Portfolio
Zines
- 2025
- Design
- Art Direction
Challenge
A low-stakes creative side project to flex my design and creative muscles without too many encumbrances. No better medium than to explore through zine-making. In this medium, I get to literally do, talk about and design whatever I want without answering to nobody and appreciate the art-making process for what it is. Pure enjoyment and pleasure. Like a kid freely able to dance and express themselves without the need or fear of living up to any standard nor pleasing no one.
Approach
I started off with going with the basic, classic zine template, printed on a single page and folding into 8 smaller micro pages. No stapling needed, just one simple cut in the center and fold. To make things easy, I started off with some fairly simple topics of personal experiences with skincare, "SKIN" and "WORDS" to layout some of my favorite quotes, lyrics, and snippets of media and speech that have one way or another inspired me in some way. In this way I spent less time worrying about the content and more time designing.
Long Forgotten Artworks
In order to source some artworks, I delved into one of my favorite places to scavenge, the Wikimedia Commons. Unearthing new-to-me works by masterful engravers like Marco Dente, Jacques Gamelin and others who've long passed this mortal coil in centuries past, therefor whose works are now effectively in the public domain. It is interesting to me to juxtapose the work against some more modern treatments, inverting the sketches brings a new transformative edge and feel to the original works. I wonder how they'd feel if they could see their works being used in this way today.
A Twist on Framing Text
Taking great inspiration from the design of of the book, Snacky Tunes: Music is the Main Ingredient, Chefs and Their Music (2020) by Darin and Greg Bresnitz, I thought it'd be fun to experiment with it in a zine format. More visually striking than the traditional rectangular columns of text, creating the framing shapes in Illustrator than exporting back into InDesign makes for some fun design moments, elevating a what could be boring subject on skincare to be a little more interesting to gaze upon.
