Meet Your Zine Maker: Usagi Por Moi

As Usagi Por Moi, Jannese Rojas creates craft guides in the sweet style of Japanese crafting with fun and easy-to-follow illustrations, photos, and patterns. She also publishes travel & photo guides to Japan, chock full of neat places to go, see, and eat.  Ask her for travel advice at the Brooklyn Zine Fest 2013 on Sunday, April 21st from 11am to 6pm at Public Assembly.

What’s the weirdest thing you photographed on your trip to Japan?

The weirdest thing I photographed is a bearded elderly man dressed in a women’s yukata, with fake boobs, a mannequin head strap on as a hat, miniature fishbowls filled with goldfish as earrings, just walking around Meiji Square and the telephone store in Harajuku. Japan has lot of amazing things to shoot but there is a plethora of oddities to photograph, especially to the outsider (gaijin) walking the streets of Tokyo.
 

How does your work as a designer and photographer inform or complement your zines?

All my zines are either solely photo based, or photographs help to showcase my crafts. As far as my work as both an accessories and graphic designer my aesthetic, composition, and style all benefit from my professional experience which definitely comes through in my zines.

What got you started with crafting, and what keeps you interested in it?

I’ve been crafting since I was a teen. I wanted dresses and accessories I couldn’t afford so I started making my own and it sort of trickled down into this whole world of craft. What keeps me making things is the challenge, I want to figure things out and have an insatiable need to create. My brain is in constant creation mode, sometimes it’s hard to sleep because I can’t turn it off. Also my blog is a big incentive to keep on crafting; it’s helped me become part of a larger community of creative people around the world.

Is there anything you’re especially looking forward to at the Brooklyn Zine Fest 2013?

I’m hoping to meet some fun and interesting fellow zinesters, and maybe take another unknown challenge.