This zine is called Known to Unknown. My partner, Julia and I walked from Stuyvesant Residence to Lower East side to the waters and back. For the project we needed to create a path or a map of our walk. I think since the beginning of the project both of us were very insistent on the fact that we didn’t want to capture our walk or New York City in the way that most people would usually see it; buildings, shops, or its landscapes. We decided to focus the idea of doing something that you see on sidewalks like the signboards. As we went along the path not I thought of not only using the signs but also random notices related to apartment leases or even job opportunities because they added a lot of character to the place. I believe by letting the walk decide our main content we sort of got even more engaged in it.
For our mock draft, we decided to make it only with sketches because our pictures hadn’t developed yet and we also wanted to try how sketches would look in the final one. For that we only did one picture a page and it wasn’t the best version. After the critique, I realized that we needed to play around with the layout and exhibit what we were trying to say. Below are a few pages from our draft:
We used a disposable camera to give the pictures a very raw feel and so getting the pictures on our laptops was a challenge. Something that the both of us were trying to extract from this zine was viewing NYC from a different lens and yet subconsciously knowing that a path existed. We also took into consideration of what came out of the walk and how we could relate that to our layout. I suggested that since we saw quite a bit of graffiti near lower east and that reminded me of pop art culture which includes collaging, playing with layouts and designs, the repetition of pictures in a certain way was inspired from them. It luckily also fit the aesthetic of the zine.We didn’t want it to look like a photobook nor a sketch book, but something that one could hold in their hand to recollect memories.
