Zine 03

I modified the zine quite a bit from what I showed previously, paying extra attention to leave a column untouched on some spreads, so that there would be more breathing space. I also did a few test prints to ensure that the zine copied the font size and layout of the IKEA magazine as closely as possible. (honestly hoping this doesn’t count as plagiarism)




Click HERE to view the zine in its full glory!


Although it seems easy to just copy the IKEA layout and language, there were still challenges that I faced while I was creating this zine. I think the greatest challenge that I faced in this project was choosing the names of furniture and coming up with a description that fits it well, to sell it to a targeted audience. It was also pretty challenging to try and emulate IKEA in the simple and direct way that they communicate to their customers, often with some sarcasm or pun involved. In terms of layout, I did face some issues with aligning the photos and words in a way where they can fit well together, not just on the page itself, but across the spread. It was also difficult to recreate my zine in a manner that had local IKEA flavour, while still maintaining the essence of IKEA itself.

Overall, this was a really fun project to work on and I thoroughly enjoyed the process of creating this zine – from imagining the users to thinking of the potential users and seeing the whole zine come together! I hope this zine gives them a little insight on the residents that possibly live in Sengkang and I hope that you will enjoy reading it as much I did preparing this zine 🙂

Zine 02

In order to accurately reference IKEA’s catalogue, I needed an actual copy of it. Thankfully, I managed to find the 2017 copy of their catalogue at home. It was the main source of inspiration and influence for my zine.

IKEA’s catalogues were distinct in their layout, placement of words and font choices. I tried to stick to these elements as close as possible, so that people could immediately connect my zine to that of an IKEA catalogue. 


I like the obvious hierarchy of the front cover. The eye is immediately drawn to the title, followed by the text that is in stark contrast to the darker background, bringing to attention the object that is labelled. Not forgetting the logo with its iconic colours, making a striking first impression on the reader.


I love the rule of thirds that is balanced in this layout. The focus is on the image that takes up most of the page, leaving a white space that is just enough to fill up details of the products in the image. The hierarchy in this layout is also obvious, where the title, body text and subtexts are very clearly identified by their size in font, as well as placement on the page.

The balance of the spread is what strikes me the most about this layout. On the left page, the spacing really played an important part in bringing out the image and the text, in a way where it is not too cluttered or empty. I also like how the images are not arranged in a strict grid, but with some slight misalignment of the images. On the right page, the descriptive text is used to balance off the heavy use of images. The space at the top right hand corner also balances out the weight of the title and body text on the left page.
This spread was all about consistency. Despite being two different products with different image framings, the similarity in the alignment and weightage of the rest of the elements made the size difference less evident/weird.

Albeit the simplicity of the IKEA layout overall, the placement of the images and texts are accurate enough to bring attention to them. IKEA also has a very smart use of empty space that frames the overall spread and provides a consistency throughout the catalogue.


DRAFT 01
I realised that it was quite difficult to follow the IKEA catalogue exactly the way they printed it, partly due to the difference in the size of their publication and the A5 requirement for this zine. The layout ended up looking too tight and clustered together, and required some segregation so that readers would be able to differentiate between the different sections/parts of the zine.







DRAFT 02
After consulting Shirley about my zine, there were some changes made that improved the hierarchy of the information on the zine:

First spread – gradient overlay added to bring focus to the main subject, since the background colours were too vibrant / distracting

Second spread – right page shifted to give more space between the pages, but makes the page look like its under the same category as the left page

Third spread – yellow colour added behind map to bring emphasis

Zine 01

When I first received Sengkang as my location, the first thought that came to my mind was: “Where is Sengkang” / “What is Sengkang” / “Is it the one with Nex – oh wait isn’t that Serangoon” I asked around and didn’t receive much information about the place as well. The most common response I got was: “Sengkang got nothing one leh”. #jialat

Anyway, I convinced myself that not knowing anything about the place is a good thing, because that means I get to explore new places (yay)! So I decided that I would head down to Sengkang knowing completely nothing about the place (not even to google it), and let my observations do the work.



My Sengkang explore buddy @ Pinyi, who had his location at Jalan Kayu, which was quite nearby. We went to Sengkang on a Sunday afternoon, a day where I presume most families will be spending quality time together. While having lunch at the food court, the first few things we noticed about Sengkang based on what we saw from our surroundings was that it was a family oriented neighbourhood. The demographics ranged from toddlers to elderly, but with not many young adults. Based on our observation at the mall and the food court, we noticed that the population was of Chinese majority, and that people dressed very casually.


I looked at the map of the Sengkang area so I could get a rough idea of where I was going. I noticed that there were many schools within the Sengkang boundary, and one of my first thoughts was that it would be interesting to document the schools.

