FMP WEEK 12 (WC: 15/02/2021)

I have been continuing to make creative content these past few weeks. I have found that producing visual work frequently has been improving my technical design skills as I have been refining and improving my professional abilities on software and applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. The more I practice, the more different skills I learn by trial and error or just by making first-hand as this is what helps me more as opposed to just watching videos on how to do something. Finding out the way that I work best and retain information most effectively is essential for my professional design practice, therefore I will continue to produce my work in this experimental manner as I have been doing before as this leads to more positive and successful results.

My tutorial this week was really successful in making me more motivated to do work, as I have really struggled during this pandemic in terms of equipment and resources, functioning Wi-Fi and lack of access to Wi-Fi (as the connection issues in my house will interfere with me doing work or stop and start frequently/lose connection) therefore hindering my ability to create and therefore affecting my motivation to produce work which is up to my standard. However, after showing my tutor and the people in my group my work, I gained some positive feedback on my presentation skills as well as being able to manage my time affectively as I have been producing a lot of content which I had been praised for. We had to present the concept of our magazines and my feedback was that Sentient Magazine was very unique and unlike most magazines that are popular on the market as well as being praised for its authenticity by staying true to my own style. This is one of the reasons why I used myself and my closest friends from home as my customer profiles. Mainly as I was able to gain some primary research from the people closest to me and therefore this would create a more authentic magazine. But also because this is my final university project of my third year at university; and being in education my whole life, I wanted to dedicate the magazine to myself mainly. The importance of being proud of your work and making content for yourself is something I am very passionate about, it has been the way that I have produced some of my best work, such as the magazine and illustration project in first year of university. The success of that project is what influenced me to create this magazine, as my tutor stated to find the project you enjoyed the most and create that as your starting point for your FMP as this makes the most sense. I found it appropriate use myself as I wanted the customer to be me, I want the magazine to be something that reflects not only my personality, but my interests, design style and influences which is why I also want to seek out some of my friends to use as interviews. I placed these at the beginning of my sketchbook for the viewer to understand the content being produced is for a specific target market which has been researched and refined.

I made this pieced titled “Connected to Each Other” using an image from Unsplash, a website recommended to me by a tutor, which has copywrite free imagery to use within commercial or personal projects. And as I stated before, I did not want to produce too much photographic content, as this personally is not my favourite thing to do, however I needed some visual content for my magazine, and I found that this was a perfect solution. However, I will sill be using my own imagery in my magazine and within my collages; I aim to utilise resources like these recommended by teachers for an extra dimension and to access imagery that I would not be able to make by myself anyway. Usually, I edit the images and mix them around with my own designs anyway that they become a part of something completely different. They become transformed into my own style, similar to what I did with the mood boards of the magazines I researched for visual content for my magazine a few weeks go.