Joseph Fernandez

My name is Joe Fernandez and I am an image maker and creative director from London. My body of work is inspired by my love for the fashion, entertainment, and sport industries; specifically how society interacts with them in modern society. I pride myself on authenticity, inclusion and highlighting marginalised, unique voices and ideas throughout my work to challenge and question the current state of the world as we see it. This ethos was key in making Seam Zine: a fashion zine for people with visual impairments. 

Seam Zine is both a physical and digital zine with content and design features created directly for people with visual impairments. Due to the lack of fashion resources and mainstream material for people with visual impairments in the current market, the zine was created to be as accessible as possible and to help the visually impaired enjoy fashion in the same amount of detail as other people, after being excluded from the fashion scene for too long. Seam Zine includes a vacuum formed sleeve so readers can feel the textures and shapes of the garments on the cover; braille on each page, fashion features inspired by different senses and real fabrics from the garments in the zine implemented into the pages.  

Design features in both editions of the Zine include soft gradients of soothing colours, which flow over each page, complete with contrasting accents and rounded edges to create a clear and legible style that stands out but creates a welcoming and comforting feel to the zine. Style is added through the visual motifs inspired by the different human senses of touch, sight, taste, and hearing shown especially through the Seam custom font and page numbers. 

To accompany the physical zine, there are QR codes throughout which leads you to the digital version of the zine, where you can listen to the various interviews and features with influential people in the fashion industry for people with disabilities and impairments as well as young upcoming designers. Incorporated into the digital zine is ColourAdd, a colour alphabet which allows the visual impaired to recognise the true colours of the magazine through an easy to decipher range of symbols.