However, upon exiting the mall to the outdoors, the first thing that caught my eye was the number of bicycles parked beside trees and railings. I thought that it was quite uncommon to have so many bicycles in a neighbourhood. The first impression I had was that the community here was really environmentally friendly and fit, and I was eager to find out why bicycles were such a popular mode of transport around this place. Maybe it was because I came into the area with fresh eyes, and being extra observant made me realise this, or simply because it was a weekend when families spend time together. But because of this observation, I was determined to document all the bicycles I saw along the way, hoping to make something out of it when I evaluated them later.


My speculation of Sengkang as a cycling community was further proven when I chanced upon this bicycle repair pop-up store at the community centre. I felt that this was really unique because the only bicycle repair shops I’ve ever known are the ones along ECP, with bicycle rentals + repairs under one roof. For this uncle to be able to set up a pop-up store solely for bicycle repairs, would mean that cycling is quite a popular activity here, so I decided to approach him in hopes of getting some insights.


Hello uncle, do you mind if I take a photo of your store? I need to document it for my school project. It’s very interesting.
Uncle: As long as my boss doesn’t find out. And make sure I’m not in the photo! (I managed to catch his silhouette though, ha)

Do a lot of people cycle in Sengkang?
Uncle: There are a lot of cyclists here, but I don’t receive good business because this is just a small shop. There is another shop behind which is bigger, more customers go there. Usually they don’t trust me because I don’t have a place where they can park their bicycles.


The uncle was busy repairing the bicycle (shown in photo above), and he didn’t seem too happy that I was taking up his time. I continued documenting the bicycles I saw at the community centre. There were spaces dedicated for parking bicycles, but there wasn’t enough space for all of them, so some were parked outside or in-between the parking spaces. I also thought it was interesting that every bicycle reflected some characteristics of its owner, based on colour or even the accessories that were attached to them.

I crossed another road before reaching the first set of blocks that I’ve encountered on this straight route that I was taking. Looking at this map almost gave me a heart attack because Sengkang West Zone B seemed like a H U G E cluster of blocks.

Here were the things that I documented here over a span of two days, on a Sunday and Monday afternoon –

BICYCLES
Since bicycles were the first thing that caught my attention upon exploring Sengkang, I was documenting all the bicycles that I saw along the way, and there were A LOT. I’m not sure if it was excessive as compared to other places in Singapore, but it did feel like it. There were a huge variety of bikes that reflected Sengkang’s demographic. There were old, unused bikes and broken bikes (elderly), brand new bikes (new families), bikes that had a child’s seat at the back and kids’ bikes (families with children), and various customised bikes (one had an umbrella attached to it, one didn’t have rubber on the wheels, possibly representing the quirky side of residents?)


BICYCLE BASKETS
While documenting bicycles, I noticed that some had baskets that contained very unique items in them. I thought that these items seemed to say a lot about the owner of the bike, about what is important or unimportant to them, or how long the bike has been used or unused. It was interesting to analyse them at first, but slowly I realised that most of the baskets contained trash items that were probably deposited by other residents (why would anyone want to store trash in their bicycle baskets?)


BICYCLE DEFECTS
Scrutinising and doing a closer observation of the bicycles made me notice defects in some of the bicycles, most likely old and unused, or probably once used too often. I thought it was quite creative of some of the residents in the way they chose to repair their bicycles (or lack thereof).


BICYCLE PROTECTION
I’ve never noticed this in the bicycles that I’ve seen prior to this project but some Sengkang residents seem to take really good care of their bicycles by protecting it. I find the choice of materials intriguing, although most of them use plastic bags (probably to protect their leather seats in case it rains and causes damage).


BICYCLE + CAMERA
As I was documenting bicycles around the blocks, I noticed that every bicycle parking area had a surveillance camera that was looking right at it. This further proved my speculation of Sengkang as a cycling community since their bicycles were “heavily guarded”, and heightens its importance. I felt slight discomfort knowing that the cameras were looking at me as I was documenting these, and I wondered what it would be like to view the bicycles from the camera’s perspective.


CYCLISTS
I was fascinated by the number of cyclists that I saw when I was walking along the road. It seemed like I saw a bicycle every time I turned my head to look around. I found this pretty unusual, and was even more curious as to why there were no bicycle paths within a community that has a passion in cycling. I’m not sure what I can analyse from these photos since it does not really say much about Sengkang.


ABANDONED FURNITURE
While exploring the blocks and documenting bicycles, I chanced upon some abandoned items. I didn’t think much about it initially, until I saw a collection of 4 chairs dumped at the wall behind the carpark. I realised that I was suddenly paying attention to objects that people probably wouldn’t think twice of, and I found this concept interesting. I retraced by steps and took some photos of the abandoned items that I passed by previously. As I walked around the blocks more, I discovered more and more abandoned items, and it seemed bizarre to have that many abandoned items just within one cluster of blocks. I loved the idea of the abandonment of objects that once meant a lot to its owners, and I was curious to find out who used to own them and the reasons for throwing them, since some of the objects seemed in pretty good condition. I thought it might be interesting to analyse the damages of these objects and speculate who the possible owners might have been.


