This project was my first experience with a large scale project. Collectively, we built a magazine from scratch forming concepts to planning content, designing layouts, giving identity to the magazine and getting into production.
The first week began with a topic, ours - Horror. A topic that I often avoid and escape. It was difficult to recount my own interpretations of it, mainly because I never had an understanding of it to begin with. So, to engage myself in the subject I began my research with recounting memories that I associate with horror.
Association with disabled people - As a child I heard stories that demonized a disabled person living in my neighborhood.
Bollywood / pop culture - During the release of Laxmi, I had read about the evil representation of transgender in Bollywood.
While analyzing existing magazines I noticed that their approach to horror was fantasy and films. Considering the Indian context, a horror magazine could be given a real life approach exploring cultures and the depth of belief systems. Therefore, we decided to dive into selective topics, based in reality and beliefs. My area of research focused on Mythology, beliefs and black magic.
Target Audience
While researching I also took note of how the audience experiences horror. In talk with Sakshi Joshi, an IIAD student who is a horror enthusiast, I enquired about the themes she finds the most interesting. Her usual source of experiences is pop culture/ films and she categorizes the theme into two categories; fantasy based characters with a spiritual approach, and the psychology based that explore the mental sickness of a human. Her inclination was towards the later theme, as it is more unpredictable.
"If I start banging my hand against the table in the middle of a conversation..."
Gagan Narhe, a mentor for the project, had also demonstrated how certain behavior and actions can provoke a terrifying feeling in the human mind. At that moment, my instant association of such action was with spiritual possession. And I understood his theory.
Conclusion from the conversations:
The existence of a spirit that creates a haunting experience has become predictable for viewers, therefore horror movies based on the psychological disorders in human are more likely to engage viewers since these subjects are unknown to the people. Horror stimulates the mind more when dealing with a subject that drives curiosity. Any uncertain behavior leaves a terrifying feeling, in a way horror is the fear of the unknown.
Insights
India is a land of beliefs and superstitions, therefore a lot of my research was questioning these beliefs and the existence of evil entities. I gathered the following insights through this approach:
The negative human feelings like anger, falsehood and greed are a sign of demonic possession. As prophesized in Hindu scriptures, in Kaliyuga, humans let these feelings drown them into sin, under the rule of Kali, the demon. Each of these traits are personified as demons carrying the lineage of Adharma (sin).
A lot of superstitions about evil entities only exist in conversations and stories. They have no factual origin, which led me to the hypothesis that these are formed by people to explain the unknown, like the untimely death of a husband is blamed on the wife, as a sacrifice, declaring her a witch.
Based on this hypothesis, we shaped our magazine content in a way that explains the unknown, giving food to feed fantasies of the readers.
Zine
I had conceptualized my zine about demons or Asuras, the supernatural entities associated with evil in Hindu mythology. I projected the prophecy of Kaliyuga as an explanation of the evil that exists within us and our actions to convey a sense of demonic possession that has taken hold over us.
I faced trouble in understanding the purpose of a zine. I could not visualize the visual language and structure of the magazine at such an early stage, with no prior explorations of how I wanted to convey the theme.
Content generation
The purpose of horror enthusiasts is to seek stimulation, a thrill. To make the experience of the magazine engaging and mind-boggling I brainstormed for interactive elements that will keep the reader curious and surprised throughout the magazine.
We wanted the reader to empathize with demonic human minds, so I thought of questions in the narratives like 'Are you the culprit? check if you match their palm onto a bloody handprint' to make them suspect themselves.
We planned to divide our content into 5 sections: Mythology, Psychology, Religion, Travel and Dystopia. I worked primarily on the Mythology section and modifying some of the other content. Since we weren't well-versed in content writing for a publication, we reformed our research into articles through Chat GPT. My prior experience with open AI informed my method of generating content to get good results. A few guidelines I kept in mind while forming the articles:
Arrange the research points in a similar flow that is required for the outcome.
Specify the tone of voice, word limit, and the concept you want to present the outcome in.
Generate multiple answers to form a better and effective article.
While planning the matrix, I had analyzed a Fangoria issue to understand the structure of content in a magazine. This activity introduced some key features we could incorporate in our magazine like community building, and certain sections that are constant to give the readers something to look forward to.
The magazine's theme was "exploration of the unexplained," so the articles explored various topics that are connected to horror. Based on this concept, we gave it the title "Dhundhla" (blurry), which represents the lack of understanding and awareness of widely believed or heard eerie concepts.
Visual Explorations
We curated a collection of visual references to guide our layout explorations. It led to the following keywords: Chaotic, asymmetry, contrast.
I used runway ml to generate demonic creatures and overlay it with different visual to create the desired visual.
Reflection