Androgyny Magazine July 2017

I always have this mixed - almost conflicting - feelings towards fashion magazines, I am no expert in journalism nor do I have a degree in journalism. However, I know that one of the biggest reasons that chose to study fashion is because I love fashion magazines. The choice was made when I was 18 when I joined a fashion marketing course (there weren't many schools to study fashion, therefore I joined fashion marketing). Without much choice, I studied fashion marketing and fashion design management. I love both of them, and I don't think it changed me into not liking fashion magazine or fashion journalism. There are two magazine projects I did, one is called More magazine, which I did in my uni, it was a prototype of a magazine that is city based, and everything inside is about that one city. In our case, we did NYC to show the concept. Another magazine project I did is called 'Blurred', which was an androgyny fashion magazine, much more conceptual, arty and non-commercially presented. In hindsight, I see a lot of room for improvement, but I think that is good in a sense, so I can see the work and know what I could have done better. It's a learning curve, and I quite enjoyed it.

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對於時尚雜誌，我一直有很複雜的情感，幾乎可以說是衝突的情感。對這個領域來說，我根本是個門外漢，也沒有相關的學歷。但是我知道我當年之所以會去唸時尚行銷，就是因為我當時對時尚雜誌很有興趣，因為相關個科系很少，我在沒有多少選擇的情況下，就進了時尚行銷跟管理的這條路。到現在我還是很喜歡這個選擇，因為我擅長商科的東西，但是這也沒有阻止我對時尚雜誌的喜愛。可能一方面是因為興趣，一方面是有這個巧合。在我的大學以及研究所的日子裡，我做過兩個雜誌的企劃，一個是Ｍore，以城市為基礎的雜誌，我們做的這個版本是以紐約市為主題的。另一個是我幾個月前做的Blurred，是個去挑戰性別界限的雌雄同體時尚為主的雜誌。
現在往回看，有很多可以改進的空間，也有很多缺點，但是我想這也是一個好處，看得到自己的缺點，才有繼續往上的空間。這個去體驗學習曲線的過程，我很享受。

content page

featured designer

featured designer

the last page of Blurred

The most recent magazine project I did was one of the unit in my course called collaborative unit, where you team up with your chosen team members and come up with a project that is student-led with a supervisor. One of my friend was an editor in Vogue Thailand and she came up with the idea of an androgyny magazine. We all thought it was really unique and fun. Our supervisor is the course leader of fashion journalism and criticism, and he confirmed that there was no magazine within the same realm being made yet.

The difficult bit started from day one, how do we define androgyny, it is a little bit obscure. Androgyny is not uni-sex, androgyny is not men dress up like women or vice versa. Androgyny is where the features that identify genders are unseen or unobservable, it is probably closer to genderless, but not quite exactly.

However, once we defined (kinda) androgyny, what does that mean? and how does it become the theme of the magazine? How is this idea perceived and what does it represent? There are so many questions unanswered and we were sure about it. In the end, we decided to divide the magazine into four sections: Transcendence, Revitalisation, Ambiguity and Liberation.

The idea of androgyny is showing the gender fluidity and the ambiguity of genders. Within the four sections we contacted a very long list of artists, fashion designers, photographers, graphic designers and makeup artists. Their work and collections become the content of the magazine, and the magazine were able to deliver the messages of androgyny under different categories and through many forms of arts. We also conducted interviews with the artists and present them in the magazine. I thought it was impossible to make it 90 pages, but we somehow made it. Forgot to mention that we had about two months to make it from scratch. That was a handful, and it was just one of the units in that semester.

At the end, we were able to pull of something we are very proud of, a unique and a new magazine exploring the boundary of genders. In the last two pages, we put a semicolon, meaning that this is not the end of the androgyny fashion. And a quote saying: "Androgyny is not trying to manage the relationship between the opposite; it is simply flowing between them".

It was so nice to see Blurred become one hard copy and all of us in the team will always share the same achievement. There were really rough times, there were times we thought we will never see the end nor to imagine the outcome. And now we see it, we are in a much happier place.

