Inspirations/Research
For this semester, my first two 2D projects have all been heavily influenced by Japanese art. And through those first two projects I explored and immersed myself in Japanese art and graphic design and fell in love with it even more.
So for this final project, I wanted to continue with the momentum and explore more Japanese art, in particular Japanese graphic design. And hopefully slowly develop a distinctive style that I can bring with me after my foundation year into and my specialization.
One thing that I picked out from researching from my previous 2 projects, was that the Japanese use their text and typography in very interesting ways. In terms of overlaps, overlays and their use of colors.
In Japanese graphic design, text and typography aren’t just there to tell you something, it is not just a tittle or a body paragraph. The text is there as part of the composition. To bring the composition further like a strong supporting actor supports a main actor in a film.
With this knowledge, I researched more Japanese magazines that have clever usage of typography. And I found these examples :
With these examples in hand, I proceeded to continue to explore how i could use typography in a similar way for my zine.