Bracket
A vaporwave monograph
Bracket is a 44-page magazine exploring the visual aspects of the vaporwave movement while poking fun, and indulging in the conventions and tropes the genre has to offer. The goal of this project was to create a single issue of a magazine and I decided to make a personal and artistic standalone monograph.
Process
Bracket broke the norm from most of my design processes as my end goal was simply to create an interesting and attractive vaporwave-themed magazine. For that reason, the journey of creating the publication was nonlinear. I allowed the imagery to inform the spreads, and the spreads to inform the overall flow of the magazine.
Visual Research
Vaporwave is a unique genre that pulls elements from 80s low fidelity and retro aesthetics, computer interface and technology from the early 2000s, roman sculpture and busts, tropical scenery, anime and a variety of other random elements. Because of the variety the genre can cover, I started with some visual research, compiling examples of the type of imagery I was interested in.
First Image - First Spread
I started by taking my own photographs. From there, I started to play around in Photoshop to create a heavily distorted style of photo. From there, I played around with a potential layout involving that first image in Indesign. A common trend in vaporwave imagery is to include Japanese characters. However, I suspect that not all creators of vaporwave who include Japanese characters speak the language. I wondered how accurate their use of Japanese is and if the text is even properly translated. I went to Google Translate and typed out: “this is poorly translated.” That came back to me as: “これはグーグル翻訳です”. I paired the text with the image and then started writing the copy for the spread. Informed by my translation joke, the text became a commentary on this practice in vaporwave. I further developed this theme by pulling out bars that extend from the image and covered part of the text to intentionally cover and obscure. I named the spread: “translate. “
More Spreads
In a similar process to the first spread, I created images that fit within the look and feel I was aiming for. I then either paired these images together or added additional text that I felt related in some way. On spreads that were two different images on each page, I tried to create a sense of rhythm and play between the two elements as I paired them together with a small rhyme or joke. The idea of rhythm continued into the overall layout of the magazine as I created a pattern of text-heavy spread, then images, followed with a silhouette over a solid colour. Each of these patterns focused on a single colour.