TRASH
In line with the theme of abandonment, I thought of documenting everyday objects that were lying around. However, some of these objects seemed to be too common and didn’t really tell me much about the Sengkang community (looks aesthetic though).


After going through all my photos, the theme that really appealed to me was the collection of abandoned furniture. Although bicycles were the main focus at the start of my exploration, I felt that they were quite common among many neighbourhoods in Singapore. The abandoned furniture and its damages really told me a lot about the kind of people who possibly live/lived in Sengkang. And since I knew nothing about the people who previously used it, the analysis of these objects would be heavily focused on my own observation and assumption.  Also, since these objects were temporarily placed in the space, it would be impossible to re-document them again. I saw this as a possible representation of the ever-changing landscape of Sengkang because of upgrades and developments; the idea of out with the old, in with the new.

 


RESEARCH ON IKEA
To emulate the IKEA catalog, I did some research on the brand’s values,  culture and behind-the-scenes footage, to relate it to my zine.

IKEA’s values and culture ties in with the concept of my zine, revolving around the idea of family and community: “create a better everyday life” / Every product we create is our idea for making home a better place.” / “At IKEA, we respect each other, our differences and are open to everyone making a contribution.


IKEA IDENTITY

IKEA colour –
(
https://www.famouslogos.us/ikea-logo/)
The yellow and blue, both primary colors, in the IKEA logo evidently highlight the colors of the Swedish national flag. The boldness of the lettering (a Futura typeface) and the contrasting colors make the emblem really leap out. The blue color represents trust, and the yellow color depicts happiness, optimism and imagination.


IKEA Font –
(https://www.sitepoint.com/ikea-and-the-font-fiasco/ )
“For the last fifty years, they have used the Futura font in the logo and in their catalogues. In fact, the font they used is a specially commissioned variation of Futura known as IKEA Sans. The IKEA catalogue is one of the most printed books in the world and the 2010 edition sees Futura replaced with Verdana. Yes, plain old Verdana — the font that’s safe to use on the Web. IKEA have said the reason for the change was to simplify and merge the fonts used on the Web and in print.”


PERSONAL VIEWS ON IKEA CULTURE + IDEAS:

Do-It-Yourself
DIY the zine themselves?

Creative, smart, space-saving/utilising ideas / Compact / Organised –Modular layout?
Hidden compartments?

Simple line work illustrations –
Instruction manual style?

Witty lines –


The Second Hand Campaign –
I chanced upon this campaign by IKEA that was rather similar to the concept that I had, the only difference was that it served as a link bridge between the buyer and seller. It advertises furniture that was initially meant to be disposed of, and advertising it as a new IKEA product. “The campaign offered a different way for the brand to interact with its customers, one that was useful as well as interesting, while also getting across the message that Ikea’s furniture is built to last.”



FURNITURE NAMES
I took references from online Singlish dictionaries to help me with the curation of names for the abandoned furniture.

Singlish Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlish_vocabulary#0.E2.80.939
Singlish Dictionary – 
http://www.mysmu.edu/faculty/jacklee/
 
Chio (verb) – Physically attractive.
Chiong (verb) – 
To rush.
Emo (adj) – Over-emotional.
Huat (adj) 
– to be lucky or fortunate.
Jialat (adj) 
– Used to describe being in trouble or a terrible situation.
Kayu (adj)
 Traditionally used to accuse that soccer matches have been fixed with shouts of “referee kayu” or soccer fans. Also used to describe lack of spontaneity or wooden behaviour.
Koon (verb) – Sleep, take a nap.
Koyak (adj) – Damaged, broken.
Rabak (adj)
– Badly torn.
Relak (verb) – 
Relax.
Shiok (adj)
 – Comfortable, enjoyable, pleasurable.
Wayang (fig) – An act carried out or display put up to confuse or mislead.






ANALYSIS OF FURNITURE







DIRECTION OF ZINE
Ikea catalogue style; promoting abandoned furniture to other residents who could use them from assumed original family demographic, and the theme that might represent them. It also attempts to sell Sengkang as a family-oriented neighbourhood and promotes the bonding within the community.



TRANSLATION – ANALYSIS TO CATALOGUE
A mattress from a family of devoted hibernators who treasure sleep a lot, the target audience would be someone who would really needs a place to sleep. Name of objects would be changed to Singlish with Swedish accented letters, to make it more “local”, and for the humour of relating it to an Ikea catalogue. The names are chosen based on their relation to the object and the targetted user, as well as the meaning of the Singlish word.