lonely but so full of splender
Before starting my Ask Me Anything project, I never thought that I could interview some famous people someday. I was so worried that I would not receive any reply when Andy told us we should send an e-mail to all the five person we wrote down on the paper. But surprisingly, I soon received the first reply from my list and also he is my first artist on the list.
ZHONG XIA YOU is famous Chinese humanity and art blogger with one hundred thousand followers on Sina Weibo (Chinese version of Instagram). Her artworks have been noted for its stylized cinematic quality. The reason why I chose her as my interviewee is that I can see the great sorrow in her paintings, although most of them are about the relationships between human and universe. In addition, I just started painting on my laptop and I found that it is difficult for a beginner to actually create something. Hence, by doing this interview, I was hoping to have a deep understanding of her artworks and in the meantime to learn some skills that could be helpful for people who want to start painting.
When it comes to the layout work. I decided to use the square as the shape of the book because I wanted the publication to look more like an art book. Besides, My interviewer’s works are also suitable for presenting in squares.
I also used simple lines to visualize the content of the text. By combining minimalism with my understanding of his works, I have created works to explore the relationship between people and universe. Everyone is like a lonesome planet in the infinite universe, lonely but so full of splender.
The biggest problem I encountered is that I don’t know how which way to bind the book.At first I wanted to made it into a form of turning pages ( a handy book with page number and index. But after I print out my prototype. I found that the paper I choose is to hard( 350gsm ) and made it almost impossible to fold. ( I tried to fold but the edge will get nasty). All my art works and layout were done in Illustrator (because I completely know nothing about Indesign) and it gets a little bit tricky when I decided to change them. So l came up with the ideal of using rings to bine the pages and it look really polished when l finally combine them.
three versions of my work
I have to say it feels really good when i got the final version. My interviewee posted it online and received a lot of positive comments. l started from noting to a polished small publication. It is hard but ,still, worth it.