Who Killed Jane Doe?

In this zine project I decided to switch up my semester topic a bit. Rather than using animals as symbolic representations for misrepresented persons in media, I decided to personify animals to bring awareness to the destruction of their habitats caused by human influence. My original idea involved creating a more interactive zine than what would be stereotypically expected by creating a "murder mystery" zine in which the audience would have to take the zine apart and solve puzzles. However, as my project progressed it developed into a children's book that required interaction to reveal a darker, hidden message. I decided to do a children's book in order to capture the project's propaganda requirement, since children are the most easily influenced and manipulated by propaganda. On the surface, when there is no interaction, it seems like a regular children's book theme with colorful images of endangered animals and a short, simple account of what the personified animal does. However, when the audience dives deeper in to zine they may notice that the accounts of the animals actions have highlighted, red letters that spell out a dark message. Upon further investigation the audience would discover that the pictures are bound by velcro to a black and white copy of the original image with a melancholy haiku printed overtop. To push this even further the QR codes scattered and hidden throughout the zine lead to animations, poetry, and further information relating global warming and its effects on animals.