The first was to produce a zine which represented my trip to Tokyo and also the ideas about that relating to my contexts presentation. (my unaltered scans which I used for this piece are included with my presentation too.)
I have been working on a self printed zine documenting and reflecting on my trip to Japan, looking at the details and experiences of the place to create a graphic representation of the trip. For this I decided to be quite spontaneous and just bring in a load of bits collected and photos from the trip as well as using my blog report to pull quotes to use also.
I cut, ripped and photocopied this collection of ephemera and created some basic collages that were really quite interesting in their own right. I liked the idea of the collage as Tokyo is a place of quick and sometimes confusing fragments of information, sounds, sights, a combination of cultures and era. The collage seemed to replicate that flow of information.
I liked the idea that someone could get a sense of Tokyo from my piece, but not the whole picture, there is something missing that can only be gotten by actually visiting. The broken pieces of imagery, text and ephemera setting off memories and feelings which represent both the chaotic and overwhelming nature of Tokyo itself and of travelling to a new place but also the dream like and distorted nature of memory and individual interpretation of a space. The hand printed nature also has an honesty to it and also inevitably leads to slight misprints and differences which enhances the themes and ideas of individuality.
I wanted to use minimal colours as again I felt this kept some information back from the viewer and leads to things merging together or becoming somewhat ambiguous and needing further investigation, the image needs to be thought about as the information it gives you is not straight forward like just a photograph would be, I like the idea of doing something that promotes someone to think differently.
The final piece is something that I am very pleased with. This is my first attempt at a publication printed and bound myself. There are a few little things such as alignment issues but these are all things I am learning about and really they make little difference overall I wanted it to have a hand-made quality to it. The style and printing goes together really well and works nicely as a zine, the only thing I might change would be to make it a smaller A5 to give a more tactile feel.
Please comment and share if you like my work, I'd love to hear from you!
Also find my trip to Tokyo here:
Tokyo 2013