Eroticism Presentation

I feel as though I didn’t get off to a very good start with the research for my presentation and wasted time researching too narrowly. The night before the presentation was when I began to delve into wider areas of research however I didn’t have very much time to incorporate this in my presentation for 10am the next day.

I considered my initial preconceptions, the meaning and origination of the word, context, word associations, emotional responses, erotic combinations, subliminal messages via form and colour, audience, various aspects, hidden eroticism and how I felt once I had done all of this research. Before I even presented I knew that there was a lot more that I needed to research and feel like I panicked slightly because I knew this and so rushed my presentation a little.

The feedback I received wasn’t too bad and was useful to my next research steps. I have a variety of ideas and artists to consider and a few little ideas that popped into my head from the after discussion. I feel a little more at ease about what to approach next.

(Insert Presentation)

Reflection and evaluation

Thursday 29th October was the day of our client presentation and the end of our ‘Real World’ project. When I originally saw the brief and the timetable I found it incredibly daunting, especially the prospect of dealing with and presenting to real clients! However apart from getting a little nervous at the presentations I found this project a great challenge and feel that I have learnt and developed various skills. Firstly, I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to work with such an equally driven and friendly group, without any arguments or problems. Each persons’ ideas within the group were carefully considered and refined throughout the duration of the five weeks and everyone made sure to make equal effort and contribution.

So, in regards to the final presentation I felt that it went well. I feel that we were well prepared however I think that it would have been nice to have had some snacks and drinks on our table as we were planning to originally do. All of us originally had too much information on our prompt cards and were saying too much on each slide however we cut it down considerably and it flowed much more professionally and so became more engaging as we weren’t waffling on. I was very nervous for the presentation but I feel that I delivered it quite confidently, however in hindsight I would have like to have been a little more enthusiastic.

After the presentation Rhodri and some other clients came over to speak to us. Rhodri was very happy with all the work that we had produced and thought that we had really listened to him as a client and considered everything that he had said, this was something that we really tried to do and ensured that we communicated with him. He asked us if we could present it all again to the rest of his board at his office so that they could get a real feel for it and see it first hand to see if they would be able to fund any our work. I feel very proud that he has asked us to re-present to the rest of his team and it has given me a confident boost.

A large positive that came from this project was that I had to use illustrator which really helped me to develop my illustrator skills. I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be as good as the rest of my group but i really surprised myself even though I took longer to create things than the rest of my group. I’m glad that I spent a whole project using illustrator with some added pointers and tips from my group. I think that the client was really happy with our house style and said that he was liking it more and more each time he saw it and could really see it working well. I think it’s great that we managed to get all of our work to look as though one person designed it all!

Julian our mentor was great, I loved how to the point and friendly he was! He was a real help to our team and made us laugh which I feel was also important. He guided us well and gave us some really positive feedback at the end of the project which was really nice to hear. From speaking to Julian he made me think that I needed to be a little ruthless when entering into the design world and to not get taken advantage of.

Although this was hardest project we have had to date, I really enjoyed it. I am so surprised at how much I enjoyed working as part of a group, it went so smoothly. I feel that the lectures were at times more hands on and informative and gave us useful information and a feel for more real life scenarios. I also found it useful to be made to consider my future and how I may sculpt it with the help from Matt.

So, what is the one piece of advice that I would pass on to the students doing real world next year? Well, i’d say be considerate within your group and don’t instantly dismiss anyones ideas in the group as they may lead to something great! Put the effort in and do not let your team down, the project will run so much more smoothly this way. And finally, make sure that you distribute the work evenly and tailor parts of your work to peoples strengths but push yourself to attempt something that you are less confident with.

Here is an image of what our space looked like after our presentation:

Final client presentation

Preparation:

On the Wednesday before our client presentation we all met up at my house to make our presentation and pull all of our work together as a whole and make sure every last detail was finished! We had all worked hard to have all of our individual work ready for each other so that all the visuals were ready to put into the joint presentation. I drew up all of the slides (with approval of the group) that we needed to have and their content and then allocated the slides to each of us. We wanted us all to have an equal amount of slides and so it ended up that Josh and I had 4 and Jordan and Laura had 3 and we were all happy with the decision. Josh and Jordan put together the slides on their laptops whilst we all discussed it and I cut up paper for prompt cards. I felt that we had a tonne of work to do on Wednesday for the presentation on Thursday however we worked efficiently by distributing out the tasks and working in the same room. As we wanted to engage with the audience as fully as possible, we decided to just incorporate singular words onto our prompt cards to make sure that we didn’t just read of the page, I think this was a great suggestion from Wendy otherwise we would have appeared to be pretty unenthusiastic and monotone.
These are my prompt cards:

