SLASH / CHILL Magazine is an independent lifestyle magazine that focuses on self-care, and it features stories about how people deal with and evolve through real-life situations. It's about the sense of feeling, and it aims to bring the idea of "chillness" in people's rapidly changing and sophisticated city lives.
MY ROLE
I fully worked on making this magazine happen with my friend Vivian, and we started off the project in 2018 by documenting our life stories, and by the end of 2019 when COVID started hitting us, we started organizing the things we’ve written. We planned out 4 themes to start with, and we ended up naming the debut one ‘CHILL’, to simply make both us and people who read it feel better. We wrote all the articles in the magazine and all the photos are original ones from us all these years. I designed the magazine layout and did some illustrations, and at the same time reaching out to people who can help us with editing. We conducted interviews with people who we think would fit into the idea of ‘chillness’ and tried to convey their thoughts on chilled lifestyle in the magazine. The entire process took us more than a year, from scratch to final delivery, and it was totally worth the time and efforts.
WHY ‘SLASH’?
We chose the word ‘SLASH’ because we have always been interested in the idea and the symbol of 'slash'. We realized that it can be challenging to define what we do in one or two words, and we don’t like the idea of summarizing people’s creativity into one job title. We believe that everyone should always have endless slashes, and we believe that's how people are formed.
IT IS MORE THAN A MAGAZINE
Being part of the community who suffered from anxiety disorder and depression, we advocate the idea of living with anxiety while pursuing dreams, coping with stress while laughing about it, and dealing with being ordinary while never being mediocre. It is more than a magazine - it is a platform that we devote ourselves for making a better community to share inspirations, to connect with each other, to live healthier, and to be better off.
The Magazine has reached a broad range of audiences regardless of age, race, gender, and culture, and it raises readers' awareness on self-care and fulfills their pursuit of joy and dream in life. As coronavirus pandemic persists, many independent businesses continued to struggle, so that we decided to collaborate with a small independent print shop in Beijing to support local businesses. We have always maintained a good communication with our readers and gradually expanded the circle to form a SLASH community where our readers and contributors would interconnect while feel a sense of belonging and recognition.
TO REDUCE OUR IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT
We made the magazine light and portable, and we use recycled papers and untreated thread to reduce the impact on the environment. We tried our best to minimize the negative impact that we might create when working on this project, and we want to make sure that everything we produce is recyclable.
SLASH / CHILL Magazine seizes moments of pleasure, sadness, relaxation, excitement, and the pure joy of the transformation of people's lives to provide positive energy toward both our readers and ourselves.
IDEA
The year 2020 has been challenging for all of us. We have experienced the loss of our loved ones, and there are moments that we still cannot believe what had happened. We create SLASH / CHILL magazine to remind of the positive attitude and feelings. It offers a sublimation for people to relax, understand, and keep up the hope of the world, society, and individuals. With travel stories and interviews about people around us who work hard and live toward their dreams, SLASH / CHILL Magazine brings a fresh unique view to reclaim our faith in life and appreciate the beauty of our society.
SLASH / CHILL Magazine gathers people who potentially share the same thoughts, same ideas, and even the same taste to raise social awareness on mental illness and eliminate discrimination.
HOW TO DEFINE 'SLASH/CHILL MAGAZINE’
Nowadays, the fast-paced city life has led to a higher stress level for many people, especially this year with the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic downturn, depression and anxiety disorder have always been on top of the discussion. It is almost a trend for people to discuss why the year of 2020 happened to be a year of ‘disaster,’ even though everyone was aiming that 2020 would be a fresh new start for another decade - just like in 1999, people thought the year of 2000 would be full of hope and excitement.
We feature and gather stories and interviews of 'chillness' around us so that our readers would be as chilled while reading them through. With original stories, photos, and illustrations, we are able to have a close relationship with our readers, and some of them become contributors later on. We take minimalist aesthetics to make the content primary, and the use of section-sewn bookbinding method keeps all pages spread out flat and readers would easily access to all the details. We carefully wrap each magazine using untreated paper to reduce additional packaging from the carrier services as well as to prevent shipping damage.
We make SLASH/CHILL Magazine as a relief for both ourselves and our readers: we wish to bring a chilled and relaxed feeling toward people who stuck at home, and we want people like us to share thoughts together, inspire each other, and simply feel better.
Book Fairs
This is such a new experience, I’ve always been the one who go and check out book fairs but since we made SLASH/CHILL, I signed up for a few book fairs and I actually went to many places that I’ve never been, which is exciting. We went to Shanghai for Bonjour! book fair in May in 2021, and Guangzhou for BIGGER book fair in December, I really enjoyed being at the book fair to meet so many interesting and new friends, and I get to chat with them about our ideas and stories, and hear their stories as well. It’s a good practice for me to talk more about how we made this happen.
