Overview

For a final project in a Typography & Layout course we were tasked with creating a zine. We could be as imaginative as we pleased, so I chose one of my favorite topics from Botany; the difference between fruits and vegetables, and why so many could be considered fregetables. A fregetable is a botanical fruit that we often think of as a vegetable culinarily. I wanted to explore page layouts, as well as create my own illustrations. I utilized Adobe Creative Suite programs including Fresco, Illustrator and InDesign.

Process

I have a background in macro-biology and botany so I utilized my expertise to select some of my favorite fregetable examples to write about. I did some brainstorming to explore what I wanted with typography and layout within the zine, and the feeling I wanted to evoke stylistically. I wanted to evoke feelings of being in the garden, and went about finding typefaces that gave a natural and weathered effect for the display type. I juxtaposed that with a more clean and easy to read typeface for the body copy. I researched to confirm some facts about each of the items to include in the zine. I created some sketches to refine in Fresco for the illustrations, as well as some thumbnails for the potential layouts I wanted to experiment with throughout the zine to create new visual interest on each page. I finalized the illustrations in Fresco and Illustrator, and brought those illustrations together with the layouts in InDesign to complete the final product.

Insights

Throughout the creation of this zine I found a lot of joy and inspiration in creating my own illustrative assets for the final product. I found that it allowed me to create the exact feeling that I wanted to elicit throughout the project. I enjoyed that exploring differing layouts throughout also helped create visual interest and differentiation without having to make big changes, and kept excellent cohesion in the final product.