Final Major Project Evaluation
My final outcome consists of a secrets tower as well as two A3 posters centred around peoples secrets. I started my final major project with excitement and high hopes as I did a lot of research and experimentation with artist and designer styles, however I did become a little overwhelmed halfway through the project as I was so caught up on focusing on the obvious of my project, however with a little break I was able to look at the bigger picture and look at my project from a different view, which in turn gave me the idea of the transition of transformation to secrets.

I believe my final major project outcome was quite successful as although at the beginning my thoughts were not clear due to the fact that the topic I picked, which was Transformation, was broad and vague, I believe through the continuous experimentation and development it has helped me clear my mind and helped me work in the right direction, the guidance I received from my tutors and peers also helped as I was able to gather my thoughts and finish everything by having successful final pieces. This is a skill that I believe I have gained, as in the past I used to experiment and develop my work however not nearly as much as I have done during this final major project, and I believe that has helped a lot in having a successful final piece because I was able to test out many different ideas and outcomes which led me to make the final piece which I was most satisfied with.
I also believe that a contributing factor to my final major project being successful is it’s different and unique nature, because I went from focusing on transforming ones appearance to transforming ones ability to let out a secret. The extensive research that I did on artists and designers such as Ralph Meatyard, Erik Jones and Tim Walker as well as the trips to museums and exhibitions such as the British Museum and Pick Me Up also helped greatly in starting me off and inspiring me with some of my own designs.

 Also, during the overall final major project I would have to say another skill that I am happy about gaining is my computer skills (using Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator). It has improved greatly and will be very helpful for my future degree in Graphic Design, which I am very grateful for and excited about. My time management has also improved a lot due to the fast paced schedule that we worked by during the final major project which I am sure will be of great use in the future also.

 As for doing something different? I would definitely have to say maybe do a final piece on transforming through make up. Although I am completely satisfied with my final piece, while I was experimenting with the skull candy face make up I was really intrigued into how far a person can truly change their appearance through make up and I could make a magazine of transformations that I have done, each possibly being inspired by a different festival such as the Day of the Dead. I believe that would be a fun idea to do however I still am very fond of my secrets topic so I would still continue the idea of transforming ones ability to let out a secret but then I would simply combine it with the idea of transforming someones appearance.
19:36 | Category: | 0 comments

Final Major Project - Week 7
The final week of the final major project was quite a hectic one as I needed to start making my secrets tower as well designing the actual typography that would go on the outside of the of the boxes and not to mention my posters.

So with a list of stuff to do and a head full of ideas I started my poster making and designing. I firstly started of my gaining some inspiration from the Mexican festival "Day of the Dead" and so I decided to do a photoshoot and create a series of photographs from my photoshoot. For the photoshoot I asked a friend of mine if I was able to create a skull candy design on her face using face paint and then proceed of photograph her as she acted almost as though she is a emotionless body. The results of the photoshoot and face painting were a lot better than what I had hope or expected, although I believe some of the more intriguing photographs were all down to pure luck.


I then went ahead to Photoshop where I edited the photographs individually to make them into blend into a black background to give the pictures a sense mysteriousness and darkness which links to the overall idea of skulls. It also allows the audience to become curious about the work and want to explore it further.
I then picked nine of the several photographs that I picked and edited and started to add the secrets. The typographic style that I went for when writing the secrets was a very simple one in which I tried to relate the secret to the type, so if it was a childish secret, I went for a childish looking type. Through this technique I believe the audience are able to feel a sense of familiarity with the text and also feel as though they are reading the text through the person eyes of even feel as though they are the person.

After creating my series of photographs I played around with the colour of the photographs as I wanted to maybe try it in Meatyard's perspective, where he uses his black and white images to further enhance the sense of depersonalisation.


I also experimented making with the making and editing of some of my other poster designs, such as the two shown below. In order to achieve the certain effects that I wanted on the posters I simply experimented with most of the effects of Photoshop, combining some and adjusting some in order to get my desired look.


The logo that I unintentionally designed and used for the posters served as a slogan as well as the actual logo for this series. I firstly designed the logo to have the word "let" as the biggest word and the other words (your secret out) following in its path, however after discussing it over with my tutors and peers, it seemed as though the statement now because upfront and demanding as if someone is yelling or emphasising the let, which you would not want if you wished to share a secret. Therefore I went back to the drawing board and redesigned it to have the word "out" as the biggest word.



I then went onto making my final poster pieces and I wanted the secrets that I collected from people to be the main focus of my work. So for my first design I wrote all of the secrets I collected in a very small type size and then proceeded to highlight some by changing their colour into red and so from afar it appears as the Arabic skull cut out design. I wanted the audience to somewhat interact with this piece as well and hence the small type size because secrets aren't easy to let out so you have to go close to the piece to read it to get the feeling of someone letting their secret out to you.

My second design was more simplistic with an attachment to my masks aspects of my Transformation project. The mask being on its own in the poster, and not being worn, symbolises that someone has taken off their "shield" and is letting their true self out and so hence the secrets that surround the mask. I specifically used different type faces for each secret as I wanted to let out a sense of personality and attitude through the secret itself, for example a childish secret will have a somewhat playful typeface. 

Although I found making my final poster pieces a little tricky as it was the first time I tried some of the techniques I used.
I believe the black and the red worked well together as I previously said in another blog, the black and red suit well and they portray the topic of secrets very well as the black gives off a sense of mysteriousness while the red links well to the skulls through the idea of death.

As for my secrets "tower" I made it out of a 400mm by 400mm box as I wanted to make it big enough to allow people to put their head into the box and read the secrets that were displayed within. I made four boxes, the bottom being the all white base, while the top three boxes were the ones that contained the secrets. The idea behind it is that you are able to get the feeling of being inside someones head through reading the secrets that are within the box.

I carefully planned the positioning of the secrets as I wanted it to be both friendly for children as well as intriguing for adults and so I separated the secrets into categories. 

The bottom box contains the most appropriate secrets.
The middle box contains the semi appropriate secrets.
While the top box contains the most inappropriate secrets.

The boxes were also positioned on top of each other in a unorganised way but the reason I did this was because since the secrets were the focus point I tried to show that secrets were not a very straight forward thing, they are complex and sometimes messy, just like a humans thoughts, and since I wanted to allow people to feel that they were inside someones head I wanted to therefore give them the full experience even through the positioning of each box.

I received a lot of excellent feedback about my final poster designs as well as my secrets tower and so I am hoping it shall be a big success with my audience as well.

Pictures all author's own
19:36 | Category: | 0 comments

Final Major Project - Week 6
On the sixth week of the final major project I started designing the confession booth that I wished to build as well as the confessions cards that would be placed within the booth for people to write their secrets on.

I also continued to experiment with the idea of skulls and illustrations. I started looking at the Arabic words for lie, skull, truth and secrets as I believe the Arabic typography gave a little bit of a mysterious feel to those who can not read the language and so the typography becomes a secret within itself.



During this week we were also able to visit the Comics Unmasked exhibition at the British Library as well as the Pick Me Up show at Somerset House.

Through the experimentation of using Arabic typography in the shape of a skull, I thought it would be effective if I tried this design in a stencil form as I liked the idea of combining the secret language with the idea of "letting a person in" through the holes of the stencil.


I then also experimented with the idea and my past research of the human body, through the veins and the muscles. In the photographs below I tried to combine the human skull with the veins in the second photograph, while in the third photograph I experimented with combining the human skull with my rough representation of the human muscles.


The human skull combined with the veins appealed to me and so I experimented again with the idea of stencils and therefore cut out a skull stencil with veins. In the first stencil outcome it is a plain black spray painted outcome, while in the second one I tried to include an element of colour into it by firstly spray painting the skull and veins and then simply painting over the left side of the veins in blue and the right side in red. Although the paint came out slightly messy it gave the picture and design a bit of life as it can be compared to real life where the human insides are not the cleanest and tidiest places.


I continued my experimentation this time with the idea of the skull and the muscles. I stuck to my rough representation of the human muscles as it appealed to me in a way that it had a very graphical effect and reminded me of the artist Erik Jones.


In the photograph above I tried two different ways of creating the skull and muscles. The first being the skull is drawn on top of the muscle, which is not anatomically correct, while in the second one the muscles are rightfully on top of the skull, which is what we have in the human body.

Even though the first design was not anatomically correct, I believe that it gave a sense of uniqueness and was visually more appealing than the second design. 





Through this designing process I then went ahead to picked my favourite two designs which I then printed onto fabric in order for it to be the curtain for my booth.

Pictures all author's own

19:50 | Category: | 0 comments

Final Major Project - Week 5
During the fifth week of the final major project I continued to look at the idea of the insides of the human, more specifically the skull. I continued experimenting however this time with the idea of stencils as I thought that stencils somewhat to the idea of "letting a person in" through the holes of the stencil.


I used the colours black and red not only because they suited and looked good together but because when it comes to lies, deception and hidden feeling the colour black comes to mind because of its mysteriousness and element of hidden darkness. For the red on the other hand it came to mind because the stencil I made was in the shape of a skull which relates to death, which then also related to blood and pain. However red can also symbolise passion as you are "letting someone in", therefore you care for that person.

I also experimented with another kind of illustration where I drew two drawings on top of each other. One drawing being of a person, while the other being the skeletal form of the person on top of it. I really enjoyed trying out this style of illustration because it was something different to what I would usually do, it was also an uncommon way of illustrating that I believe people do not see very often.



These thoughts then led me onto looking at and researching the human anatomy and the skeletal form of the human being and what is truly under the things we try to disguise. So I looked at the cardiovascular system, muscular system, skeletal system, nervous system etc.

Through my research of transformation, disguise and lies I was then able to come up with the idea of secrets. This idea stemmed from the fact that people wish to disguise themselves all the time and lie about their true feelings and thoughts and so I wished that as part of my project people could be a little more honest.

And so I came up with the idea of a confessions booth as part of the "secrets" aspect of my project, which related to unmasking ones true self. I wanted people to open up and be a little more honest by writing a secret/confession to me anonymously. I therefore created a trial confession booth where I made a quick poster that I believed to be eye catching and a small box for people to put their confessions in and provided post it notes and pens for people and just sat and waited for people to participate. The results of my trial was a lot better than I expected. I believe the reason that people did this was because they possibly saw it as an outlet for their secrets and a way for them to share their confessions and thoughts anonymously (to get something of their chest). For others, I believe they took part in this trial for fun and entertainment purposes, which was also welcomed.



From the good results I then wanted to start designing the real booth.

Pictures all author's own
19:34 | Category: | 0 comments

Final Major Project - Week 4
During the fourth week of the final major project I continued to take a different turn from the idea of physically masking someones face and more towards the direction of how people mask and disguise feelings and thoughts.

Therefore I started researching "feelings", which is an emotional state or reaction, as well as the many different types of emotions we feel such as timidness, joy, shyness, frustration etc. Then I started looking at how these feelings are disguised through our speech and facial expressions. This idea stemmed from the common feeling that every human being feels at some point in their life where deep down they are upset about something but do not wish to bother anyone and so they disguise their feelings by acting happy and lying so no one is able to catch on.



From this idea of disguising someones feelings, I started to think about how people focus more on appearance rather than what is truly inside and so this sparked the thought of the human body. We are so focused on our outer appearance and "what is there in front of us" that we forget about is hidden within us. What most people forget is that the human body consists of the skeletal structure, nerves, organs and muscles. This idea intrigued me a lot as it was a different thought than what people usually think about on a daily basis.

While conducting this research I looked at areas such as the Mexican festival Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) because of their brightly coloured and eye catching skulls that they decorate to celebrate.

Through these two very different paths of research, they both got me looking at skulls, which then led me onto looking at the idea of death, as skulls are widely connected to the idea of death. Therefore I started looking at death masks, which are plastic carvings of a deceased person, and death photographs, which are photographs that were taken during the Victorian era of families with their deceased loved ones.



Through the idea of not seeing what is truly inside, I started experimenting with the idea of perception. Using two photographs that I cut into strips and stuck together and so when a person looks at the combined photographs they are able to see one or the other but with enough focus the person can then see both pictures simultaneously.


Pictures all author's own

18:39 | Category: | 0 comments

Final Major Project - Week 3
For the third week of the final major project I researched my topic of Transformation further however during my research it led me to look at different aspects of the topic.

Transformation slowly led onto the topic of disguise which then led onto the idea of lies. While I was looking at the idea of lies I started to also explore both secrets and the truth as it related to the topic.

During this week I was also able to visit the British Museum and take a look at their African and Aztec mask collection as well as gather some inspiration from the other works that are displayed at the museum. 


Another museum that I was able to visit this week was the Design Museum where I got to go to two exhibitions, one being the "Hello, my name is Paul Smith" exhibition. The Paul Smith exhibition was intriguing and unique which allowed it to be very inspirational to me and I was able to experience things that were part of Paul Smiths life. 

We were able to experience being inside of his head and listen to his thoughts.


I also went back to looking at the different genres, uses and types of masks.

Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Fantasy, Sadness, Crime, Comedy.
Uses: Protection, Disguise, Performance, Entertainment.
Types: Full face mask, Vertical half mask, 3/4 mask, Horizontal half mask, Classic half mask.

After this research I looked at how much a person has to cover their face before they become unrecognisable and so I experimented with this idea by covering people's photographs in different ways to see at which point someone becomes disguised, with the obvious result being the full face mask being the winner.



At this point I was still also experimenting with different types of illustrations such as pencil drawings, water colour paintings and pen drawings.

Pictures all author's own
15:58 | Category: | 0 comments

Final Major Project - Week 2
During the second week of our final major project we took part in a "Creative Making Week", where we teamed up with a couple Lens Based Media students to create a collaboration project.

Prior to this we were asked to bring in a few items which included, an empty bottle, torch, sponge, paper clips, a couple of buttons, a ball, a sock and blu tack. We were also given a list of words to get us started on our project such as "to curl" etc.

Using these things given to us as our inspiration , we decided to firstly start by coming up with ideas that linked to all our final major projects, in order for the week not to be classified as a waste. Our final major projects consisted of my project with my, which is Tranformation, and my groups mates' projects which included, Comics, Mental Illnesses and The Idea of Beauty. By trying to combine this project ideas we came up with one idea which we were all happy about which included a peacock.

Our idea:
A female peacock spots a beautiful male peacock whom she promptly becomes jealous of because she has always wanted to be acknowledged as beautiful, however for peacocks it's always been the males that have the beautiful feathers whereas the females have always had the dull grey feathers. When she spots the male peacock she goes up to him and tried to interact however the male peacock is not attracted to her and this makes the female peacock resent him more, prompting her to kill him and steal his feathers.

We came up with this idea because it contradicted the normal idea of "beauty" where the female species where always the one that had to be "beautiful".

After brainstorming and making storyboards we decided to make a stop motion and a comic strip which related to both our pathways, Lens Based Media and Graphics.

Then, using the objects that we brought in we tried to make two peacocks, one male and one female, out of the empty bottles, paper, buttons for eyes and paper clips for the eyebrows and hair, and we succeeded.


Overall, I believe our group worked extremely well together as our ideas didn't clash at all, we each gave a fair amount of input and we worked as a team to



However while I was working on this creative making week, I didn't forget to continue researching and experimenting with my final major project as at this point I started looking at the idea of lies and deception and so I started off by looking at Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland as I thought it was the perfect example of "deception". I thought this because Alice In Wonderland is thought to be an innocent child's book and film with just an element of weird concepts however in the original drugs is the main concept that is disguised, as the sugar given to Alice at the tea party is cocaine, while the mushrooms she eats are hallucinogens etc.

At this point I also researched American photographer Annie Leibovitz as well as British photographer Tim Walker because of their link within the fantasy world, as Leibovitz created Disney themed photographs and Walker allowed fairytales to come to life through his photographs.

Pictures all author's own
00:03 | Category: | 1 comments

Final Major Project - Week 1
For my final major project I have decided to do it on the topic of "Transformation", and more specifically the Transformation of appearance.

Therefore as part if my research I have decided to look at various techniques and procedures that allows a person to transform their appearance, this includes wearing masks, plastic surgery, make up, aging etc.

As part of my initial research I looked at artists and designers such as the American photographer Ralph Meatyard, the American illustrator Erik Jones, and designers Joachim Sperl and Raoul Hausmann.

Meatyards photographs of people wearing masks intrigued me not only because it obviously went along with my project nicely, but it was rather the fact that he uses the idea of depersonalising someone by taking their identity and little difference that people had away through the use of masks and so erasing all sense of personhood. Erik Jones on the other hand appealed to me because of how well he changed a simple painting by using intricate repeated shapes as well as bright and eye catching colours.

Taking these designers as inspiration I tried to then imitate some of their works. For Meatyard I used my own photographs that I created in his style by asking people that I know to pose absentmindedly for the pictures wearing masks.



While for Jones I simply drew over photographs that I took in the style of Meatyard but drew them in the style of Jones as well as made collages and painted over them using different shapes imitating that of Jones' illustrations. While experimenting with Jones' illustration styles, I also tried different ways of illustrating pictures such as drip water colours, which I became very fond of, although it was my first time illustrating in such a way, because of it's uniqueness.



As part of my research I believe that my trip last year to Venice was very fitting as Venice is known for it's beautiful Venetian masks, which sparked my research into mask's history and uses, but I also thought that my trip to the Punta Della Dogana museum was useful as I got to see artists there that transformed ordinary pieces into extra ordinary pieces such as David Hammons' "Untitled", 2000 (which is a glass basketball hoop which was transformed into a luxurious looking, crystal covered candle holder).





During this week I was also able to visit the Martin Creed exhibition at the Hayward gallery, which was definitely not a disappointment. Although it was quite an unusual exhibition that didn't strongly have anything to do with my project, it did focus a little on transforming spaces and how we, as the audience, perceive a space.



As part of my continuous experimentation I tried Sperl and Hausmann inspired collages. During this experimentation phase my ideas started to drift slightly from the idea of masks and more onto the idea of lies and deception.



Pictures all author's own

01:28 | Category: | 0 comments