512stew

18 perspectives on Austin’s culture

512stew is a visual ‘zine’ published by the 2015 BFA Design class at UT Austin. The 300-page book is the construction of a narrative through each students’ explorations of Austin’s super- and sub-cultures, displayed through photography, hand illustrations, and text. Each student was responsible for communicating their specific relationship to Austin through each chapter, and a dust jacket that doubles as a dual sided poster.

A management team of 4 students was elected by the class. As Chief Editor, I assisted with writing the script for a fundraising campaign, created the chapter titles pages, edited the copy, and helped in creating bookmarks and invitations to a gallery event showcasing our book, as well as shipping books and posters to our donors.

Chapter Titles

The name 512stew comes from Austin’s area code: 512, and the idea that the book was a melting pot of each student’s background, ideals, interests, and design style. For the title page of each chapter, we developed an icon language using typical stew ingredients. Each title block shows a unique combination of stew ingredients in relationship to the themes and topics explored in that student’s chapter.

Recognition for 512stew

512stew was featured in an article in The Daily Texas, launched a successful Indigogo fundraising campaign, and received the Core77 Design Award Student Runner Up in Visual Communication in 2014.

Figure 1.

Exploring Austin’s ‘eco-conscious’ culture

Page Spreads

Psoriasis

Excessive construction in downtown Austin compared to psoriasis.

Lung Cancer

Commuting traffic exhaust affecting trees in Republic Square park compared to lung cancer from tobacco smoke.

Gastroesophageal Reflux

Pollutants on Lake Austin near a popular coffee shop causing eutrophication compared to gastroesophageal reux disease.

Atherosclerosis

Litter and clothing build up along urban watershed compared to

atherosclerosis.

Cancer Cells

The crowd and aftermath from Austin City Limits at Zilker Park compared to

multiplying cancer cells.

Spongiform Encephalopathy

Scenic highway 360 and popular outlook compared to neurons suffering from spongiform encephalopathy.

Austin has a reputation of being a city full of hippies. In my chapter, I chose to delve into the notion that hippie Austinites are inherently environmentally conscious. I decided to compare the citizen caused degradation of the city to physical degradations in the human body. By finding popular places in the city that were deteriorating specifically from human action and photographing them, I was able to visually compare them to a hand drawing of a similar event that takes place in the human body. I used medical journal illustrations and technical drawings from Edison and da Vinci as visual and language inspiration to create the look and language in Figure 1.

Dust Jacket

Each student also designed a dust jacket which unfolded to served as a double sided poster. By layering a drawing of a human body with leaves and organic shapes made by watercolor, I was able to use the dust jacket as the introduction to the correlation between humans and natural processes.