South Africa, for me personally, has been a place of variety from culture and experience to race and religion. Despite its painful history, present and possibly future, people have always found a way to make their environment a place for people to experience and express themselves and ways of living.
Through this, South Africa has developed a more positive nature to hosting a variety of people and displaying a combination of cultures, languages, experiences and range of other postmodern concepts, creating and developing the “South African”.
To best represent these aspects, a comic book named “The Chronicles of EISH!” has been developed (in this case just an original and variant cover of the original, however there is hope for the comic book to go into development for a comic book series).
Struggle, unity, cultural power, growth, individuality and acceptance are key aspects of South African history and culture, in both positive and negative realms. This is where culture, design and art comes in, in this case being primarily concerned with the creation and interchange of meanings, giving and receiving among members of the society we all belong to and choose to live in.
This ultimately affecting the way people communicate themselves, their ideas and feelings about the world, in ways that will be understood by each other. Therefore, as a result, culture relies on its members understanding what is going on around them in meaningful ways and ‘making sense’ of the world in essentially comparable ways.
The design of the name of the comic “The Chronicles of EISH!” is made to look like something from the past, having a nostalgic feel to it for audiences who are familiar with the style of those design periods and long-forgotten comics.
“Chronicles” in the name essentially refers to the comic being a written account of important or historical events in the order of their occurrence. It serves as a way for South Africans to tell and record a series of events in an almost factual and detailed way. Giving them a platform to express their opinions freely, as they happen or have happened.
‘EISH!’ in the name is used to express a range of emotions, such as surprise, annoyance, or resignation. Eish being a feeling, a way to represent South African culture and overall concept of experiences, rather than it being just a word. However, it is an incredibly important word as it is commonly used by a good majority of South Africans in expressing their feeling towards various occurrences throughout their lives. It is a word and a feeling I have and have used in my daily life countless of times.
The step-like structures that make up the letter “EISH!” are representative of the metaphor behind stairs and the comic itself, which is ascent, descent, climb, step, levels — these are all words associated with journey, progress and growth, and not just in terms of the physical act, but also in terms of the emotional and spiritual connotations of journeying in my personal point of view.
There are images of South African experiences scattered across the cover that many, not just me, can relate to. This is the purpose of the comic. We are not alone in our experiences. If we just look in the right places and for the right people, anything is possible. South Africa is more than meets the eye.
To conclude, South Africa is a home filled with love, life, hate, crime, distress, experience and so much more. People, not just me, should be able to tell it from their point of view, and this is way for me to export content like this from my point of view as a South African artist and designer.
The hopeful aim of the eventual comic series developed from this current one, would be used for individuals to experience and challenge the way we think about cultures and the interconnectedness between people and communities.
