Perfect Imperfections
2024
A zine focused on the photos we nearly delete. A finger in the corner, a blown-out flash, a missed focus, these accidents often end up meaning the most. Perfect Imperfections brings together images like these and shares the stories behind them. It explores what makes a photograph feel human rather than just look good.
Format
Graphic Design
Print/Zine
Role
Graphic Designer
In a Nutshell
In the current world we live in, there are a lot of staged perfections. What is real? How much of it is a façade? Through our tiny phone screen we plunge into this big, big digital world, full of algorithms and calculations, full of idealized standards and impeccable images. Does it reflect the reality of the human experience? What does it mean to be human?
The zine is created for me as a glimpse of how others view their world. I want this zine series to be a fireplace where people can feel connected in this shared human experience, and all of this doesn’t necessarily need to make any sense. But hopefully, my readers, at the end of each read, would think, “I feel more human than yesterday.”
The design of this zine issue is inspired by disposable cameras. With film, you never know if a finger slipped over the lens or if the shot turned out imperfect—but you keep it anyway. Each frame is chosen with intention because film is limited. That sense of imperfect honesty and selective memory aligns closely with the spirit of this project.
While experimenting with photo sizes, I discovered that minimizing them accentuates the prominence of the finger. To enhance the zine's theme, I chose to keep most photos at a smaller size. The layout was inspired by the classic camera grid, leading me to adopt a 3x3 grid for the zine.