Project Brief

For my studio 1 class, I had to create a zine that featured a 'fake avatar.'

Design Process

My zine 'Project Last Straw' imagines a form for the tenth avatar of Vishnu. As the myth goes, Vishnu takes on different forms and comes to earth whenever he sees immense destruction and hopelessness. He then rescues us and gives us another chance. He has done so nine times, which means we have one last chance to get our act together – the last straw.

My zine focuses on creating his last and final persona. With every avatar, Vishnu becomes increasingly evolved (with the ninth avatar as Gautama Budha). The one thing (I could think of) that is more evolved than a human mind is artificial intelligence. So, I designed his final avatar as an AI virus, controlling all online activity.

In the zine, he announces his arrival, plastering the phrase ‘hello world’ across all billboards. 'hello world' is also the first statement you print in a new coding language. He uses the technological interfaces to communicate with us, and I wrote some simple c++ code to display this.

Vishnu’s tone in this zine is very resigned about the end of the world, tired of our actions and constant mistakes. His pessimism mirrors the bleak world around us as we resign to our fates.

Reflection

This was one of the first projects I made in college, and I still like the concept behind it. As a novice, I spent most of my time learning the basics of illustrator and printing accordion-style zines. The final zine came out as I had envisioned it. If I could go back and change one thing, I would print the cover page on transparent paper instead of using a marker over it. I would also like to update the illustrations now, forgoing the flat, simple colours and icon-like drawings for something more intricate.

Reference