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So my first day back in uni today (first day of the final term!) began with an introduction to our final project titled 'The Big Idea'. In groups, we discussed the word that we had chosen from a number of options given to us each by our tutors before Easter. My chosen word is 'Consumerism'. After the usual initial brainstorming I've found that this has proven to be a broad topic that could lead me to a huge range of outcomes. I've been researching into branding, advertising, globalization, the production of goods, theorists' work, anti-consumerism and the effects of consumerism mentally, physically, economically and ecologically. I've also been looking at Naomi Klein's 'No Logo' (a book that helped with my last project), and Celia Lury's 'Consumer Culture' to get some academic insight into my chosen word. With such a broad topic to work with I've got a lot of research to get on with before our presentations at the end of the week, so I'm glad I've chosen a word that I wont get bored with quickly. I hope...
This is a poster I designed that will be displayed at a uni symposium in Bournemouth tomorrow. It's been designed as a visual for my dissertation titled,
"At home and abroad: A consideration of the social implications of the privatisation of leisure activities with a particular reference to the Nintendo Wii Fit and Internet social websites."
Here are some images from my latest project titled 'Creative Meaning'. We were asked to chose a site, in my case it was my make up bag, and document several aspects in a creative way. In the end I decided to design a booklet that showed how to use the contents of the make up bag which I called 'The Guerrilla Girls' Survival Kit'. One of the aspects of my site was based around how I use make up to target my insecurities, which I interpreted as a war on my facial flaws. With an army theme throughout the booklet I communicated several features of my make up bag including the make up ingredients, colour palette, frequency of use, where to use it and also what items to use in order to hide and enhance certain facial features.
I found the research side of this project to be the most enjoyable as it was a chance for me to get away from the usual Internet, books and magazines, and instead produce some primary research on an object that is personal to me. It was essentially down to me to get the most research I could out of my chosen site by looking at in ways I hadn't previously thought of. For example, I had never looked at my make up ingredients and was interested in what I had found (like the hydrogenated vegetable oil in my eye liner and salycilic acid in my lip balm).
Overall, it was a good opportunity to produce some interesting first hand research while looking at an object in a completely new light.
After our first month long 'Real World' project I received some very informative and encouraging feedback from our tutor Olwen. I really enjoyed the brief and it's always good to hear how others think you performed. I am definitely my biggest critic and what stood out most to me within the feedback was,
"If there's one thing that comes out loud and clear it's that you should be more confident about your abilities and be assured that you have much to offer."
When working in a team it can be easy to compare yourself against others and I found myself a bit intimidated by the skill level of my 4 other team members. However, this feedback gave me confidence in my design capabilities and made me realize that we all have our individual strengths. I just need to make sure I have confidence in order to really play to my strengths.
Here's a bit about my first project as a 3rd year Graphic Communication student...
We were asked to create a brand identity for a youth centre in Newcastle called 'The Link'. It basically serves as a place where young people can meet and get involved in a range of creative projects.
There were 5 of us working on this together as a team and i think we all complimented each others skills really well. Despite the late working nights and getting horribly ill in the last week, I really enjoyed the whole experience and it really inspired me to work hard to contribute as a team member. Everybody put in a solid effort and as a result our team won after presenting the concept to the client.
To give you an idea of what we produced, here's some merchandise I put together for the project just to demonstrate how our logo could be marketed.
