If you’re a record collector looking for a reading experience that will echo the feeling of crate digging, you’ll flip at this Indonesian music zine. Dari Ngak Ngik Ngok ke Dheg Dheg Plas was originally a report on the pop music scene in ’60s southeast Asia by Irama Nusantara, featuring design from The 1984. Thankfully, Jakarta indie publisher Binatang Press honored the punk spirit by republishing the work as a poppy, full-color Risograph zine.
This publication is clearly a labor of love, full of vibrant, high contrast hues with nostalgic fonts and irresistible pop art accents. This youthful, eye-catching zine evokes the sensation of looking through old psych records, a mid-century teen magazine, or a comic from the ’60s. While the text is written in Indonesian, its accompanying designs are beautifully vivacious that we imagine you’d have fun poking through it whether you can read it or not. Peek through the images below and you’ll see what we mean.
In 2019 we helped develop book design for Irama Nusantara’s report on Indonesian music during its most tumultuous decade in the 20th century, the 1960’s. Along with Norrm and Irama Nusantara, we decided to make this book accessible to public by repackaging it into a zine.
Indonesia during those times is not as globally connected as today. What perceived as ’60s design abroad is not the same as what it is locally. Adding to that, design archives from that era is not very well documented in Indonesia, so it took us a lot of deep-digging through research in Indonesian history and archives.
Published by Binatang Press, this zine is Risograph printed and available over at Tokopedia or select independent bookstores.
