A Brief History of Human Concept of the Universe
A Brief History of Human Concept of the Universe
Rachel Tandon, January 2015
2.25” x 3”
Digitally printed
Designed for the course’s final project, this zine covers the evolution of human concept of the universe, beginning with the flat Earth theory, going through geocentrism and heliocentrism to modern day universal expansion theory, and ending with the multiverse theory. It is designed to present past theories as a platform to understanding and viewing today’s modern theories in cosmology. Through the logical progression of content, as our concept of the universe gets bigger and bigger throughout the zine, and the paring down of statements and illustrations, I hope to convey the hard to grasp concepts in an easily digestible way. The idea of the zine is also not only to educate, but to provoke thought and lead to a pause in people’s days—it is to provide a moment for readers to stop the immediacy of their lives and just sit and read and think for a while.
The zine is hand-written and illustrated, and digitally colored in Illustrator. The pages get wider as you flip through the zine, and the zine in total is about the size of a credit card.
The zine costs 15¢ to print and was distributed in the Blue Room at Brown University during dinner hours. I placed a few copies on each table and observed people’s reactions from a side booth. Overall, people had positive reactions to it, many taking the time to pause and read it fully—some even recommending it to their friends to read after they finished. Verbally, I was told it was “cute,” the “donut” illustration really helped, and people liked the intuitive widening of the pages.
I had also instructed viewers to go to the tumblr page arewerightyet.tumblr.com to critique the zine, but I didn’t receive any comments this way. I figured out how to track visits to the website, however, half way through the distribution and by the end of the night eight people had taken the time to type in the address and visit the website. Ideally, I would have been able to set up an online forum where people could comment on the project without having to log in to their personal tumblrs first (or create an account).
I really enjoyed making this zine, as well as receiving responses to it and I could see myself making it into a series, sharing other modern scientific theories in similar ways.
initial brainstorming
layout brainstorming
form prototyping
layout
more layout
finished zine
title page
p. 1
p. 2
p. 3
p. 4
p. 5
p. 6
p. 7
p. 8
p. 9
p. 10
back
distribution in the Blue Room
distribution in the Blue Room
distribution in the Blue Room
distribution in the Blue Room
video still–reading it
video still–saying it’s actually worth something
video still–recommending it to friend
video still–friend picking it up to look at it
tumblr page
tumblr page visitor statistics at end of night
.
February 11th, 2015
by Rachel Tandon
A Brief History of Human Concept of the Universe
A Brief History of Human Concept of the Universe
Rachel Tandon, January 2015
2.25” x 3”
Digitally printed
Designed for the course’s final project, this zine covers the evolution of human concept of the universe, beginning with the flat Earth theory, going through geocentrism and heliocentrism to modern day universal expansion theory, and ending with the multiverse theory. It is designed to present past theories as a platform to understanding and viewing today’s modern theories in cosmology. Through the logical progression of content, as our concept of the universe gets bigger and bigger throughout the zine, and the paring down of statements and illustrations, I hope to convey the hard to grasp concepts in an easily digestible way. The idea of the zine is also not only to educate, but to provoke thought and lead to a pause in people’s days—it is to provide a moment for readers to stop the immediacy of their lives and just sit and read and think for a while.
The zine is hand-written and illustrated, and digitally colored in Illustrator. The pages get wider as you flip through the zine, and the zine in total is about the size of a credit card.
The zine costs 15¢ to print and was distributed in the Blue Room at Brown University during dinner hours. I placed a few copies on each table and observed people’s reactions from a side booth. Overall, people had positive reactions to it, many taking the time to pause and read it fully—some even recommending it to their friends to read after they finished. Verbally, I was told it was “cute,” the “donut” illustration really helped, and people liked the intuitive widening of the pages.
I had also instructed viewers to go to the tumblr page arewerightyet.tumblr.com to critique the zine, but I didn’t receive any comments this way. I figured out how to track visits to the website, however, half way through the distribution and by the end of the night eight people had taken the time to type in the address and visit the website. Ideally, I would have been able to set up an online forum where people could comment on the project without having to log in to their personal tumblrs first (or create an account).
I really enjoyed making this zine, as well as receiving responses to it and I could see myself making it into a series, sharing other modern scientific theories in similar ways.
initial brainstorming
layout brainstorming
form prototyping
layout
more layout
finished zine
title page
p. 1
p. 2
p. 3
p. 4
p. 5
p. 6
p. 7
p. 8
p. 9
p. 10
back
distribution in the Blue Room
distribution in the Blue Room
distribution in the Blue Room
distribution in the Blue Room
video still–reading it
video still–saying it’s actually worth something
video still–recommending it to friend
video still–friend picking it up to look at it
tumblr page
tumblr page visitor statistics at end of night
.