Ask me Anything: Darcey Ward
The process:
After my direct message to her through Facebook, I emailed her my questions and was lucky enough to get some in depth responses. I then was able to think more on how I could present this information as now I knew the amount of text I would be working with.
Initially I wanted to create a zine as it is suitable in regards to her work and my questions I have asked her on her new project [D]raft Magazine. I began by using a4 sheets of paper to understand how the zine would be presented. I then began creating a template on Adobe Illustrator and started playing around with the information provided.
However while I was creating it, I felt that this did not portray who she is as a blogger. I placed a paint brush style typeface to try mimic brush strokes and markers as I feel she incorporates that messy undone style on her blog. This became a failure as the zine appeared flat and had no personality to it. After returning to her blog and discussing ideas with Bronwyn and Andy in class, I felt making something more hands on would be more suitable to her blog style.
To portray her style of blogging I wanted to use line paper and simply write out the question and answers however after testing this idea I felt it was even more disconnecting than the zine as it was my style of writing all through out. However I was still determined to produce something with a more hand made sense to showcase her blogging style. Besides the marker style banners and the san serif typeface for large bodies of text there were some highlights of a typewriter inspired font that she uses frequently. Bronwyn then suggested for me to try a typewriter and incorporate it into the making of this zine. After a few emails I was able to borrow a typewriter through Bronwyn and from then on my ideas were based on how I can showcase intricate typeface a typewriter can form.
I began experimenting with the typewriter and I found it very difficult to understand and honestly began to get very frustrated.
After setting the margins and figuring out the spacing I felt would be suitable, I then began typing the answers and questions. I found it interesting how although keyboards have adapted the same layout as a typewriter it was far more difficult to type. The pressure was different as I had to firmly press down on each individual letter and the angle I approached the keys had to change to have a dark ink. As suspected I would make a large number of errors.
I found the best way to overcome this was to simply backspace and place a dash across the incorrect letters as it showcases how typewriters are used and highlights the idea of a hand made zine. I then wanted to contrast this by using markers too.
I decided to overlay each answer I had typed out with a piece of tracing paper and simply hand wrote the question with a standard marker and highlighted key aspects of her answer. I did this as I wanted the booklet/zine to represent how Darcey would plan each of her blog posts or articles and reflect the idea of a draft. I was happy with this outcome and thus repeated on the other questions.