Final client presentation:

               

Aside from all of the informative slides such as the challenge, the goal, the target audience and the success we had our four touch points; the animation, the business cards, the website and the infographic which we showcased to the clients. We had a combination of print and digital work and considered the sustainability for the print based work. The animation was used to display the success of someone who had already partaken in one of the training courses and we felt that it worked really well at the top of the website as well as having it shared on all of their social medias to spread the word further and further. The website was linked from the original Cynnal Cymru website with a lot more visually stimulating information about the two training courses, it also contained social media links to further connect up all of the touch points. The business cards were made to hand out at all times and to be taken to their networking events, they incorporated the Cynnal Cymru logo and were linked directly to Rhodri and the training courses. The infographic was both print based and digital as it would be printed in large for the networking event and would be emailed, which would keep down costs yet go directly to businesses to draw them in and then link them to the website. Our work came together really well and the house style was very strong and continuous throughout all of our work!

Our presentation itself also followed the style from the whole project as we brought in all of the illustrations from the rest of our design work. We decided that using the community visual at the end of the presentation would be a great and strong way to finish it. The clients would then have an image to hold in their minds once it had finished which captured the style and sense of community from the project, this is something that we all 100% agreed on.

Client presentation day!

Friday 16th was the day of our first client presentation and although quite nervous we worked well as a team to prepare ourselves. The morning of the presentation we made use of our time to practice running through the slides as many times as possible, to ensure that we were well rehearsed and a little more at ease. I feel that the delivery of the presentation itself went smoothly and I personally feel that I engaged somewhat with the audience and made eye contact with the clients which I felt was necessary. I’m pleased that I made notes because I think that if I wrote a script I wouldn’t have been able to engage with the audience as much. I think that the presentation was well received and we received positive feedback such as, that it was comprehensive, well rounded, had equally distributed spoken information between the group, had a good presentation style and they were happy with the tagline! This feedback really boosted our teams’ morale. Our personal client Rhodri was also happy with our work so far and was on board with the direction in which we were going. We desperately need to get some information from some of the people who have done the training course and some statistical information from someone connected to Rhodri, this is a part of the project that is holding us back at the moment unfortunately..

Client presentation preparation

On Wednesday 14th we had a tutorial with Wendy to help us prepare for our client presentation on Friday 16th. It was really useful as we had a lot to clarify in order to make sure we put together the correct presentation. I think we all felt quite confident about the presentation preparation once we had left the session. We discussed what would be incorporated into the slides for ‘what?’, ‘who?’ and ‘how?’ and decided upon sticking to four slides as it worked well for our content. We thought it would be best to go our separate ways and do some independent work then meet the day after to put our presentation together as a group, so that we have individual and group work.

I decided to look at what ideas and research I could come up with for the business card and infographic. I found Pinterest really useful, particularly because I found some useful tips on infographics which is great as i’ve never designed an infographic before. I do feel a little worried about designing the infographic as I have never created one before and it is my last year of uni, however it’s also very important that I try new things! I feel quite confident about a rough idea/style for the business cards but the infographics needs some more work to bring it up to the same stage as the cards.

Thursday 15th October

Today we all met to properly put together the presentation for Friday, it took us roughly two hours but I feel that we worked really efficiently whilst it not feeling too tedious, it was quite relaxed. We made four prompt cards with notes on and distributed the talking evenly to ensure we had equal roles. I was a little concerned that we only had one example of our own work on the slides but after to speaking to people from other groups I realised that everyone was at quite a similar stage.

  

Prompt cards:

Monday 12th October

I found today quite productive and thought that it was definitely a step in the right direction. After having a little chat with Wendy to make sure that we were on track, we did a fast and slow thinking exercise, which I’ve personally never heard of before. I feel as though I actually learnt something new today about communication and found myself interested! Josh and I had to consider what parts of our project came under ‘fast thinking’, so we came up with the strapline (3 word slogan), the colours (as they evoke mood, feeling and thoughts) and the 2D visual imagery (particularly at the top of the website for example).

