Tagged: relationships

more still life: cake / sexts

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These are the remaining images from our second still life shoot when there was no longer daylight to shoot in, but I actually like the soft pink light which we achieved with a lava lamp. We still wanted to use cake as it links slightly to our previous shoot and also the involvement of food at our launch party, as well as the fact that cakes are usually given as a gift or gesture towards somebody.

We took this use of cakes as a gift and decorated them with somewhat explicit or provocative messages which are often sent as ‘sexts’ in our contemporary dating culture. These demanding and less-than-romantic statements are things most people our age have been sent, or have sent themselves, and so by juxtaposing them with extravagantly decorated cakes conveys a lighthearted commentary on the lukewarm sentiment of these online relationships.

The images aim to provoke the viewer into wondering how they would feel if these ‘sext messages’ were, rather than being sent through cyberspace at 2am, presented to them by their love interest on a cake as a romantic gesture.

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sexualisation of food: final images

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This editorial that I shot with Immi stemmed from our love of still life, and by taking inspiration from artists we love such as Rebecca Storm and Prue Stent, as well as looking at Bompas & Parr’s creative use of food to create sensual moods and environments, we based this editorial around the sexualisation of food in contemporary art and culture and how particular foods and their shapes, colours and textures can be provocative or resemble sexual imagery – for example our selection of very sweet and sugary foods to convey romance, aphrodisiac properties and even using food in sex. e.g. drenching objects in honey and capturing it dripping down and pooling around the objects, using squirty cream and documenting it slowly deflating and running off jelly, the placement of fruit and berries which have often been used to depict fertility or female genitalia.

We wanted our images to be quite kitsch and created bizarre set-ups of edible and non-edible objects. Our images began quite clean and minimal but we found that when we added more and more to the arrangements the images really came alive and had the appearance that we wanted, and fit our concept more.

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NOOKIE media pack

In our finished media pack, I wanted to capture the fun and lighthearted mood we want our publication to create, and so the art direction and overall layout and design has this feel. The media pack illustrates our thoughts and plans for fashion direction, the flat plan of the issue, promotional strategies and advertising.

using a survey to collect submissions

I created an online survey titled ‘tell us your dating horror stories‘ so that we could collect submissions for our magazine based around people’s interesting, funny or embarrassing first date or internet dating experiences. The survey had an option to leave your name or leave the submission anonymous. We received over 40 submissions and after narrowing them down have decided these will form part of our main feature article for the first issue, clearly summarising what our issue wants to talk about and commenting on young people’s use of social media to find potential relationships.

editorial/layout inspiration

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One of my main inspirations when thinking about layout and design in relation to our concept was Ladybeard magazine, an independent artsy publication, with each issue having a clear, unique theme. Their first issue was titled The Sex Issue, and featured interesting, quirky photography, graphic design and illustrations. This publication, as ours aims to, discusses and depicts taboo or secretive subjects e.g. masturbation, in an artistic way with a clear contemporary aesthetic.

magazine concept: sex/relationships and internet dating

After mindmapping the current zeitgeist/scene amongst people around our age, we decided a theme stood out to all of us and this was social media, connectivity and mainly, internet dating. We chose our magazine to have a theme of modern relationships and perhaps more broadly, matters of youth culture, with our first issue being heavily themed around Tinder and internet dating.

We wanted our publication to tackle the topics not often explicitly talked about in young adults’ publications, with our magazine providing a platform to create a commentary on these new ways of living and connecting. The magazine will challenge norms and what is ‘acceptable’, giving a satirical, fun and light-hearted approach while also being a publication that readers can identify with.