Tag Archives: zine

Project 2: Zine Final Outcome!

Hello, here’s the full layout of my zine about Marine Parade!

(cover pages: front & back)

page 2 & 3

page 4 & 5

page 6 & 7


Reflection:

When I started out in this project, I was really quite excited as it seem like while trying to present and encourage people to discover more about Singapore, I myself was opening my eyes to a side of Singapore I never knew as well! I felt like I learnt a lot from my exploration adventures. I used to feel that because Singapore was so small, that was nothing else to do. But being on this zine journey made me realised there is still a bigger world out there. I am stoked to visit more unfamiliar places in the future, especially after reading my classmates’ zines! ╰(*´︶`*)╯

Now for the zine process.

I honestly felt that my idea was not bad. The fact that I wanted to stick to a colour theme and venture on exploring the ‘texture’ side was sort of stepping out of my comfort zone as I was used to drawing (but with not much technical skills lol).

Which was why it was really disappointing that I could not complete my zine in the best way possible. It was still far from what I wanted it to be. There were so many other layout methods that I could have approached e.g. own typography. I should also include textual information on introducing my ideas and explaining the uniqueness of each layer/page, as people who don’t read my OSS won’t know my concept behind the zine.

It was regretful that I was rushed to do the zine although we were given a lot of time and it was unfulfilling to showcase works that were not my best. I could not share my zine properly with my peers. It was even worse that I could not have it printed professionally and my zine was printed in such a bad format, I had to end up resizing it down to nearly an A6 size after cutting away the edges. (。•́︿•̀。)

Given another chance and better time management, I will show a better zine.

Even so, thank you for reading my post and I hoped that you still enjoyed it. ◡̈⃝

 

Project 2: Making of Zine

Heyya! My zine’s idea was to focus on textures and shapes unique to Marine Parade, categorising into the ‘layers’ that make up the neighbourhood.

Since I wanted to explore the topic about textures, I got the idea to incorporate other textures and superimpose them into my photos and mimicking the actual photos, trying to create more variety in my works and not make the pages that flat since I was only planning to focus on the visual aspect on the zine only through my photos.

For example, the waves will be replaced with lace.

 

scan of my lace dress: sea waves

 

scan of blue sticky notes overlaying: tiles

 

scan of several blue yarns: lines patterns of the rock

 

scan of cellophane paper: glass roof

I also did some watercolour drawings so that my beach layer won’t be so plain.

For the buildings, I thought of mixing textures of clay and paint streaks to make a play on the characteristics of how buildings were made.

scan of paint streaks


Now for the pages process! I used Photoshop to create all my edits, saving the pieces as individual pictures then pasting in on InDesign.

I forgot to mention that I titled my zine ‘Slice of Life’. The name was derived from the anime genre – slice of life, whereby the anime of this genre focuses on a cut of narrative that could happen in the every day life of a character. It enhances the ‘layers’ concept and introduces to the readers that they will be getting a taste of a part of Marine Parade!

Because of this, for my cover page, I edited a slice of cake showing the different layers that I gathered from my photos.

It was modelled after this photo of a chocolate cake:

The ‘cake’ layers include the sea waves, tunnel wall connecting to ECP, the post office’s architecture, rock monument, a shop’s banner. The top was then decorated with the clouds as the whip cream and the wheel sculpture as the chocolate piece.

Photos used for this edit:

I also put the cake on top of a paper plate, similar to those used in hawker centres (the popiah), as the use of ‘proper’ plates and utensils may make the styles too contrasting as the cake looks quite whimsical whereas the a porcelain plate is bit formal.

I used my blue painted swirls to add on abstract patterns in the background so that it was less plain.

The back cover follows the same layout showcasing an empty plate with leftover bits of the cake, signifying the readers digested the mini experience of Marine Parade after reading my zine, being a perfect last page to my zine.

 

For the pages inside, I originally wanted to divide the pages from the top to bottom as people, cultures (food, monuments, etc), architecture, beach. I realised the limitations of the number of pages I could do and thus decided on the following layout.

pg. 2: contents page – introducing readers to the layers

pg. 3: first layer – cultures

pg. 4-5: second layer – architecture

pg. 6-7: third layer – beach

 

For the contents page, I kept it simple. As mentioned, I wrote down the ‘layers’ that I would be showing.

The drawing of whale was extracted from one of the wall murals below the HBD flats.

 

For page 3, it is about layer 1: the cultural aspect of what makes Marine Parade unique. Unlike most other neighbourhoods, there was an effort to make it a culturally unique place. There was many recurring usage of the nautical theme through the multiple figurines placed around the neighbourhood.

  

 

I also included some of the ‘everyday’ objects that I found! Although there were not exactly part of the nautical theme, I had not seen them in any places yet, making them special too.

I compiled the photos as a collage.

 

For the 4-5 pages, they centred on the architectures that one can find in marine parade.

I wanted to present the architecture to form up one continuos flow of buildings. Mimi helped gave me some ideas such as making fonts out of these building structures or just putting them in a collage style. Such as:

Another idea was to overlay the different patterns that I found. Whereby the buildings will follow the grids of the patterns or fit into them.

   

In the end result, I chose to make it as a collage style.

