Part 1: Aotearoa (land of the long white cloud)

Aotearoa is the Māori word used to describe first the North Island of New Zealand, but more recently the whole of New Zealand. Literally it is translated to "Land of the long white cloud". 

This folding-poster holds several references to the country of New Zealand, as well as some experimental print & drawing techniques. Both sides have been printed black on black – on one side is the landscape of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, and on the other side a reference to this image and the Māori name for New Zealand: "All black (&) white clouds are above new land". This side has been covered by a (roughly translated) Māori text, written with chalk, to partly obscure and play with the english words.

As the folding-poster is first presented as a booklet, the landscape will not be fully visible, as it requires distance from the poster to see. Additionally, the fragmented "strange" language hopefully inspires the viewer to continue exploring what they are looking at, and unfold the poster.

 

Part 2: Sealands

We titled this project New Zeelands with a reason. Zeeland is a province in the Netherlands, where "Zea" could be called its English pronunciation. The second part of this research starts of with this as a concept. Zeeland literally stands for the combination of the two words "sea" and "land" in Dutch. Hence the opening quote, continued in the insert:

As though by some eternal decree, land and sea are destined to disagree... over where the shoreline should be.

 

Part of this research consisted of finding different Sea/see/zee/zealands and a fitting font (made in the same country) to showcase it in. To 'generate' visuals, the location was entered in Google Search and the first (esthetically pleasing) image was selected as a reference. This way a zine with 8 locations in different countries, 8 typefaces, and 8 completely different landscapes are united by one name.

Besides finishing the quote about the shoreline, the blue insert also functions as a 'physical' separator. The viewer is able to 'split' land and sea, by inserting SEA (or LAND) at will into the zine.