This project has been bubbling for a while. I’m here in Wellington -right here right now- surrounded with people who are here, right here, right now. It won’t always be like this. As my studies conclude, it feels like everyone I talk to is leaving Wellington. Leaving Aotearoa. That doesn’t feel right for me just yet.
I want to explore the web of connections that exist in Wellington - the intangible things. Who knows who, and why do they do what they do? How do the places we're from shape who we are now and our creative practices?
Someday in the future we’ll become archaeological fascinations. Our bones will be uncovered, they’ll know our height, our age and weight. They’ll know our peculiarities, the bones we fractured and broke. They’ll guess our diets and rebuild our features. But they won’t know you and they won’t know me. The soft things that they can’t just dig up. The friends you cherished, the people you loved and the people who loved you. Those memoires that form the bits that make us up.
With these thoughts brewing away I got to work creating issue one of FROM. I choose to publish it in the form of a magazine. Embracing zine culture, the cover was screenprinted on recycled bags from student flats. The pages with printed on loose leaf graph paper, stacked inside the bag, and bound with eyelets (like you’d find on your shoes). An unconventional format that reflects the project’s experimental voice.
I’m telling the story of people! Other’s and myself. Their words should match their uniqueness from each other. So, every "speaker" gets their own text colour. The only digital typography in the magazine is Times New Roman. Everything else was "from our world". Headings are handwritten, the photography is polaroids and the illustrations come from their own hands.
On one hand I was aiming to discover a new design voice for myself. I wanted to develop a voice that encapsulates “the real world” in all of it’s textural beauty, gritty temporality and dusty imperfections. A voice that combines that with the “digital world” of 100% whites, pixel perfect lines, loading bars, design trends and best practice modern design. I wanted the reader to feel like the "speaker" had just laid everything out on the page, to be picked up by the reader.
Why should we separate the digital and the real world? We live more and more in a digital world. We can bring them together. I've noticed a trend in an idea of "Authenticity". The resurgence of Film photography, the BeReal trend, YouTube's original slogan "broadcast yourself". In a world where we can access anyone, we crave genuine connections
It was in this context that I choose to document Wellington’s creative people and stories. These soft connections that will disappear with fleeting memories. People will leave, new people will come. This precious moment that we call Right Now. Right now can never happen again. We owe it to ourselves to tell our stories while we can. That is the heart of From.
