Concept
After initial research of Hougang (which can be seen in the two links below), I originally planned to focus on food for my zine cos I figured I might as well enjoy good food while doing work, eh? Then I realised that it’s a really common and boring topic. Inspiration came in a really unexpected form -Instagram, more specifically, SGAG. While I was scrolling through one night, I realised a lot of their recent posts were about crimes in Yishun and ‘Building the Yishun wall’, and I thought, why not turn peaceful, unassuming Hougang into a land of crime? And that’s what I did.
Research
The moment I settled on the topic of crime, I had an artist reference in mind. Once again, it was another Instagram user, an artist by the username of nanomortis. 
I really liked the colours and the sharpness of her works and I decided to draw inspiration from her pieces for my illustrations.
As for the layout, I saw many different layouts that I liked on Pinterest, but I eventually settled on these.
I really liked the fade-y watercolour-ish edges, so I did my best to imitate it for my different illustrations. I initially planned to add about the same amount of text as these layouts (to fit my short stories in), but I decided against it because it didn’t look as nice as these and it looked too cluttered for my liking.
Process
Illustrations
I started off with my illustrations first. I did all of them on Photoshop and did my best to recreate the watercolour-ish edges digitally.
My concern after finishing the first draft was that the illustrations didn’t really point to Hougang all that well. Joy suggested that I try including some of the well-known buildings of Hougang in the background, so that’s what I tried to do.
Somehow the buildings felt a little messy and out of place (for the first and second spreads), so I decided to go back to using signboards. I kept the building in my third spread and I added the rainbow in my first spread to link it to the HDB flat in Hougang with a rainbow painted on it (which was also featured on my cover page). I wanted to add something in my second spread, but I couldn’t find a position for it without messing up the composition and making it look too forced, so I decided not to compromise on the overall aesthetics of the spread and just use a signboard.
Stories
I did lots of research to try to get an accurate picture of what happened in each crime and to get a rough sensing of how the characters felt, but I reckon a lot of what I actually typed was still purely fictional. Each story was approximately 1000 words long at first, but as I tried to fit the stories into the layout, I realised that I could only fit about 500 words into each spread. There came every writer’s nightmare -cutting out bits of your story, bits that you’ve already painfully crafted to ensure that your story flows nicely. But I couldn’t stand the thought of a crazily cluttered spread, so I did my best to summarise my stories.
I came up with the titles after writing the story. As I was creating the cover page, the idea of using irony and dark humour suddenly came to mind. I wanted people to get that eerie vibe from the illustrations, become confused by the titles and then shocked after reading the stories. Once I had a clear vision of the vibe I wanted, the titles came easily.
I chose ‘see no evil’ for the first spread because the child was molested, but no one saw it. ‘Hear no evil’ was used for the second spread because despite all the shouting that was going on, no one heard them. And finally, ‘speak no evil’ for the third spread because the police officer was filled with evil intent, but of course, he didn’t say anything about it. (I mean, who would? Hahaha.) The little taglines weren’t originally part of the layout, but I decided to try them out and I thought that they looked good, so I kept them.
Final
Reflections
This project was honestly really tiring, but that was probably because the submission date was so close to the rest of the other submissions I had. I sorta wish I had more time to spend on this, cos it was really quite a lot of fun? And it was really exciting bringing a zine, filled with my own illustrations and stories, to life. Hahaha. I’m really glad that I had the chance to create this and I’m sure I still have a long way to go and lots to learn about designing for publications, but I’m happy with what I’ve managed to achieve so far. And even though I’ll be specialising in film, I’d still create these just for fun as little side projects. Hahaha. And with that… YAY! The last project for Foundation 2D II has been officially completed!