Afterwards we allocated each of us to the various touch-points that we have decided to design. I personally didn’t want to work on the animation as I seem to have worked with video or animation every year and have never particularly enjoyed it! Luckily two members in the group were happy to work on the animation, so between Josh and I we shared out the business cards, infographic, website and emails as well as working on the brochures as a whole group. I feel happy with this decision and really pleased how well our group have gelled so far.

We also discussed a more definite colour palette and header/body typeface so that we keep it all consistent. We struggled on deciding upon a colour palette at this stage but we do want to potentially use one strong colour and a couple of pastel colours. For the typefaces we looked at what everyones preferred typefaces were for this project and tested which we thought worked well. Currently we have decided to work with ‘Quicksandbook’ and ‘Helvetica’, which is the second block down in the examples below. We wanted a friendly, approachable type however we also need convey professionalism which is why we have also decided upon using Helvetica for the body text. I was unsure to start with but I feel as though i’ll get a better visual idea once I start applying it to my work.

The next step is to start working on some visuals and to plan our presentation which is to be delivered to our clients on Friday.

New project! Persuasion..

So, we have started our new subject project called Persuasion, which after the briefing sounded really good! It sounds slightly different to all of our previous projects so far, especially as we are contacting real companies/organisations as well as putting together our own briefs. The first step was to choose an issue or problem, or just something that we are passionate about therefore I decided to pick the topic of body politics and role models within the media. We had to research our topics in depth and deliver a pecha cucha the following week, which I do always get fairly nervous about due to the public speaking. As I was passionate about this topic I thought that researching and gathering information about it would be easy however I found it more difficult than all previous pecha kuchas. I had so many areas to look into the my research was very time consuming as I wanted to really look into each aspect of it properly. Although I believed in what I was saying, I wanted to word it very carefully as not to offend anyone which I thought was going to be hard as it was a bit of a touchy subject.

Here is my pecha kucha with notes….

I’m going to be talking about body politics and role models represented within the media.
I will also investigate the “perfect body”.
I will start by talking about underweight models however will lead onto speaking about overweight models, body changes, health and the history of the human body shape.

Before completing my pecha kucha I must express that I don’t condone underweight/unhealthy models.
However I don’t want to wholly concentrate on this end of the scale as I want to incorporated many other factors of what a role model is.

Israel has hugely tackled the problem of underweight models and introduced a new law in 2013.
First country to introduce a law whereby models most produce medical reports and must not have a bmi lower than 18.5.
They focus on health.
Anything that they digitally alter or enhance must be made clear to the audience.

The Victoria Secret Ad created a huge uproar as they only used one type of (slim) model alongside a “Perfect body slogan.
This effects women self esteem as well as increasing men’s expectation of women.
It is understandable that people and companies fought against this (harmful marketing).

Some history of the female figure.
1900s-1950s – figures appeared varied and healthy as did the role models.
Of course there’s a focus on appearance but there always has been and always will be.
During the 30s & 40s there were ads promoting the avoidance of being underweight.
They were into being physically active and healthy.

60s – 90s is when the change began.
Twiggy was a huge role model, although she was slim she was naturally slight and it was in her genes.
The 70s saw a rise in eating disorders.
90s were drastically thinner – the waif look was fashion.
They used terms such as “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”.
The media began to really promote unhealthy views of women.

I didn’t want to wholly focus on this side of road models as it has been a problem for years.
It is slowly being tackled and I hope that more countries follow in the footsteps of Israel.

Debenhams have vowed to ban airbrushing.
Their ethos is about making women feel good about themselves and not eroding their self esteem by using false comparisons.
They explored airbrush tricks and have banned airbrushing from some of their ad campaigns.
They try to just stick with minor editing such as removing stray hairs.

Dove counteracted the Victoria Secret shoot with “The perfect real body”.
They tried to celebrate the REAL woman, although this is good to tackle, in some ways it’s just as bad as they also roughly included only one shape and size (curvy) which is unfair to all the other shapes and naturally slimmer/boyish figures for example.

JD Williams also spoke out about VS models as they also do underwear modelling. They Call these women (top image) plus size models which I find outrageous as they are all around size 12. This is not supporting variety and nor does it represent a diverse or natural non glossy representation of women.

