Florence Gao Zine Reflection

Below is the link to my whole zine(flipping through the entire zine), it was too large of a file to be directly uploaded to this post.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uuV6i9cF8wm5Eka13X_aoYwqeeDcBJRC/view?usp=sharing

(please log in to your New School email account for access)

Zvc  

My zine was about my trouble of sleeping and how my cat that I adopted helped me through it. Basically, my zine contains a few pages of me alone, then introduced my sleeping problems and smoking problems, then to when I first met my cat and at last I gave up smoking+slept much better now because of my cat. In the end, I also attached a part of my therapist’s letter about my cat being my emotional support animal, which I hope it would help my readers understand what my zine is about. Above is the front cover or my zine. For the cover, I used one of the previous pieces that I did called “Studio Chaos” that was based on my nightmare/the messy feeling that I had while working in my studio.

I feel like it would be hard for a lot of people to understand what my cat means for me-to me, he is more than a pet. Before having him, I would wake up at least 3 times per night and have reoccurring nightmares. After getting my cat, I not only got less depressed, having him slept by my side also made me able to sleep without taking medicines. I feel that my cat is a big part of my identity, just because that sleeping is so important(think about this, about 1/3 of our life we spent sleeping).

Here is what my zine looked like in my indesign. One of the photos of multiple me and my cat was photoshopped. That took me a long time and hard work but I love how it turned out, that is for sure my favorite page of all.

 

I made all my zine except the handwriting part on InDesign and printed the final one at village copier. I first tried to print it on the procolor printer and the first day the printer broke so I could not print at all. The second day it successfully printed but it was a much bigger size than I wanted and also the color was quite off(I had a lot of vibrant colors). Then I went to a shop to print out my zine in the size and color I wanted, but when I wanted to pick it up they told me that their machine was broken so they could not bind my zine. In the end, I had to go to village copier the day before it is due and paid the extra fee for the rush fee and got my zine 30 minutes before school started and wrote rest of my scripts when the class was starting.

If I would do another zine, I would definitely make sure that my printing was successful at the first time. It was such a struggle to print and this was my first ever zine so I never like tried to print anything like this. I think this was a great experience to try making something that I have never done and I think I did a pretty good job of making the whole zine looked put together and all the concepts throughout my zine made sense. However, my handwriting is crappy because I was in such a hurry and made a writing mistake. I would so want to do it better if I had more time(but I guess it kinda represents the clumsy side of me..). Other than that, I think my zine was very put together and I am satisfied with my first ever zine.

 

 

Self portraits & Identity, Manci

This is how I prefer to wear when going outdoor to have fun. I hate carrying heavy things, which gives me a sense of burden, so keeping it as light and casual as possible makes me feel at ease.

This is a reflection of how my friends see me, very complex. They see fortitude and determination in me, from the way I handle work, the way I walk, the straight forward way I talk in, to my appearance: locked brows, my angular chin, and my serious (sometimes even seems to be angry, they said) expression when I was thinking or focusing. But they also see blandness and indecision (and stupidity) in me when I take care of friends, making various decisions, get shy or respond to funny things.

This is the way I see myself. Hard to describe. I am super emotional, I laugh very loudly and joke with my friends for 24 hours in a day. I only reveal my humor in front of intimate friends and I enjoy killing time in nature with them.