Reflections on the Zine

After a weekend of working hard on the zine, here are my final results! And the reflections to go along with it.

The cover page. I opted to keep it simple, just like the poster. I used Adobe Garamond Pro for the whole zine because it reminded me of a storybook font, and since I was telling a story, it would be a good choice. I didn't want it to be a story for kids, more like for adults, so that's why I felt it was still sophisticated enough but able to provide some character. I also purposely kept it small because I didn't want it to steal any attention from the letterforms. For the cover, small caps is used for emphasis that it's the title of the zine.

To B, Or Not To B. The origins of this saying is from William Shakespeare, and it was originally a question of whether it was worth staying in this world or not.

In the context of this zine, it's about B finding his own identity. And so I feel that this smoky, unformed image represents that quite well, as B's not sure who he is yet, or what he wants to be - it's an internal struggle.

The left page. An introduction to B. Using size and semibold font for emphasis, and following up on the story with pt 12. Used the spot colour to highlight the negative feelings B must have felt by always being so close to being first, but always coming in second-best.

This is when B really strives for perfection. He keeps working to be better, more perfect, in an attempt to prove himself. However, it doesn't work. In the background, you can see tinges of madness - emphasised by the red.

This is B's start of the descent into madness and frustration. The left squares seem to be tumbling off the ledge, representing his downfall nicely. The sketches on the mozaic paper are more organic compared the ones before, with a lot of sharp, starry corners - I thought it looked good to showcase anger, like B couldn't contain his feelings anymore, started exploding, and lashing out.

I actually wanted to add the bouncing 'B' chalk image over here (as referenced in one of the previous blog posts) but I felt that would be too much. I opted to play a little bit with the type instead.

 I did play a little with the type here because there's some space - bottom below, lower and lower.

This is where B's brother comes in to encourage him and makes him realise that being a 'backup' isn't all that bad. It's actually a good balance to be Number 2. Here, B comes to accept himself. There's still some order to his thoughts as referenced in the isometric grid, but it's not as orderly compared to the first page - there are more variations and space to play.

Making the text follow the path of Brother B turned out much nicer than I expected. 

And thus, we're back to the beginning (but it's actually the back cover). B has transformed back to being his basic, beautiful self, but more sure of himself now. I actually debated making this the front page, but going back to the title of To B Or Not To B, I feel justified choosing the smoky, intangible letterform as the front cover.

There were some issues when I was designing this. I don't have much experience in InDesign, so finding the difference between black and key black, or even changing the display settings to show black as actual black - I mean, it must seem so easy but I feel so stupid for not knowing.

Another example, I couldn't for the life of me figure out why some of my imported TIFFs was showing an annoying white outline around it.

I tried to fix it by covering it up with some squares. And that's when I realised my choice of black was not really true black...

No amount of Googling helped me to find an answer. Anyway, I managed to fix the most pressing issues that looked super ugly (not covered in this blog post), but I'm definitely going to ask Walter & Sarah why this kind of problem exists - for future reference, here are the questions:

• Why are red and white lines showing up around placed bitmaps
• Does overlay work on true black?
• Transparency flattening? How do I export?

This has taught me that the export process is really important for print. I can't afford to leave it till the last minute. I mean, for digital work, what you see is what you get. NOT WITH INDESIGN. Anyway for now, I'm just glad I managed to get the zine done. Looking forward to the next assignment.