Second year FCP portfolio

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Contents

Self Promotion Summer Work Identity

Seminar Work

Self Promotion The aim of this project was to develop a personal identity that can be used across different platforms to end up with a professional business card, a visual cv and covering letter and an online portfolio.

My visual inspiration came together through picking out existing designs and analyzing the features within them that stood out to me.

For my graphics based cards I incorporated colours, textures and patterns that I felt related to my existing work.

Graphics based initial business card designs.

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These designs fused together my love for photography and illustration with my layouts.

However even though I liked some of the visual effects, I found they didn’t look as professional and weren’t as easy to read.

V.S Mixed Media based initial business card designs

Design Recipe

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Final Design//

After evaluating my initial ideas as well as taking into consideration feedback, I decided the designs focusing solely on typography were the most effective. I like the clear colour palette and minimalistic design. After an initial print out I came to the conclusion my design would be printed on 400 gsm card with a matte texture.

Visual // CV

Covering letter

Advert link:

https://career.loreal.com/TBScareers/JobDetailRetail?jobId=14992

Portfolio Research & Comparison ///

Portfolio

http://brontey11bm.wix.com/portfolio

Summer Work Trend board

I developed my skills over the summer by creating new mood baords to not only keep my blog updated but also to carry on practicing layouts and Photoshop techniques.

Street Style Board

In year 1, I found that I really enjoyed taking Street Style photos. So over the summer I did a continuation looking at how my friends dress differently at home and at University. I then showed the comparison through this mood board.

Link to blog post: http://the-white-stuffx.tumblr.com/post/131250801721/well-last-time-i-did-one-of-these-i-had-just

What Am I Like ‘What Am I like?’ was a mood board project where the brief was to create imagery through Photography, Illustration, collage or any means you like that depicted you as an indivdual.

For my mood board I went with an illustrative approach because I enjoy it as a hobby. I chose the catgeories: Music, Posessession, Past-time, Shoes, Outfit, Food, Book, Weather, Animal and Place picking items from each of them that represent me as an individual.I used a cross hatch sketching effect and used this to overlay the images in photoshop, editing the opacity.

Work Experience

Studio LBW

Over Summer and Autumn, I got the opportunity to do a Marketing and PR internship at Studio LBW. It was great experience because they are an expanding independent clothing company. I was offered the opportunity not only to organise and plan events but come up with layout designs, photoshoot ideas and was also in charge of their social media presence and brand identity.

Whilst I loved the whole internship, I was especially happy when given the opportunity to produce layout designs for a product booklet. In the end all 10 of my designs were used as templates in the final product.

Studio LBW As well as using my ideas for layouts, Studio LBW allowed me to come up with photoshoot ideas and visualizations on my own. I took the opportunity to do trend research into areas they could use and produce mood boards to showcase my ideas.

Identity

Project The concept of this project was to explore the theme of identity in a given area and portray it through making a zine in groups. Our given theme was ‘class’ and as a group we wanted to create a zine that dispelled the negative stereotypes of working class people that were being recreated by political and government issues.

Promotional Image for MARDY ZINE

Team writing//

For our zine; ‘Mardy’ we have explored the theme ‘class’. As a collective we decided we wanted to change and present a new perception of the working class. We wanted to create something relatable by telling stories in interesting ways through the means of Photography.

Because our zine focuses on Nostalgia and memories we wanted the visuals to be modern, minimalistic and monochromatic with an accent of colour.

Getting to our big idea came from our extensive research into areas that we related to class such as Political and social factors, artists and history. After initial research into our trend innovators who were key influential icons like Coco Chanel, Karl Marx, Grayson Perry and Banksy- we started to create our own primary research. We created a three word system in which we asked people we knew to sum up what ‘Class’ meant to them in three words.

Our sample was based upon other university students because we felt this would be a way to obtain answers from people who had come from a variety of backgrounds but who also thought similarly to us as a team. We also kept the sample anonymous so the answers would be as honest as possible.

After we obtained 3 words from our sample of twenty-two people, our results showed that the words ‘poverty’, ‘labour’ and ‘inequality’ were most popular. Our insights from this led us to the conclusion that most people were associating the word ‘class’ with working class.

After deciding as a team that we wanted to explore ‘working class’ as our zines focus point, the next step was to start looking at contextual influences and research.

Key focal points were: the Grayson Perry ‘All in the best possible taste’ documentary, portrait photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Martin Parr, Richard Billingham, Charlie Phillips and Nick Hedges and the use of journals, articles and databases.

After it became clear to us as a team that all of our research was pointing towards a photography based project, we decided to repeat our three word system experiment with association to ‘working class’ to help us develop a photography based idea for our zine that didn’t look like we had just mimicked the artists we had been influenced by. We used the same people in our sample as the previous experiment and kept the anonymity once again. As a group we were expecting similar answers to the first experiment but we were surprised at how many people said things like ‘Jeremy Kyle’ and ‘teen pregnancy.’ This led us to the realization that a lot of people still have negative connotations and we decided that we wanted to change this in our zine and show honest, accurate representations.

To develop our starting point of creating a photographic zine based on working class people, we thought about the existing artists’ work we had looked at, how we wanted to be different, who we wanted our audience to be and what we stood for. Because we knew we wanted to tell stories we knew we had to have subjects and models to interview and be the focus of our zine. We wanted people with relatable stories but we thought using people only from Nottingham was too limiting and specific. As a team, we all come from families with working class roots and backgrounds so we decided using relatives could be an interesting and ethical way of obtaining our content especially as we all come from different areas.

Although our inspiration came from photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Nick Hedges, we found their work showed the hardships and struggle of working class people and we wanted to celebrate their lives and change the perceptions. We found people’s opinions on working class people from not only our primary interviews but also from our secondary research into trend drivers. The insights from our research were that common television programmes such as ‘Benefit Street’ and ‘skint’ as well as political changes (tax changes etc) within the government have reversed positive progression and produced negative societal stereotypes associated to working class people. To combat and change these stereotypes we decided to show that their lives are not confined to these stereotypes through interviews about their lives. To do so we produced an interview that would explore their childhoods, family memories, milestones and jobs. Using this information we would then pair extracts with photographs that celebrate and re-enact what we considered to be interesting and positive elements and memories from their lives.

To make our auto-biographical photo’s stand out we wanted to make the visuals have a strong juxtaposition in old and new. The big idea behind this was to not only create a zine celebrating ordinary people but to still create something that is primarily an arts and photography publication.

This was because most popular arts, fashion or photography publications do not appeal to working class people but we hoped that our accessible ideas and themes paired with an informative base and visually appealing presentation ,would create a unique and creative (yet educational) zine.

To summarise our big idea; Our zine ‘Mardy’ is based upon changing current negative stereotypes attached to working class people in an autobiographical photo essay format so that it appeals to ordinary people with its relatable topic and stories.

The idea behind our creative concept was to creative a photographic based narrative that portrayed nostalgia, memory and reality in a new urban and modern aesthetic.

To get to this point and develop it further we started by analysing the contextual research we had that had been visually relevant to our zine. This is how we came to the decision of using all black and white photographywe thought it tied in to our research because a lot of the photographers we had primarily looked at had taken and produced their work in the depression of the 1930’s and 40’s. Moreover the use of classic black and white photography would make our photo’s look traditional and relate to our concept of relaying of the past.

However because we wanted a juxtaposition with old and new, it was important to source visual references and inspiration for our layout and zine design that were modern and minimalistic. We looked at existing booklets, zines and magazines to find layouts and styles that would be a visual contrast against our classic photography style.

For the photographs we had planned to photograph locations and places that were mentioned as key elements of the interviews we had produced. We were inspired by Berenice Abbott and we wanted the images to be simple, landscape shots with a high contrast black and white filter. We took these individually in different areas relating to the individual.

After editing some of the initial photography and placing it in mock-up layouts we came to the conclusion the images (and the overall zine) needed an accent colour to bring everything together, add another dimension and add another urban, modern quality. After thinking about connotations of colour we chose Red because we feel it relates to working class with its symbolism of strength and power as this is something we are trying to portray in our zine rather than the negative stereotypes.

Because of adding the red to our colour palette and design recipe, we had planned on using our studio time to take portrait shots of our interviewees in similar styles to our artist research. However we felt this wasn’t a very creative use of the studio time and tried to come up with a more unusual concept that would also be very different visually to our landscape location shots. The idea was to take objects and elements from each interview and photograph them in a unique way. For example instead of photographing wedding rings, we used candy rings to make the image more humorous and unpredictable. The visual inspiration behind the shoot was that we wanted the image to be a similar aesthetic to our other photography (I.e. shadowy and high contrast) but also more modern. After looking at existing still life photography we decided that we wanted our images to be shot on a wooden crate to add texture and shadows and shot from above. Shooting images like this is a common trend at the minute so we thought it would contrast against our other photography. To maintain the bold and unusual appearance we spray painted part of the crate background red. This added not only the connotations relating to our theme and the colour itself, but also a visual appearance unlike the rest of our zine.

The intention behind our images was to give connotations and references to ordinary day to day life by the use of photographing ‘normal’ locations and objects. We hope it makes people think of their own lives and their own memories and upbringing. The images also closely relate to community and location by showing people different areas across the UK and portraying the differences but also the similarities. When it came to executing our zine we wanted something that was tactile, interesting and visually different. It was important to us to display our images and interview quotes in an interesting way because of the simple colour scheme and classic photography style.

The printing and execution of our zine was particularly important to us because it needed to reflect the modern layout but also reflect the concept of working class people. Originally we wanted a glossy high quality paper with acetate inserts and a pull out poster of our images. The idea came from all of our visual research into layouts and because we had so many leftover images from our photo shoot that we wanted to take advantage of. However after consideration and further planning we decided this was a contrast against our identity of being ‘relatable’ and didn’t add any positive value to our concept or imagery. The idea of ordinary people, with accessible content was getting lost behind an on trend and modern design.

Taking this into account, we rethought our ideas and decided the zine could look appealing and provide an interesting effect with a mixture of newsprint like paper and tracing paper. The idea behind the tracing paper inserts was to create a separate mini zine within the main issue featuring the main quotes taken from our interviews.

We also hoped using a newsprint paper would make the zine to look more honest and make it more accessible so it didn’t look like the high end ‘glossy’ magazines often associated with arts and fashion. Moreover to make use of our photo studio time, we wanted to put some of the images from the shoot together to make a pull out poster that would be inserted in the zine. This was so that we had varied content celebrating all of our research and ideas that was displayed in a clear and concise manner without going back to the traditional layout of a magazine with columns and grids.

We hope the content our zine Mardy shows that working class people all over the UK defy a lot of the current negative societal stereotypes and have a diverse mixture of life experiences whilst being light-hearted, warming and nostalgic. We also hope that the visuals portrayed in our zine show that new arts publications can be innovative but also accessible and relatable.

My Street Photography

For our zine ‘Mardy’, we explored working class people through photographing their memories and life stories. Key elements of this included location. We took photos of these locations for the content of our zine, here are some I produced and edited around the east midlands area.

As well as photographing areas and locations that were special to the individual, me and my group also took images of the interviewees themselves. Both of these images were taken by me and the image on the right was also used as our zines front cover.

Portrait Photography

Digital Presence // http://cargocollective.com/mardyzine https://www.instagram.com/mardyzine/

Final Images and pages from MARDY X

Seminar Work

In our seminars this semester we have had the opportunity to work with a lot of guest lecturers and do a lot of practical activities. I enjoyed the chance to use my love for painting and drawing and learn new techniques from the lecturers.

Illustration with Laura Quick

Mono Printing

Zine Making

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Lord Whitney // BTS

Final Images theme : Ladder

Brontey white N0515045 FCP FASH20031 communication and message