Art Fund: Development

Digital detox
Leading on from one of the initial ideas which seemed to hold the most potential, the concept was explored further. The idea is that social media is too much of a daily focus and we scroll through and see some nice final outcomes that are visually pleasing but we do not know where any of these were inspired from. The campaign is taking well known pieces of art in galleries and then highlighting that bits of inspiration can be taken from them all to create what you see on your social media feed. 

The experimentation for this concept began by gathering some famous pieces of art work and drawing over little sections of each of them. I then put them together to create this very experimental and almost abstract interpretation of a face. 

Working with images that I already had limited the placement and composition of the design, but it would allow me to get a good idea of whether or not this concept would be worth developing further. Digitally creating a gallery space over the top of an existing image of me holding an iphone meant that the hand would be behind the frames.

The section of the hand and phone that was blocked out was selected and duplicated so that it appeared to be in front of the photo frames. The idea of the concept was that the social media timeline would be on show and then the background images would show where the inspiration had derived from. To make it make sense the images in the frames need to be the pieces of artwork that the abstract face was inspired by. 

The image above shows the concept at very early stages and composed in a way that could be improved with development time.

I started to brainstorm some of the taglines that could be used on the posters to ensure that the correct message was being published to the audience. 

Collaboration: Concept refinement

Having spoken to my tutor (who specialises in editorial design) about where to start with this brief and how to develop a strong concept, I realised that I was a little unsure as to how the two subjects tied together. We had discussed them separately and became passionate about them as individual bodies of work, but the link had not be explicitly determined. 

I had a few key words for the themes that would be adressed within the content of the images, but by sending a message to Kristina I was able to get a more detailed insight into exactly what the photoshoots will be portraying and focusing on as a topic. 

Kristina's response:

"The aspect that is going to hopefully tie the concept of these two projects is “women issues” women issues don’t just happen in one form, there are various issues that women experience all around the world. And just because they are not visible people often forget that they exist. The theme of Islamophobia is universal, people experience it in all parts of the world. And the issues some women face in Bali are often forgotten about and unknown because people cannot see them, they don’t visit the remote places of the island, they are simply there to have fun and spend money. Therefore, I feel that the working title is ‘Out of sight, out of mind’. This is just what I’m thinking of at the moment. All the images will hopefully be shot in a similar style, therefore they should all work together in a publication (but not necessarily) we will have to wait and see!!"

‘Out of sight, out of mind’
- women issues
- not visible so people forget they exist
- the universal issue

The response from Kristina highlighted that this publications purpose is to spread strong messages, something that zines are known to be more effective to do. Upon reflection, I have decided that a zine accompanying a finalised photobook would work well. The zine will allow for the distribution of the topic and then by raising awareness of the issue, people will then want to buy the full photobook.

The content of the zine could be made up of some of the images and writing either, in short, explaining the issue, or a number of quotes that would engage the reader to want to find out more about the topic being discussed.

Brainstorm

Taking the working title, I was able to have a brainstorm on the different ways in which I could portray the messages within and purpose of the content in the most effective way in regards to design decsions and presentation. 

I will now take these initial thoughts and experiment with some of the given images and work out the most effective design decisions that I can present to Kristina. 

Collaboration: Bruno Ceschel

A photo-book or photobook is a book in which photographs make a significant contribution to the overall content. A photo-book is related to and also often used as a coffee table book.

Bruno Ceschel - Tips on making a photography book
This blog highlighted the importance of printed photos and the power of collation and sequencing when trying to portray particular messages. The digital age has stopped the printing of books and when they are printed they gain this sense of formality and people enjoy reading them more than with the interruptions when online. He shares some of the practical methods of making a photography book that may inspire the digital based design process and how the different things could portray things in a more powerful sense. 

Ideas
1. Folding pages
Luke Stettner - it is interactive which is a good way to engage the audience with the content as they can rearrange/fold the pages in the book, creating new meanings 

This is good visual literacy for the project that I am working on because it is about the prejudgements and then reveals more about the girls and their lives. 

2. Have one good idea
bad to try and incorporate too many ideas
3. Keep the books small and simple
cheaper to produce and ship 
smaller to carry around and more people will read
better reading experience, can be read anywhere
4. The book is a physical object
there is an element of intimacy and engagement with printed content
5. The book prompts a performance
the user interaction is fundamental for how much they engage with the content
Jason Eskenazi - Wonderland is the size of  paperback novel, allowing you to carry with you everywhere you go for inspiration on the go 
landscape book generally fold out too big and take up too much space
folding almost flat allows for a much more intimate experience
6. Represent your message with the right medium

There is a small zine publishing team (called “PPP”, aka Preston is my Paris publishing) in which they did a project of the “Preston bus station”, an area with lots of “brutalist buildings” which was threatened to be demolished (because a lot of people thought it was ugly). But at the same time, there were a lot of people in the community who wanted to save the property

The photographers from “PPP” ended up doing a documentary series of the bus station, and ended up printing it as newspaper — which was the perfect medium for the people of the community (old people who read newspapers, and teenagers who live in a “disposable” culture):

This allowed the photographers from “PPP” to give away the photos for free in the newspaper format. Whereas if they tried to print it as an expensive hard-cover, nobody would have bought it, and therefore nobody in the community would have ended up seeing the images.

