Personal Planning: Reflection and Development- Essay/ Unit Evaluation

When I was first introduced to the Visual Culture: Context and Theory unit, I remember being quite nervous as we were all bombarded with all these techniques and words that I have never come across in my life. I found it particularly hard, as sometimes I believed we weren’t given enough tutorials before being thrown into a major project. As time went by I started getting a hang of it and now I feel like I have been introduced to a whole new different world of design, by decoding hidden meanings of image and even text, that affect society around us. A photograph or an image to me at this moment in time isn’t just a picture of a beautiful woman and an attractive man, its so much more deeper than that as I have now learned to analyze their body language, their gaze, dress sense, accessories, the placement of products or even the text; and just in general the mise en scene of the image. 

For our final piece we were assigned an essay, to research the issues of Gender or Race in Advertising. I chose Gender as I thought Race was too common and its something that we are all aware of that is going around us everyday, so for me it was a subject that I would have particularly gotten bored of as there’s no answer why there’s racism in the world and why people can be racist to the color of your skin, or your religion or even your nationality. Its just one thing in this world that no matter how deep into it you may go you will never find an answer. So I chose Gender in Advertising as I thought it would be interesting to explore how males and females are perceived in advertising and I wanted to look into the history of Gender in Advertising to see how it has changed over the years. 

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Through my research I found it really hard to find information on men in advertising. It was all about women not having much self confidence from back in the day so all they knew was to be obedient to men. I discovered how the beauty of a woman was taken advantage by the advertising industry to sell their products, especially house keeping products, where a typical housewife was ideal. Men weren’t really used much in advertising unless it was for DIY products, as women ruled the advertising world with their beauty and glamour. I found a lot more history on women in advertising than men, which made my essay almost sound bias. But by the end of my research I just about came up with sufficient information for both genders. The first image I chose was a 1920’s Chanel No.5 black and white advert and a 2010 Dolce & Gabbana advert. I wanted to show how the perception of a male and female has changed over the decades.  In the Chanel advert both genders were dressed elegant and respectable but still showed glamour, and the woman was domineering, as I believe the beauty of a woman besotted men back in time. The Dolce & Gabbana advert consists of 5 males and 1 female being pinned to the floor by one of the half naked males. The image just screams out seduction and sex as looking at it for a split second, you would think it’s an image of a possible gang rape. I call it the sex sells strategy, as I believe that no one looks at the beauty of a woman anymore, but how sexy her body language is in an image. 

Even after analyzing both images I still didn’t think it was enough. So I decided to grab another 2 images, again one from the 1900’s and one from 2010 of bathing suit models. The first image I chose was an image set in 1906, consisting 2 females and male dressed in what they call bathing suit which looked more like stockings and dresses for the females and a knee length jump suit for the male. Looking at a 2010 Calvin Klein image of a male in shorts just covering his penis area and his buttocks leaving the rest of his body bare; and the female in a bikini covering her breasts, vaginal area and buttocks. I wanted to show how dress sense has deteriorated over the years. From even going to the beach in the 1900’s you still couldn’t show more than your arms and shoulders, then as years passed it got cut to a one piece bathing suit that looked like shorts, then eventually a one piece bathing suit in the shape of knickers and what they call Speedos for men and then eventually a two piece bathing suit called a bikini for women. I am pleased with the way I have structured and research this essay, as it makes you realize, over the years how much society has changed, how its not about beauty anymore its about how sexy you are; how and how open they have become and have no respect for the one thing that should be left within privacy… your body. 

Shelter

For our next project we were assigned to create a poster for the homeless charity "Shelter" for a bus shell . I researched homeless statistics not only for UK but worldwide and different charities such as, Oxfam, Centre Point, Emmaus and many more. This project was a real eye opener to see the importance of what goes on around you everyday. I came across loads of upsetting images of adults, children and old people and made me realize that yes, it could really be me or my parents, grandparents,siblings, nieces and nephews. Reality really hit me!

For my final pieces I wanted to show a lot of feeling through them, not necessarily by giving it the 'shock' emotion, but I wanted it to touch peoples heart and be one of them posters that  will make you, take a double look. I thought of how to pursue this and came up with including children; a face of a child as children always touch peoples hearts by being so young, clueless and innocent. Seeing a homeless child and a child being uncared for immediately touches my heart one way or another . I drew out a sketch of a little girl in rundown clothes, head down, holding a teddy bear (signifying a child) and a penny box; standing outside a window shop during christmas. I wanted to give it a Christmas theme as it is the most warm,loving season of the year where everyone is with their loved ones and friends and eating good food, sharing presents; really just a happy time of the year. So having a poster of a child during christmas alone in the cold, I believed it would be ideal for my final piece. After  receiving feedback for my tutors, I realized that the image just said "Poverty" instead of "homeless"by the way I structured it. I was then stuck, because I just personally thought that they were both the same! 


In the end I just threw myself into it. A friend of mine and I went for a stroll round Bournemouth see if we can find any homeless people. Funny enough, we found ONE! Our plan was to approach them and speak to them and maybe give them some food or money or whatever they preferred in exchange for their time. But this one in particular didn't seem like he was in a good mood. We tried to take some pictures on the sly, although we felt bad because I felt like I was just simply taking the piss, as if I was taking pictures of a statue. But the deed was done and I managed to take a few good shots. The guilt was eating me up so after a while we returned to give him some food and money but by the time we went back he was gone. 

After going through the pictures I just imported them into photoshop and started playing around with them... I always loved the quote by Ghandi "Be the change you want to see in the world", so I definitely wanted to use that within my final pieces. Within my poster I wanted to show how corrupt the world is and that homelessness is everywhere! So at first I came up with the image below

I liked it! but it just didn't say "homeless people". I wanted to include the pictures that I took but I also liked what I did with this one, with the world being cracked as if to say corrupted and the red not only symbolizing 'Shelter' but I just thought of, danger, alert, blood etc. So I decided to use my picture as a background image and fade it out . 

Perfect! But then I needed a second piece. So decided to play around with them a bit and in the end came out with 3 final pieces, using 2 of them as a choice of leaflets and one Final Poster. 

Final Poster

Leaflet 1 

Leaflet 2 

Adobe InDesign

Unlike the image-editing and graphic software like Photoshop and Illustrator;  Adobe InDesign is used  to create pieces such as posters,flyers, brochures, magazines and books. It is mostly used by graphic designers. 

Using InDesign I created my first project assignment, which was to create a book using all the different techniques we have recently learned. At first I thought it would be quite challenging as I wasn't very clear on InDesign, but I pulled through and I proudly created my first, very own book :) 

My Book in IND

My Book FINISHED

Side View 

Inside.

Book Binding

French fold

French Fold Book Binding is created by folding a piece of A4 paper in half, then fold it again in half, creating pages. You can either leave it folded or bind the non-folded edge using Japanese binding wire or spiral bound. 

Concertina Binding

Concertina Book binding is created by cutting out two seperate pieces of paper according to how many pages you want and folding them together in an accordion style bind.  

Adobe Illustrator

Although Illustrator and Photoshop have many things in common, unlike Photoshop it is

used more for logo graphics than image editing. As a vector based drawing program, it functions by creating curved paths connected and motified by anchor points. These anchors are edited by their handles, which never leave the structure of the file. 

Experiment 1

After we where shown on what we could do on Illustrator, I created my own Halloween font as it was the week before Halloween using the warp,twirl, pucker,crystallize and wrinkle tools. I then created the swirls around the letters using the pencil and path eraser tools.

Experiment 2 

Letterpress

Letterpress is the printing process of text and image, invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century;using a press with a “type-high bed”.This process was used through out into the, 19th century and then mostly used for books in the 20th century. 

Letterpress machine

My own letterpress 1

My own letterpress 2 

The letterblocks are  thoroughly inked up by your chosen colour of ink, before placing them however you want on the bed. 

After placing your chosen paper carefully over the letterblocks, you roll the bed into the press, which will apply the pressure to give you a result like above.

Type & Tape

Type & Tape is the first practical task we were given at the beginning of term. We had to create our own unique font out of nothing else but duct tape. In a group of five we sat down and put our ideas together. As a group we chose the best one. We got creative and used different colors of tape as well as making each letter different levels.We named it “PacFont”.