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最近期的雜誌企劃叫做Blurred，意指為已模糊的，這個企劃是第二學期某一堂課的一個作業，這個企劃可以讓學生自由發揮，然後會配一個指導教授幫助這個企劃。跟我同組的一個同學之前在雜誌社工作過（我之前也在雜誌社上班），他提出了做一本關於雌雄同體時尚的一本雜誌。當時的指導教授是我們學校的時尚新聞與批判的課主任，他告訴我們說這個類型的雜誌還沒有在市場上，所以我們做了很多市場調查阿，然後同時做了很多研究。

第一個關卡就非常困難，所謂的雌雄同體時尚是什麼，它不是中性，它也不是一個性別打扮得像另一個性別。定義很複雜，而且許多設計師以及時尚界的專家也無法篤定地說出一個定義。簡單來說，雌雄同體代表的是：一個看不到性別的特徵，所有能代表特定性別的展現都沒辦法被觀察到。可能有一點點接近無性別，但是也不同，不是沒有性別，而是沒有能展現性別的特徵。

如此特定且窄小的字眼，要如何做一本雜誌呢？即使定義了這個字，又代表了什麼？這個字要怎麼成為一個雜誌的主題？這個概念是怎麼被大眾解釋的，又代表了哪個部分？所有的問題我們都沒有一個明確得解答，最後我們把這個概念分成四個部分，且每個部分都用一個字來當作一種分類：Transcendence 意指為超越，或是更上一層樓；Revitalisation 意指為重新賦予生命；Ambiguity 意指為曖昧不清；最後是 Liberation 意指為自由解放。

在這四個分類下，我們找了所有我們有辦法聯絡的藝術家，攝影師，時尚設計師，平面設計師，彩妝師等等的。在他們的作品中找到跟該分類相對應的進行訪談且寫一篇文章放在雜誌中。當時怎麼想也不會覺得我們最後做出來的雜誌有 90 頁。當時只有兩個月的時間從零開始這個企劃，這也只是這個學期的一門課之一而已，最後成為我最喜歡的課，既有挑戰性，也讓我們有機會自己做出這個作品。一個我們都很驕傲的，獨特，新穎的作品。

Uni project in 2015

The content page of More magazine

content of magazine

content of magazine

Before the MA project, the other project I did as my BA final project is called 'More', which was a magazine based on cites rather than time. We made an NYC edition, and looking back, it was so rough, so raw, so inexperienced. I suppose that is acceptable as my first ever magazine project. Me and my two other team mates made the whole thing in a couple months and it felt so good seeing your own work become real. At the time, my style of graphic designs were more busy, the composition of each frame was too much for my current liking. From some of the content pages, there are some traces that you can spot some mistakes I made.

I remember that when I was doing these two projects, I felt really stressed and didn't enjoy the process, and I asked myself: why do I keep making magazines? I thought that was what I wanted to do, and I felt so much pressure and dreadfulness, then why do I keep making magazines and worked for Marie Claire?

I know the answer, it's because I love it so much that I wanted to do it right, and I realised that it was the 'type two happiness' which means that you wouldn't be completely enjoying the whole process, but after you've done it, IT FEELS SO GOOD. A little bit like working out, it was tiring and you felt like you couldn't do it, but you always can, and you like it.

From that moment, I know that I will always love fashion magazine, and I am really glad that I have decided that this will always be part of my life.

Giselle

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除了我的碩士作品以外，我跟大學的朋友一起做的企劃叫做More，是個以城市為基礎的雜誌，所有的內容也是以該城市為出發點，那個時候做的第一本是紐約市的。現在往回看，發現很多的平面設計做的不是很好。我想，如果你能回頭看自己的作品，然後發現可以改進的地方，就代表你已經進步了。

跟我現在的平面設計取向比起來，當年的我更愛豐富的頁面，什麼都要擠滿，看得出來急躁地想把所有會的東西都放上去的感覺。現在我比較喜歡有一點留白的設計。

我印象我當時在做碩士的企劃的時候，我每天都覺得壓力很大，也覺得自己快被自己逼死了，那個過程談不上享受，感覺像在一艘疾駛的船上，沒辦法下來。我當時問自己說：明明我以為我喜歡的東西，好像也沒那麼喜歡，那我為什麼要一直做雜誌呢？我真的不懂。

後來我知道答案了，因為我真的很愛這一切，太想要把它做好。我意識到說這是一個“第二類快樂”，也就是說：這個快樂並不是大口吃肉的那種立即的歡快感，反而是一個過程艱辛，最後爽快的收穫的成就感。就像去健身房運動一樣，當時會覺得很累，很想放棄，但是結束後全身暢快淋漓，而且成就感十足的任務一樣。

在那之後，我就知道時尚雜誌永遠都會是我的一部分，不管我的工作跟他的關聯性有多少，這個造就了我的熱情，從大學到現在一路走來一樣的熱情不減，會在我的人生中繼續下去。

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