Rylan Doyle
OSU New Media Student
In this project we created zines using found text and images. I decided I wanted to make a story exploring depression, loneliness, hope, and love using mostly sources pulled from music and inspirational found text/images. This is a somewhat more personal project for me, as bits and pieces of it are emotions I’ve felt at one point or another.
I have this belief that music is super important in many aspects of life. It evokes a lot of emotions and feelings. I think it’s a powerful medium of expression. It’s also something that I think can be very personal to people. I like to think that a truly good song will have many different meanings based on how the listener is interpreting it. That’s why I mostly used song lyrics as my found text. I wanted to arrange these lyrics to tell a story in a way. I also wanted to rearrange and pull these lyrics away from their context to create new meanings. Sometimes just a line of verse can be very powerful alone. I chose to use lyrics of songs that I listen to a lot.
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I also used a lot of repetition, partly because music is a very repeatable thing. The instrumentals and lyrics in songs are often repeated. Also, personally there are times I will just listen to a song on endless repeat because it just happens to capture my current mood, which is yet another reason I chose songs I listen too.
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This project taught me a lot about how to use InDesign and Photoshop. I had to constantly resize images I found to 300 dpi in Photoshop, among other edits. Then I had to piece everything together in InDesign. Along the way, I also discovered many features and similarities between various adobe programs. For example, on my last page I discovered how to use transparency effects options that were very similar to effects options in Adobe Premiere.
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Below is a breakdown of my intention for each page. I do hope each person that see’s this finds their own meanings in this design, but I wanted to discuss why I did what I did for each page as well.
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Project 4 - Zines
Page Breakdown:
Cover – The cover features a quote from one of the Rocky movies. Technically, this is the only found text that does not come from song lyrics in the zine, although the quote is featured in a mash-up song I often listen too. I really like how the quote lays out that life isn’t easy, but you got to keep working at things and keep up hope.
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Page 1 and 2 – This page is the first step in the overarching story I am trying to tell. I wanted to convey a sense of loneliness and depression. A story of a lonely soul. I used lyrics from the Twenty One Pilots song, “Car Radio,” and Bring Me the Horizon’s song, “Happy Song.” Both these songs in my interpretation are about being alone, overthinking, and being in your own head in a negative way.
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Page 3 and 4 – The story continues as the lonely soul from the first page expresses wanting to find a place or person to belong with, as exemplified by Linkin Park’s song, “Somewhere I Belong.” This is followed by lines from Death Cab For Cutie’s song, “I Will Possess Your Heart.” Paired with lines from Carly Rae Jepson’s song, “I Really Like You,” I wanted this to represent this soul finding someone who wants to be with them, to end their loneliness. Colors begin to get brighter and hope ensues.
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Page 5 and 6 – Love, both in physical and emotional terms. Happy colors. The Beatles, “All You Need Is Love” blares at the core of this page, supported by Tove Lo’s song, “Talking Body.”
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Page 7 and 8 – Sometimes things don’t last. It’s the classic story of love. Everything begins to fall apart. Color gets darker, and everything is messy and confusing. I wanted to convey a sense that maybe the soul doesn’t know why everything is falling apart suddenly after everything was going so well. The soul still loves the other person, and is having trouble letting go.
Music used:
“Sorry” – Meg Meyers
“I Don’t Love You” – My Chemical Romance
“Fool’s Gold” – Fitz & The Tantrums
“Clarity” - Zedd
“Habits (Stay High)” – Tove Lo
“Follow you” – Bring Me The Horizon
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Page 9 and 10 – The soul character returns once again to loneliness, despair, and overthinking. This section features “Happy Song” by Bring Me The Horizon again, intermixed with Twenty One Pilots song, “Holding On To You.” Thematically I wanted the ending pages to represent the circling nature of life and love, hence the reuse of the same bands as the opening pages, and some of the lyrics literally discussing going around in circles. It gets kind of depressing, but there is always the hope circling around again will result in a happier ending. It all depends on how you want to interpret this booklet, and the mood felt. Maybe you circle back around, get to the middle love page, and put the booklet away. Refuse to believe it will get worse or fight to stay on that page. Or maybe you feel sad and keep going along this path I set. My point is media like music is open to interpretation and what you get out of it. I may be telling a depressing love story in my mind, but it’s open to the readers own thoughts to interpret as well.
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Back Page – The back page features the song “This is Gospel” by Panic! At the Disco. I liked that the lyrics dealt with some of the themes I was exploring.