In this zine, I had a few concepts which I wanted to work on:

  1. The good and the bad of Political figures.
  2. Larger than life.
  3. Preserved buildings in Singapore.
  4. ‘Infographic’ on Wakeboarding.

Some initial sketches:

holytrump

A positive light on Trump..?

giant hermit crab 1

Larger than life hermit crab.

 

preserved building 2

Preserved peranakan buildings in Joo Chiat.

wakeboard shark 1

Wakeboarding like you’re Poseidon.

 

I ultimately decided to go with Wakeboarding, as I had a passion for the sport and I feel that not enough people know or have tried the sport. While I initially planned to create the zine in an infographic style, it morphed into an introductory booklet which served as an informative starter kit.

With that in mind, I chose my target audience to be the young crowds who walk around aimlessly in CCA booths in schools and universities, looking for a CCA that might interest them.


While it was no longer a 100% infographic zine any more, I still picked out relevant material in crafting one. Based on my research, infographics had to:

  • be eye-catching.
  • be easy for readers to engage in.
  • include more visuals and less text.This was important as the target audience I had in mind would have a limited attention span, and would probably move on if something didn’t catch their attention within the next 10 seconds or so.

 

ART DIRECTION

Given this knowledge, I attempted to steer my zine in those guiding concepts. In my earlier projects, I lacked a strong art direction, which caused my artworks to carry little cohesion. This time, I made sure to follow a particular artistic style, which was to be done via digitally drawing on photographs.

I studied some of David Carson’s typographic works to get a general idea of the types of font I would want to use. It was an added bonus that many of his works fused two of his passions: design and surfing. This made it easy to emulate some of his works onto mine. Other artists I studied include Joe Pytka (Director of Space Jam), Richard Williams (Director of Who framed Roger Rabbit) and Guila Pex.

After much contemplation, I also decided on a Landscape format as opposed to a more convential portrait-oriented zine, reason being the photographs I took while wakeboarding were more fitting of landscape formats.

Some initial cover pages:

cover page wakeboard

This cover had a plain coloured sky. I received feedback that a picture of a photographed sky could be used instead to maintain a strong thematic style.

cover page wakeboard newsky

Too many clouds in this one, so i took another photograph with fewer clouds and ultimately changed to a landscape orientation.

COVER AND BACK

Cover page

Cover. A much clearer sky. Saturation was increased to make the zine more bold and eye-catching.

zback cover

Back. Played with the concept of front and back (The back page shows the back of the cover picture.).

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS WAKEBOARDING?

Page 1

Starting off with a familiar sight: dictionary.com.  This hopefully provides a fun familiarity to the reader. Note the added definitions 2 & 3.

page 2

The major colour theme of this project is blue, given the subject of the water sport. Created my own font here to keep up the fun, quirky mood of this zine. (Thank God I didn’t use Comic Sans)

 

TRANSPARENCIES

Using acetate paper brought me a lot of fun working on this zine. What I had in mind was drawing cartoons on the acetate, such that it could interact with a photograph when placed over it. I then had the idea of placing the transparent sheet between two different figures, so that there was a concept of duality where the acetate could interact with both the left and the right pages.

This idea was worked upon as I wanted something to capture the attention of the reader more, so that he or she would be entertained enough to read more, instead of losing interest in plain text halfway. The use of acetate this way was easy to play with and added to the fun element of the zine.

WHAT IS WAKEBOARDING LIKE?

hero

Left Page.

wakehero

Right page. Low quality photograph because OSS has a max file upload size-.-

In these pages I chose to deviate from the blue colour theme as I wanted to evoke the mood of adrenaline, excitement and power. Besides, a stark colour change on a new page would add variation to the monotonous colours. In the context of the next page, I therefore chose green to be the main colour, so each section would come together to produce the RGB effect.

MYTHS AND FACTS

nessie

Used nessie to portray the idea of a myth.

(NOTE: In between the above and below pages is an additional transparency, where the sentence “Create your own scene here!” is written at a corner. While readers may not necessarily be inclined to do so, they are nonetheless prompted to get creative and be more observant of the scene that can be viewed when one is wakeboarding, to give a better idea of how wakeboarding feels like.)

nessiephoto

Refer to bottom of post for better quality photographs.

 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

sharkie

Back to a blue theme.

wakeshark

Refer to bottom of post for better quality pictures.

 

FINAL WORDS

Page 12

 

Choice of paper:

Fabric paper for the covers provided a nice texture, and complimented the whole surf n’ sweat vibe. The rest (apart from the acetate) were printed on semi-gloss 190gsm paper (not too thick for the acetate alignment).