8. Book covers
Pink is thought to be bold and flashy which encourages everyone to pick up the book and have a look
does not necessarily need to closely represent the content inside
9. The texture and feel of a book
one of the pleasures of books is how they feel
analogy - when you look at a physical object (like a chair), you don’t just want to look at it. You want to sit on it, you want to see how it feels on your bottom, and you want it to look aesthetically pleasing in the context of an environment.

Collaboration: Bali shoot 1/2

As Kristina will be in Bali shooting the photos for the majority of the time that we have for the project, we instantly relaised the importance of contact whilst she was away. The agreement was that I would be researching and developing different approaches that we could take on presenting the information in the decided format.

Day 1/2 Photoshoot
Kristina sent over a message explaining what she had been up to whilst in Bali and then a large selection of photos that may be suitable for the book.

"Hello, 

Starting off with day one, just getting comfortable with the culture and people again - not so happy with the outcomes. Very similar to first trip.

- Exploring issues of women & children - one of the main ones being malnutrition (That is where food comes in / that is why I photographed food)

Second Day Visiting the hamlets - more confident started to employ flash within images. Wanted to produce simpler portraits as I did not see a reason to complicate it even further. One of the main issues that I feel these images raise is the idea of Inequality, showing women constantly working (Which is true) (When their children are at pre-school / school) What would you say is evident in the photos? Would love some feedback!"

Feedback:
- how does the large amounts of food at the market show malnutrition?
- would a typical meal time with not much on the table show this better?
- some photos that include the men socialising and not working may show this idea of the inequality with the women
- the darkness of the photo that is created through the use of flash is very powerful and sets the mood and tone of the book very effectively

The outcomes:

I now have some content to start sequencing, experimenting with layout and also looking at the different colours and typefaces that could be used with them.

Example of the conversations that Kristina and I have been having whilst she has been away:

The conversations evidence that although Kristina is away taking the photos, I am still being able to input with ideas on how different concepts and messages could be captured and portrayed. 

Astro-Beat Collection: Final outcomes

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poster

ticket

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Morpher: Photoshoot

As a band they did not have any high wuality photos that could be used for their social media presence or promotion for events and upcoming releases etc. It was decided that a photoshoot would be good in order to get a large body of imagery that could be used on my behalf and also I could then provide them with a folder of edited photos so that there is consistency on their social media. 

Visual literacy

Prior to the photoshoot, Jasper sent me some visual literacy that could inspire the outcomes that I get in the studio session. It is a selection of photographs from bands that as a group they like or are visually drawn to. In order to shoot in a style that the band would like, I hired out a photogrpahy studio and with the use of the lighting I would be able to recreate the low saturated photos with a sense of mood in terms of lighting. I had also planned to use coloured gels over the lighting as a way of achieving the blue and red colour scheme that as a band they desired to have as part of their social media presence.  

As a group the photos were coming out best when they were just having some fun and getting comfortable in the studio environment. This allowed me to get comfortable with the camera settings that would achieve the results that as a band they desired. This also meant that as a band they would have lots of non-serious photos that they could use as part of event promotion and the build up to new releases (as shown below). These have been getting some good responses on the social media platforms and as a band they are able to shown their vibrant personalities that official photos may not portray. The studio photoshoot also allowed for them to capture some behind the scene photos which could be used as promotion and engagments, showing the target audience that new content is going to be released soon. 

I then organised a few shots that with a bit of artistic thought and playing around, could be achieved. 

Using the different coloured gels over the lighting created an outcome that we were excited by. This part of the process was the one we spent the most time on as the images were coming out really intersting and unique each time. One of the benefits of using a gel over the lighting is that it looks unique in comparison to the computer manipulated versions that could be created and looked as though it is forced upon the image. We also tried to incorporate their instruments into someof the photos, but quickly realised this looked cheesy and unnatural as they were just holding them and not playing them. Rather than aborting this whole idea, we took that fact that it was a bit ridiculous and had some fun with it so that once again they had some engaging content to use on social media platforms. 

The photoshoot resulted in over 1000 photos that needed to be checked and grouped into the ones that will be used. The band had decided that they wanted to choose the first large group of images that they all agreed would be ones that they liked. This isn't the way I would have normally done it, but it would ensure that they were happy with their appearance in them and would avoid any later problems after I spend a lot of time editing them. I then took that large folder of images and uploaded them to Adobe Lightroom so that I could see them as a collection and further narrow down the choices. I gradualy edited each photo and deleted mroe and more as better ones later cropped up. This process was useful because I had a large body of images that I could hand over to the band at the end of this project, but also lots of choice on which ones to develop for the Facebook profile picture and banner. 

As an example of the editing process, I took each photo individually and tried to optimise the lighting and overall appearance so that stand alone they worked. I then had to get the final group together in Adobe Lightroom so that I could see them all next to eachother and make sure that there was consistency throughout the whole collection. The unedited photo looked good, but by increasing the contrast the band members became clearer and the photo looked better. The same process was also carried out for the purple image.

I then began to experiment with the different ways in which the bands logo/name could be added to the images in a subtle, but effective way. The red image shows the photo with increased brightness to try and allow for the logo to show through better. The next approach was to have the name down the side of the photo. I don't like either of these, so this is something that needs to be revised. 

Edited
As part of the deliverables I provided a large selection of images that had been edited with a consistent visual style so that the band could upload images on their social media and it would continue to build up their identity as a band.