wes anderZINE
Welcome to my ZINE!
To start off explaining my process through this project, here is my summary design of the project brief. This project was exploring the appropriation of style, so we were required to choose a company or person to appropriate in visual style.
I didn't go with my first idea on this, which was vintage Japanese product posters. However after a discussion with my instructor inspired me, he mentioned the way I designed my brief specifically the type and colour reminded him of Wes Anderson. This was so exciting because I also LOVE Wes Anderson. Well, I was very interested in him and on the quest to watch more of his films because I was obsessed with The Royal Tenenbaums. His approach to colour is already very similar to my own so it felt like a perfect fit of extending my own style. It was also interesting because Anderson's product is film, so how do you appropriate a film maker's cinematic style to a printed book? This was such an exciting start.
Process
From there I decided to go ahead with Wes Anderson style. I wanted to do some more research, I rented out some films from the library, sat on my couch and did some research. I also went to the internet to find some more details on how to replicate his cinematic style, because I planned to take my own photos that looked like stills out of my own Wes Anderson movie. I wrote a list of elements I knew I had to include to make it Anderson, this included: symmetry, Futura, yellow type, outfits with quirky, colourful and specific choices, overhead table shots, handwritten type, etc. When it came to my content, I wanted to do something I’m interested in learning about anyway. I chose film photography because in the past year I’ve been slowly getting into it, and need to teach myself much more. It’s very important to make connections from your design to the content, style, etc. So before I even started I wrote out connections I can make to bring the project together. Some of these include:
Symmetrical composition
Large, centered titles to reference cinematic title sequences
Implied storyline in the photography to mimic stills out of a film
Type box shapes designed to mimic the mailboxes seen in a photograph
Models have film cameras (pentax and pentacon)
Binding with real film
Book dimensions mimic ratio of cinematic screens (16:9)
Photography
My photographs needed to have a very specific look and opportunity for symmetrical composition so I scouted a list of spots around the city to take my models. This was very helpful to be prepared so the photo shoot didn’t take too long.
Making The Book
I left myself room for playing with shapes in the collaging process, so it wasn’t all pre-planned before I printed. I wanted to let myself play with the coloured papers and make it up as I went. I did this to get an experimental result and achieve the hand-crafted charm of a zine.
For binding I had the idea to use my resources from home because I have plenty of chopped up developed film that I have no use for anymore. I cut these in half, leaving the holes on one side and trimmed them to fit the short edge of my zine. Using the same impasto gel I’ve been using for collage I glued the film onto the edges of each page on both sides. I had to be very careful to line up the holes well enough for binding aligned later. To attach the pages I could either use thread similar to Japanese stitch bind, however I’ve done that method for a couple past assignments so I tried something new. I have some small metal jump rings I use for making jewelry that would work well through the film. However my pages all together stacked too thick for the rings, so I went with a different sort of stitch with thread.
Digital Design
A big part of this ZINE book was the physical post-printing collage but it all was designed digitally to begin with. Here are a couple section header pages, I printed the rectangles separately and glued them back on after printing.
To appropriate Anderson's style the best I can I went out and found a few specifically designed typefaces that mimic the type in some of his films. My favourite is the quirky script because its not something I would ever choose myself but it is so successful compositionally and it
felt unexpectedly right.