I had initially wanted to print the whole zine using the transparent acetate such that the zine is completely waterproof and I could present it in a clear rectangular container while tied to a string, just like a wakeboarder. However, the acetate pages would stick together when wet, and the zine would be very difficult to bind due to the resistivity of acetate.

 

Nonetheless, I am satisfied with the way my zine turned out:)

 

wakehero w cape copymyth2 wakeshark2

This project was a fun one to work on: We had to spell our names out with a relation to whatever it is we decided to describe ourselves with.

The premise of this project gave me many ideas I wanted to work on.

 

After consultations, I was given an important piece of advice, which was to create a theme, or a collective mood, of the series of typographic compositions I was to create.

I decided to go with the idea of being simple, yet witty.

 

As such, these are the captions I decided to work on:

  1. I am allergic to dust.
  2. I was born during the dawn of the computer age.
  3. I find kids annoying.
  4. I am Jacob.

 

“I am allergic to dust.”

For this composition, I will attempt to create my name with a runny nose; said nose will represent the letter ‘A’ in my name. The nose will be made from clay. To make things more relevant, I will place a layer of grey ‘dust’ (probably felt wool) as the background of this composition. To keep things 2D, I will take a photo of the final piece to print out. I am hoping this will turn out well during the presentation.

 

“I was born during the computer age.”

I felt that this piece should represent the thing that we 90s kids would be very familiar with. Therefore, I chose to emulate the past Microsoft word document font. Back then, Times New Roman was the default font, and was also the most accepted font in school.

Screen Shot 2016-02-02 at 11.25.11 pm

This small but important Microsoft word cursor was added as well.Screen Shot 2016-02-02 at 11.24.52 pm

After consultations, however, I was inspired to push the already familiar text a step further. I took the advice of adding an old school ‘screen’ effect to the composition.

Examples:

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 5.19.01 am

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Notice the hazy, faint RGB blanket that new flat-screen laptops today do not produce.

 

This was actually pretty fun to do as the process, though long, turned out fruitful. Here are some process shots:

Screen Shot 2016-02-11 at 9.46.19 pmScreen Shot 2016-02-11 at 10.27.13 pmScreen Shot 2016-02-11 at 10.28.09 pm

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 4.32.22 am

Looks really complicated, and it is! Thankfully the online guide was very easy to follow:)

 

The tutorial for this effect can be found online here:

http://layersmagazine.com/simulating-a-computer-screen-in-adobe-photoshop.html

And finally, the icing on the cake:

clippy

Clippy, the nostalgic paperclip. I personally never really liked him.

I remember how he was always there to aid, but was never really much help. #Aforeffort

 

“I find kids annoying.”

To tackle this piece, I decided to tackle to root cause of the problem. We all know what causes kids, and we all know the preventive measures. So I decided to do a little research on a particular household brand.

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 8.56.21 amScreen Shot 2016-02-12 at 8.57.16 am

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Their ads were so witty and entertaining that I almost got carried away with my research.

Subtle as it was, the logo itself was distinguishable enough. There was little I had to do for others to see the relation in this, even without the product replacing the letter ‘O’ in my name:

Typography i find kids annoying

Again, I was encouraged to push this even further, by including the Ⓡ symbol in this piece.

Wiki time:

“The enclosed R or circled Latin R (Ⓡ or ⓡ) is a typographical symbol. As one of many enclosed alphanumerics, the symbol is an “R” within a circle. Its most notable usage is as the registered trademark symbol.”

However I was told, with good reason, that I may not be sending the message I intend to, which was that I do not want kids (at least not now). I had to include something to show my audience that message.

This led me to download some Photoshop crayon brush presets:) There’s something about kids being almost synonymous to whimsical crayon doodles, and I hope I can use this to bring forth the right message this time.

crayon doodle kids

cute, but also kinda creepy.

 

“I am Jacob.”

For this final piece, I wanted to do a reversal of the project. Instead of introducing my name first in the typographic artwork, I decided to introduce the adjectives and things that make me into the composition, and end it off with my name as the caption.  Since there were so many things I wanted to include in this piece, I decided to employ the concept of a typographic portrait.

Some super cool examples:

typortrait batman typortrait heisenberg

 

Portraits like these are fairly common. However, I felt that since this was a multiple item project, I wanted to give the whole thing a bit of a narrative, where this wraps everything up on a nice note. After all, pictures of one’s self comes to mind when one says “This is me.”.

Some process shots:

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 9.31.11 am

gaussian blur because i’m not a selfie kinda guy lol

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 9.28.47 amScreen Shot 2016-02-12 at 9.29.42 amScreen Shot 2016-02-12 at 9.35.03 am