the neon colours and the very comic/sketchy feel of it. Next section will be the digital look of my zine.

 

Flow of Zine (What each page/spread features)

  • The Front Cover (right) and Back Cover (left)

For the front and back cover design I initially intended to have it look like a cropped/framed view of one of the HDB block floor in the front with the hint of potted plants and all with the back cover a back view of the block like what you would see – the hanging of laundry, balcony etc. but eventually felt that by having such a design the architecture thing would be too overwhelming as you can tell that on the subsequent pages there’ll be hints of the HDB block again. Plus, doing up the details would’ve been too time consuming and having too many objects to look at takes away the main focus on the covers – the credits and title of the zine.

Thus I only kept the idea same for the front cover, suggesting more levels of the HDB block in the design instead of going with my original look which made the design look more like a frame/border surrounding the potted plants. As for the back cover, I decided to go with just a simple look, the credits: my social media handles and something like a logo design? (i’m not sure what that looks like but i’m very sure i’ve been excessively using that silhouette of mine since last semester’s final project for 2d; i think it’s becoming like an identity of sorts hahaha).

  • Now diving into the contents of the zine. When you flip the cover, the first 2 pages you see forms a spread layout with the contents presented as an infographic.

Going with the idea of having the content flow from broad to narrow, the first spread featured an overview of Everton Park, what the place has to offer in a quirky fun infographic form using phrases, quotes and numbers and making use of the box grids from the architecture silhouette of the HDB block. You would have probably realised that this is an expansion of my earlier infographic for Part 1 of this project (visit the link at the bottom of the post to read more). In addition There’s also a small part which provides readers with directions on how to get to the place by MRT and what they should look out for in order to find the place after.

  • The next spread. Instead of having a second spread, I decided to make them as pages. Continuing the flow of content, from an overview I started narrowing down firstly to a brief history of Everton Park for the page on the left and Ang Ku Kueh for the page on the right.

For the left page, I felt it would be pretty nice to start off with a brief history of Everton Park as with all other publications or anything whenever there’s a subject involved, there would be background information about it in the beginning. As the year it was established and how old the HDB estate was was pretty much all the historical information I could gather online about the place, I decided to pair it up with some anecdotes from the residents who have lived there, store owners and those who are living there to make it more personal and a little nostalgic. One of the interviewees I managed to get an anecdote from was Mr Yip Yew Chong, the local artist whom I have constantly mentioned throughout my past few posts because of the 2 wall murals he has painted just round Everton Park – They look super gorgeous!!

Whereas for the right page, I decided to do a feature solely on Ang Ku Kueh. Why Ang Ku Kueh you may ask, it is because of an observation I gathered. I realised when mentioning Everton Park to others, first thing they would mention about the place would be that it is home to the famous Ang Ku Kueh confectionery, Ji Xiang Confectionery that has been around for close to 30 years to date (since 1988). And rather than having a full boring page of information just dedicated to the store like an interview feature of quotes by the store owners, reviews and what flavours they have to offer etc. I thought it would be more fun to have it as a thematic feature page with Ang Ku Kueh as the theme. So I started with a brief description of the confectionery followed by fun facts and Ang Ku Kueh related content after. How I came up with the fun fact idea was from online research I chanced upon on Ang Ku Kueh. Turns out the Ang Ku Kuehs that you receive at a baby’s full month comes in different shapes and it is determined by the newborn’s gender! For baby boys, the Ang Ku Kuehs you get are in a simple pointed shape whereas for the baby girls, the couple will give out the normal round ones with the intricate mould design that you will usually see when you buy the confectionery. Thought it would be an interesting fun fact to know! I personally was fascinated by it! For the remaining space, I featured some Ang Ku Kueh themed merchandises like keychains, totes, plushies from local designers and their brands like Ang Ku Kueh Girl, wheniwasfour etc.

  • The final spread and the last content for the whole zine features 5 cafes to check out at Everton Park. As simple as it looks, it is really just a quick food guide to follow up on the previous page’s theme of food.

Curation of the content on this page wise is really just the address of the place, its opening hours, and ratings shown through the commonly used stars symbol. I had intended to add descriptions of what each cafe has to offer but to prevent the page from looking too wordy and making the information hard to digest, I settled for simple and short phrases to describe the food place and it surrounds the circle-cropped image for each cafe. As to how I decided on these 5 cafes to feature: Uniqueness (e.g. different country’s cuisine how they prepare their food) and of course, the ratings! This definitely required some researching… and ah, spot the speech bubble that I mentioned early on under art direction too!

Change(s) in idea/execution 

Actually there weren’t much changes in ideas and execution along the way. Overall it was more of change in the order of content (going for a old to new/broad to specific), which content goes onto which page and also playing around with the design layout.

If there were any major changes it would be for this page as during group consults, most of my classmates and Joy brought up the issue of not knowing where to look (the visual hierarchy was missing). The “Did You Know” seemed like the header for both the fun-fact and the “Ang Ku Kueh Companion” bit.  Eventually I went ahead with a classmates’ suggestion of colour blocking since I had this consistent geometric background thing going on as my background and it worked! Thanks Yi Ling 🙂

Challenges

One of the challenges faced was definitely printing the zine. Having printed a publication before in polytechnic, I thought printing wouldn’t be a problem at all.  As mentioned during the inDesign workshop, some printing shops are able to help you settle printing just by saving in pages but some you had to save in spreads and with spreads came proper visualisation of the pagination like which page match would match with which.

A visual aid for better visualisation – Basically what you see in inDesign vs the layout you’re supposed to have when you export as spreads to achieve the correct pagination:

A HUGE HUGE PITY: Firstly, I think I’ve wasted quite a bit of money as I couldn’t get the printing right in terms of alignment (the bulk of it) and pagination (initially) and because of these continuous errors, I eventually got so focused on getting them right that I overlooked if all my content was printed out properly. Only till presentation day and after the silent round-table peer critique did I realise that an image on my first spread got cut off after reading my classmates comments AHHH. Internal panic but I guess I had to acknowledge that, if not the zine would’ve been perfect. The printing shop was super nice to actually help manually align the pages for me so that when printing on double sides, the alignment wouldn’t be off. Lesson learnt!

Enjoyable moments, etc.

Pretty sure that majority would’ve found this particular part of the zine project rather dreadful but as much as inDesign was a “pain” I believe to many, I really enjoyed the process! And especially when you print the zine, that feeling when you see your own fruit of labour… :”) Personally I really enjoy designing, editorial design so this project felt like my way to destress except since we were given a tight deadline it felt rather pressing at times when you get art blocks.

All in all, I really enjoyed 2d so much, those sweet post-it messages of feedback my classmates for every critique session, and being under Joy for the past 2 semesters have been so fruitful. I’ve learnt so much. Thank you Joy for being so encouraging and nice!!

I’m bummed, my utmost favourite foundation module is officially over 🙁

And finally, here you go! The links to Part 1 my of Zine: Neighbourhood Explorer (Infographic): 
Research: https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/char0066/neighbourhood-explorer-zine-research/
Final: https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/char0066/neighbourhood-explorer-infographic/