I then added on the “reflective glass roof” cellophane paper cutouts and overlaid the paint streaks in a similar fashion to follow the pattern as shown below. The pattern was used in many of the HDB flats’ void-deck walls design.

 

 

For the 6-7th page, they featured the beach – East Coast Park!

I decorated it with the little shells/starfishes drawings I made. The background used was the waves painting. As mentioned, I used the lace to superimpose on the sea waves.

I included the stone benches as I felt that they are an iconic object found in ECP. The white flowers were also added as greeneries are an important part of the beach.

During my visit, the trees near seawalls area were blooming! It was really beautiful and I wanted to include them for appreciation of the nature aspect of Marine Parade.

 

 

And that’s all the pages that make up my zine! Hope you had fun viewing it!

Project 2: Zine’s Research + Ideas Presentation

Hello! For our 2D’s second and final project, we were each assigned to a random neighbourhood in Singapore and afterwards present a zine about it (:

Aaaand the neighbourhood that I got is.. Marine Parade! To be honest, the ‘bubble’ that I live in mainly revolves around the MRT’s purple north-east line and I had zero idea about what does Marine Parade look like. Just the week before Mimi picked the neighbourhood for me, I was talking to my hall friend, Evelyn. Our conversation went something along the lines of:

Me – “Oh ya, where do you stay ah?”
Evelyn – “Marine Parade!”
Me – “Oh…. Marine Parade.. Where is that?”

 

Great start to the project. However I was quite pumped up as this meant exploring a side of Singapore that I was unfamiliar with! I had no idea of where to go and what to expect, and it was really interesting to discover the unique sides of Marine Parade in my recce trips.

It was really quite inconvenient to visit via MRT but lucky for me, I had a direct bus from my house, bus 43! (But it was really super far when I went from hall…) During my first visit, I went during the evening as it had been raining for the previous few days. The findings were not much. I only covered the Marine Drive area.

    

There some nice mural paintings about community care (for the elderly). And I noticed that most of the HDB flats were white with some blue accents.

After some of my classmates did a presentation on colour theory, I got inspired to have colour theme so that my photos can look more consistent. Which was why on my second recce trips, I focused on sceneries/objects that were white & blue (with some green)!

Here’s what I found!

            

I walked from Parkway Parade to the estate areas, covering basically the whole Marine Parade Road: Marine Drive, Marine Terrace, Marine Crescent. It was really fun photographing the colours aspects of the neighbourhood, there were a lot! I guess it was because there was an effort to integrate a nautical theme since it was built on waters (which I will elaborate on in a later part). From HDB flats to condominiums to even the landed properties, most of them were a mixture of blue & white. Along the way I also spotted objects that were blue & white too, such as the chairs, market shops’ banner and decorations.

Also it was then that I realised that East Coast Park was part of Marine Parade….. Which was embarrassing because every Singaporean had been to ECP at least once in their life. Which was even worse when I told people I have not been to Marine Parade before when I frequent ECP often when I was young (¬_¬;) ohmy

These were the photos that I took and which that I used to present my findings.

ANYWAYS! I did some research on my own too.

Background Information of Marine Parade:

Marine Parade is a reclaimed land, being part of Singapore’s multi-phase project. Works started at 1966. Being one of the first few housing estates on reclaimed land, it was popular in demand of that time. Which was why in recent times, it had regraded as one of the silver zones in Singapore.

I thought that the fact that Marine Parade is a reclaimed land was really cool, and I wanted to incorporate this information into my zine’s idea.

Reclaimed land is the mad-made process of stacking and packing layers of sand on sea waters. Because there are layers of the whole land, I thought of translating that into my zine.

Whereby the pages of the zine are the layers that form up Marine Parade, e.g. the sea waters on the last page. And architecture, people, culture are the layers stacking on top (the upper pages). I proposed a rough idea to Mimi but she felt that the idea had to be more concise.

An idea then popped in my mind. The concept of these layers are also associated with their ‘textures’, e.g. Smooth waters vs rough sandy lands vs angled layers of buildings. From my photos, I noticed that there were also many intriguing-looking shapes and patterns from the buildings.

Basically, I wanted to work with textures and shapes of Marine Parade, exploring the ‘layers’ of the land, while being in the theme of blue & white.

I wanted to my audience to focus more on the visuals on the zine which was why I decided to include only photos and edits in it, showcasing the textures of each layer.

I went to look up for inspirations on how I could make the layouts of my photographs more interesting.

 

I wanted to do more the scrapbook style similar to those of Japanese magazines, where they played around with patterns and photo to make their editorials more appealing.

 

In order to gather more finds about the textures, I went back for a third and fourth recce. This time I explored near the ECP area and got these photos.

          

Once again I found new textures to work such as the wall designs, sand particles, sea waves. Also! There were a lot of cute sea animals statues aww. And bonus popiah photo since it was my lunch @ marine parade central’s hawker centre + it’s sort of white colour haha.

 

I think I was more or less settled with these photographs at that point. I did went back two more times because I wanted gather some thoughts and opinions people had of marine parade as I felt that texts can make my zine look more entertaining to read and convey my message better.

 

Refer to my next post for the making of the zine’s pages! (: