Today we did a workshop with Chris where we made mini zines. The point of these zines was to capture our own interoperation of our magazine theme, aesthetic and ideas.

Here some photos of mine.

Today we analysed some magazines, we look at the article types in them and also had to make a profile of what type of person would read said magazine. This was to help us develop our own magazines, here’s some photos of the work we did in class. We also did a few more fun and light hearted activities like finding photos of what we think out target audience looks like.

Our first day back we where presented with our first project, a group project. The goal? To make a magazine. My role in this project is photography/styling. I want to focus more on the styling aspect but I wouldn’t mind getting involved in the photography side too as that’s another passion of mine.

our initial idea is to make a magazine that gives off scandi beach, minimalistic vibes. Unfortunately that’s the complete opposite to my style, however I’m excited to start researching and styling clothing that isn’t my style. It’ll give me a challenge and I don’t like to fail when I’m challenged.

here some photos of what we did on our first day, including two photos that’s inspired me styling.

Final evaluation 

When I started this project I was very very confused. Which got in the way of me starting the project initially. I slowly began to understand it as we had more lessons explaining certain aspects of the module, specially the non-creative parts like creating a customer profile. Even when I finally understood the project there was still something wrong, I wasn’t truly confident in the images I wanted to originally create. There was a lot of work that would of gone behind being able to create such imagery such as ‘going out’ a lot, which I couldn’t do as financially at the start and midway through this project I wasn’t doing well. Because of this I started picking up more hours at work to be able to support myself as my family are unable to help me. This really set me back a lot. Until one day when I was randomly editing images which I was going to put on my blog, I decided I actually really liked these images and thought I should maybe use them for my project. As I could continuously reuse the images I got for the original theme if I edited them in this new style. Theres no way to describe this new style apart from the fact that its weird, but I feel like that fits better with my sub-brands message and goes better for a clubwear sub-brand. It also still fits with my target audience as Gen Z have a wide style range much wider than other generations seem to think we have. 

The message I wanted to spread with my sub-brand was to just highlight the existence of the LGBT+ community and be welcoming of LGBT+ allies, I wanted to also add a tiny femininst message too, but I got so into the LGBT+ messaging and referencing that I forgot. When changing the editing style I wanted to keep the clothing style and photography style the same, which is y2k and club scene photos, I just inverted these images to be able to get the weird neon cyanotype effect. This effect actually heavily reminds me of clothing that has become popular and is available to buy from store commonly associated with Gen Z, such as urban outfitters, Shein, Motel, NiiHai and Jaded London.  

Im not 100% sure if I managed to convey my message well. However I think ive managed to visually represent it. The town my family live in, being part of the LGBT+ community is seen as weird, you’re often described as a misfit, a weirdo or too “stand outy”. My images are weird and they stand out. Obviously im not making my images look like this to represent the LGBT+ community in a bad way, im using this editing style to take back and own the descriptions used towards them. It’s a “yeah I stand out and yeah I might be weird to your standards but wouldn’t it be boring if everyone was like you”. Hopefully that’s what people see when they look at my imagery. 

Overall I think I did well in this project with the creative side, ive produced a lot of imagery, I still don‘t full fully understand this project but I think I understand it well enough to be able to get the work done. Ive also been better at photography and styling and just generally creating visuals, rather than studying trends and advertising. I don’t normally copy every trend that goes around so wanting to produce stuff that’s trendy isn’t in my interests. I wear what I wear and I create what I create, if people don’t think its trendy then their problem not mine. If I was to do this project again id problem make a mini photobook to use a promotional piece as its something a person is likely to keep for years. Id also organise my work better, part of my disorganisation is due to my dyslexia, dyspraxia and possible ADHD (im so forgetful I forgot I had to go to a ADHD appointment after I got my dyslexia and dyspraxia diagnoses, in the same building, yet I just went straight home im such an idiot). This is something I can overcome by teaching myself coping mechanisms, ive suffered with this for 21 years before getting a diagnoses so theres some things I managed to adapt to without help, im sure ill be able to adapt to the rest of my problems over time.  

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the gif didn’t work so here’s the video hopefully this works

I was taking photos of my eye for my macro trend board and I accidentally took a video I liked it and decided yo edit it and make it into a gif, hopefully the gif plays if not ill upload the video.

here is a random collage I made using screenshots I took of my sims characters, I don’t think ill use this in my project but it looks pretty cool either way. I thought of the idea to mix graphic modelling in with my work, but I soon realised I couldn’t do graphics nor 3D modelling and I doubt id learn in the short time I have left, however I wanted to let thes idea out otherwise I would actually attempt it for my module. because I cant do 3D modelling I just took screenshots of my sims and edited them. I added text aswell.

creating promotional imagery and attempting to g=create logo graphics from photos

here are some digital collages ive made using my own photos inspired by the collage I did in my physical sketchbook.

I made this collage in my physical sketch book out of a magazine page that inspired me. I rearranged the image and I want to start doing stuff like this digitally to see if I can use it for my project