This is the new plus size model Tess Holliday, a body acceptance activist who has caused a lot of controversy. She is size 22, 5 foot 5 and has a bmi of 44.2.
I definitely am not fat shaming and she was bullied when younger however as I don’t think underweight models are acceptable more do I agree with so hugely obese modelling. Everyone gets turned from jobs so it isn’t hugely outrageous that she got turned down as a model when younger. She does have good views about natural beauty and being happy in your own skin.

I would never say that Tess is unattractive however in my opinion if it’s ok for Tess to be represented as a role model surely it should be ok for the one on the left to be too.
Neither of these women are really capturing and promoting what health is.
Neither looks were promoted between the 1900s and 1960s.

It is admirable that she does not adhere to photoshopping.
She did however say “This has ZERO to do with health and all to do with believing in yourself”.
She works out regularly however there are studies to say that many obese people are metabolically healthy (normal blood pressure, sugars etc) however it leaves out other health risks & the possibility of premature mortality.

It is true that obese people can live long and moderately healthy lives but so can heavy smokers.
We don’t ever promote smoking, in fact it is all about anti-smoking and how harmful it can be, even on the packages themselves.
I feel that it isn’t good promotion with the huge increase in obesity.

These three women are considered to be plus size and were used to combat eating disorders.
Purely calling them plus size models is making women think differently about their size.
I don’t think they should be called plus size as they look visually healthy.

I then looked at the definition of health which is “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” this hasn’t been amended since 1948.
I feel that the Israelian law is positive in regards to health.

When choosing a campaign I initially thought Dove.
I saw one of their ads which included a variety of women however it was accompanied by “Health is the new skinny”. This is pretty much implying skinny/slim as a negative and not “in” anymore. Whereas they should celebrate all sizes fairly.

I then decided on m&s. When looking through their ads I noticed that they included all ages and healthy sizes. I didn’t see many slogans trying to get ‘one-ups’ on anyone else.
Unfortunately I still found flaws such as all the women being almost the same height and how extremely photoshopped they are.

I decided to finally choose Debenhams.
They are the first high street shop to sign a new code of conduct for models’ working conditions.
They use a diverse variety of models, including disabled models.
They try to champion healthy body images and banned airbrushing in some of their shoots which is a big step considering the competition around them.
They are about positive body image in general.

I chose this issue because there is no such thing as a ‘perfect body’ and organisations trying to get one ups on each other isn’t working as few organisations actually show any variety or naturalness of the human body. I feel that no extremity should be considered as a role model – health should.

I was pretty nervous to deliver this but I think it went well and i’m really glad that I research it so thoroughly. My feedback was pretty positive and I was told that I sounded passionate and that it was well researched.

Beyond Fiction – Final outcome presentation

So, in the final week I printed out my pages to pin up on the wall ready for my presentation to the class which I was a bit nervous for because I wasn’t completely happy with my outcomes but of course I will have a chance to change that in due course. In the end I created 4 double page spreads however I would actually like to create more. I feel as though each female collage character should have a double page each but as I wrote all of the writing for the articles I needed a little more time. I am quite happy with the spreads that only have one female each on already. I think my presentation to the class went ok, although it was very nerve-racking. I really enjoyed this field module and found it exciting and creative and was glad that I was also able to link it closely to my subject area without losing touch of field.

Field – Language Environments

Week 3

This week I began coming up with some more concrete ideas for my final piece around the ‘body as an environment’.

Here are some notes I jotted down:

– Painting with boobs
– Mould of boobs-wire?
– As well as other body parts
– Mould wire words into the model
– Media Language
– Objectifying and sexualising music lyrics
– Linking the female object within music lyrics
– Add clothing material tags + lyrics
– Phallic/sexual language

I then went on to make a presentation to present to my class and tutor for the next week.

A few presentation notes

– Media environment combined with the body as an environment
– The language = Song lyrics/slang/colloquialisms
– Contrasting areas = Objectifying lyrics and empowering lyrics
– The sculpture will be made from wire
– I will initially mould the wire around a male and female figure
– Afterwards I will figure out which music lyrics i’ll wish to include
– The wire sculpture will represent the male and female as an object

At this point I felt quite confident with this idea as I thought the language and environment had an equal balance. I was fairly worried about how long the wire sculpturing would take me as I had never worked with wire before however I decided to go on and buy the supplies that I needed.