a zine about building our own space online as creatives
my bachelor final project!! it's a zine, but as a website
Today marks a week since my bachelor project defence. I’ve been working on this project for 4 months, without breaks of more than a couple of days. Every week had new tasks, plus the unfinished ones from the week before. I was completely immersed into this project. And now it’s finally finished, and the grades are decided this week, my part is done, and I only need to wait until Sunday to officially close off this chapter.
Towards the end, I was starting to become bored with the project. Not because of its topic or the work, more because of having to write about it, film myself presenting it, and all of those academic requirements. But I’m excited about the project itself, and I see a next chapter to it.
When I started the semester in February and had to decide on a topic, I was diving deep into digital homes, online spaces (a.k.a. websites) where one can share anything they create. More than a polished portfolio to get hired, it’s a space for true self-expression, with passion projects at the core and embracing having multiple, seemingly unrelated, interests.
I wanted to explore this for my final project, but I thought building my digital home as an academic project was too limiting, too big, and too weird. So instead I shaped the project around another big interest of mine, web editorials. I could create an editorial piece that explores digital homes, taking advantage of the digital landscape for storytelling.
I won’t dive into everything I learnt about web editorials, but I’ve loved researching them, forming their description and crafting one, and with everything I’ve seen and written for the project, I can say I love this format of publication and would love to see more designers explore it. Hopefully I did my part.
What I created was a zine-inspired website with 3 pages: an essay, a list of principles and a guide. The essay explores the reasons to build a digital home. The principles summarize the idea and serve as a bridge to the guide. The guide presents a series of steps to follow in the creation of a digital home.
I might polish it, change some details, and eventually, if I can, publish it with its own domain. I would love for this website to reach creative people who might need it. I’d love for it to grow and become something bigger and with a little community, which is what “the digital neighbourhood” intends.
A casual conversation around creating digital spaces that have the same feeling of aliveness and malleability as physical spaces. I loved reading through the ideas. https://campfire.we-b.site/
why time felt slower when we were kids (and how to get it back), by Yana Yuhai:
