[MEMORIESZINE] Picking images from film archives

 

I have picked a lot of photos I took on my film camera. All. of the pictures were taken in Leeds and the times when I was in the UK. They are really good memories of mine spending with friends travelling around. I was thinking of using "memories" as the title of the zine. It would be a photo book of my memories in the UK and that would mean a lot to me. 

Many of the pictures were with our faces on it and I thought it would be too personal if faces were put in the zine and audience would not be able to relate to them. Therefore I had decided to choose those without faces.  For those with faces, maybe I could edit them out on Photoshop? Maybe sing different methods to portray the idea of memories fading? or the nature of memories? I was also thinking of setting up an Instagram account to showcase my work so that they can gain more exposure and I could introduce myself as the account when people ask during the market. It would also be a good way to keep my portfolio. 

[MEMORIESZINE] Initial ideas, theme development and image manipulation

As the title "memories" was to vague, I decided to expand on it and further elaborate to make myself clearer on the theme and the concept that I would like to go for.

1. 

Memories flow,

memories fade.

Zoom in to discover each and every detail present in our memories. 

The zine would be a collection of cropped and zoomed in images. The concept is to lead people having a second visit to their memories and remember each and every detail of the moments. As photograph is a good medium for us to capture every moment in life and some of them might already be forgotten. 

-----------------------------------------------

2.

Do You Really Remember? 

People love taking pictures and capturing moments. But the truth is, memories fade, and people forget. 

They see, they capture. They will then revisit, and finally, they feel. 

Is this how it really works? Can they really capture that one particular moment and feeling? 

Are those memories real? Or are they just filling in the gaps between the broken pieces with their own fantasies?

For this concept, I would like to focus on the idea of people taking pictures only for the sake of taking them without really feeling the present moment when they captured the picture. Also, the idea of memories fade and we tend to fill in those forgotten memories with our own fantasies which blurs the line between reality and fantasy. Different methods of image manipulation would be experimented to translate the idea fo memories fade and reality vs fantasy. 

-----------------------------------------------

I went for the second idea and began manipulating images. I tried out different methods and effects on PS to test for the best result. 

I tired using grains and the magic wand tool to ease out part of a chosen photo. I quite like the texture of it as their is an obvious grain effect on the original film photo, the magic wand tool could only detect some part of the grained area and created this interesting fading effect.

I also tried playing around with the magic wand tool with two images overlaying each other. This translates the idea of reality vs fantasy. I also tuned the ambient of the photo to make the red look more obvious to further portray the idea of vivid memories.

For this, I experimented with the scissors tool and randomly drew irregular shapes on the original photo to create a puzzle like structure. This method represents the idea of fragmented pieces if memories. The piece so not fit in to each other which translates the idea of fake pieces of memories that you people think and happened, but actually they are just pieces of fake memories that their brain subconsciously generated to fill in the forgotten parts. 

The process are going great and I will being further exploring different methods to translate the idea of the nature of memories.  I am also thinking of the presentation of the picture on a spread. Should I use a white border to give audience more space for imagination? Or should I over print them with no borders to make ti look contemporary and straight at the face? 

[MEMORIESZINE] Pop-up market application

 

Last summer in August, me and my friend Sonja, who is also a graphic design student had decided to finally build our own creative label/ brand. We had been talking about this for years until we saw this post on Instagram. THUR is a music collective that we have been followed for long and were throwing this pop-up market DJ party, asking people to join them and sell goods. The market is of a cyberish and y2kish theme and we thought it would be really interesting to design our own products and launch them in the market. We messaged THUR and applied for a booth unit, we paid for it and the market was on 4-6SEPT.

As it was 1.5month before the market that we had decided to join, everything was a rush. We have decided to make zines and postcards as we thought it would be the most efficient and quickest product when it comes to designing and production. 

We made a google doc for scheduling our plans. The document helped a lot in organising stuff. Apart from the zines and postcards that we were going to make individually, we had also decided to design graphic teeshirts. This made everything even more hectic as I was still an intern at BVP and my own schedule was really packed. 

[LIVE BREIF] test printing + content page

For the last meeting before my internship at BVP ends, we mentioned to make a content page for the book to make it officially a publication. The content page is made for easier navigation through the book and also to introduce the students about the patterns first before they go into the content. We thought of spacing out the content page into 2 pages (a spread), however, after testing printing, we found out that there is an odd number of body pages. As all left and right pages have to work together for easier reading and associating, it is thought that the content page has to be layout into one page in order for the pages after that to work. 

Submission Form

 OUGD601 Blogger Submission Form

Name:

Ruby Koo

Student ID:

ck282479

Blog URL:

https://r-koo1821-l6.blogspot.com

[LIVE BRIEF] Adding motion and movements

After the utensils part, in order to make the graphics more fun to touch by adding motion, I also modified some of the designs to make them look more interesting and less dead.  Instead of a still container with sugar in it, I made sugar pouring out of the tilted container. This immediately made it look more interesting and added more meaning into the design. By touching the sugar design, students know that they use the container by tilting it in order to pour the sugar out. The container design is also taken from research done from searching images of sugar containers. Most places use this kind of cylinder shapes container for seasoning. As for the ice cream, motion is also added by making the ice cream melting and dripping. I showed this to my boss for feedback and he liked it a lot when compared to the. old design of having an idea cream scoop sitting still on the cone. Everything looks more lively and less boring now. 

Project statement

Nowadays, we can see that a lot of clothing brand windows are using models of different colours and races as their advertisement strategy to promote diversity. This is a form of tokenism and not only in real life, tokenism is also performed in social media platforms. 

In the research essay, tokenism is being explored and discussed. we see that internet users nowadays rely on Instagram to get direct information of the latest rends and streetwear updates. Instagram is becoming the lead of bringing up trends as it serves as a platform where people communicate and exchange opinions. Advertisements of streetwear brands are then making use of these fast chaining trends as a marketing strategy for boosting their sales and profits. Taking anti-racism and diversity as an example of trends among the internet, brands are starting to use token representatives as a symbolic figure to promote diversity among their customers. Tokenism is then becoming a big issue among these brands when these representatives are just one of the products to establish a good reputation and brand image among the audience. It is one of the phenomenon of brands implanting market strategy only on the surface, instead of really having the intention of doing good. In order to really perform diversity and anti-racism, the motive behind their act should always be inclusion. Diversity is about hiring any people from any places, while inclusion is about “using” them to their fullest, unleashing their talents and caliber together, to create something impactful and innovative. 

In order to raise the awareness of tokenism, a lookbook with no skin shown is being created. This practical outcome focuses on the garments, instead of the models. This is to lead audience to thinking the true value and the importance of skin colours. It also proves that without skins, the garment can also be shown clearly among the audience. It guides audience into looking at the design of the products and the styling of products, instead of focussing on the models and skin colours. All images are gathered from different photoshoots, both from real life shoots and in virtual Photobooth shoots. This is to promote the idea of inclusion, when under this pandemic, people from all around the world could participate in a project and that place and distance do not affect the outcome of the project. 

[LIVE BRIEF] Feedback from boss + adding utensils

 

Visuals 

- steak with fork and knives  

- pasta with fork, instead of only using wavy lines 

- rice with chopsticks 

I have had a meeting with my boss and his main comment was that the design looked fine, but they are too straight forward. We should add something challenging for the students to touch so as to train their brain. We came up with the idea of adding utensils next to the food can train students' association skills. This idea takes reference to iPhone's emojis. As emojis are a universal language, we thought that having our visuals sticking to the concept of emojis could also help pushing our tactile designs into a universal level. The designs with utensils also add motion into the graphics. This also makes the graphics looks less boring and more interesting. Taking the noodles as an example, the original design was using wavy lines as a symbol for noodles. This of course can directly give people an idea of the structure of how noodles look, but it lacks creativity. My boss stated that as a student, he would like something that is fun to touch and less straight forward so that he could have fun in class and feel less sleepy. This is something really important that I have learnt from the meeting, to think in the audience's perspective when designing. 

[LIVE BRIEF] Patterns

 The design process has been super slow as I have been working on my COP and things are getting too much for me. Also, we are working from home which means time management I really important. I have been planning to finish my COP in a few days so that there will be time for me to focus on my internship work and to update my boss on my progress. 

Its been a week since the project started and I have been drawing food nonstop. Most of them are semi-done and needed for my boss to approve. I then thought of the presentation of the food pyramid. 

1. Putting all foods into one section

It would be too crowded to touch and differentiate different items. 

2. Choosing 1-2 items as representation of each item 

This would be a lot better, but how do I show other items? I would be really confusing if other items are put on other pages. 

Therefore, in order to make it easier for students to read, patterns are decided to represent each section. They drawn to indicate each category of food the pyramid. 6 different patterns are made to represent each section. 

I tired out many patterns randomly and thought that it would be better to choose the patterns according to the textures and the forms of the categories. 

grains: dots 

vegetables: horizontal lines? 

fruits: triangles 

dietary products: wavy lines 

Lean meat, fish: straight lines?

sugar, salt, oil: crosses