Contextual Portfolio ~ Art Nouveau

 Art Nouveau was an aesthetic style that was anti-capitalist, anti-industrialisation and an embodiment of social reform, created to represent in a change of life, a new aesthetic. They proposed the importance of craftsmanship and the appreciation of specialist skills and a sense of individual pride in your work. Art nouveau can be distinguished by its natural motifs, ornamental use of nature and unique typographical elements, a lot of colour is used and very often feature a female figure.

One particularly well known artist in the works of Art Nouveau would be Alphonse Mucha who’s work I have become very fond of particularly in college when I created a project based around the styles and composition of Art Nouveau. His work is a classic example of the style; you get an alignment with the social world and see the ease of advertising products or showcasing entertainment. The women being commodified were a model for the consuming lifestyle.

Contextual Portfolio ~ Iconography and Iconology

On the 2^nd of February we had a lecture about Iconography and Iconology, Iconography is derived from the Greek word, image, and to write. It focuses on the study of symbols depicted in work, art and design and it is the identification and description of the content of images. Symbols that are used often come from previous understanding, for example a skull and crossbones or a dove are widely recognized among many cultures. Images in general are very polysemic and for this reason it is the previous understand that we need to allow us to interpret the message at hand. Iconology involves the study of meaning behind the symbolism, the image has to be put into context and understood wholly in terms of the artist or timeframe it was created in. After looking at the examples displayed in the lecture I decided to find some of my own to anaylse to better understand the meaning behind the iconography and iconology.

This is a perfect example; the primary picture is very simplistic, hardly resembling the content of the image at all. If the viewer does not have the context off the images then they do not understand the references to Disney films. The second image is simply a crescent shape, however people who have watched the film understand that it is the cats smile.

As said before, the images are accompanied by text to allow the viewer to put the icons into context, the viewer would not make the link to the films as the designs are extremely simplistic, however with the accompaniment of the text it allows the viewer to put it into context and then recall iconic moments in the film and relate it to the symbolism shown in the designs.

Contextual Portfolio ~ Representation

In a lecture we viewed a film where the camera zoomed right out from two people having a picnic into space, showing the insignificance of the two people sat on that earth compared to the vastness of the rest of the world. It then zoomed in and rather than stopping on the people it continued through their skin and showed the biological construction of their bodies, the skin layers, the cells, the bones, everything. Rather than stopping at what we would consider a boundary, it continued to break those boundaries, revealing a complexity and interconnection that the viewer might consider very daunting.

Human beings are very structural, we work within a structured society and aim to put everything into categories and sort everything so that we can be in control, or at least feel a little more in control than if the world were in complete chaos. This works with the belief that everything that we see is experienced through a lense, we never truly experience the chaos of raw matter. The mind collects information and warps it through this lense in order to represent it to us the world the way we see it.

When we see the world as explained above, we see it through the phenoumenal which is inother words, the lense that was used to describe this theory in the work of Immanuel Kant. The noumenal world could be represented through storms and vast landscapes, things that we cannot control or put into order.

It can be argued that it is possible to represent the sublime through the use of artwork and this is why it becomes so valid in life. Someone is able to throw colour at a page such as in the image above and call it the sublime because of the lack of control thereof, however as humans it is instinct to begin to categorise and structure this design. Naturally we begin to analyse it, why has the artist used those colours? Why have they thrown the paint in the direction they have? And it becomes phenoumenal as it is then being viewed through the distorted lense.

Contextual Portfolio ~ My Manifesto

A manifesto

To be unique, to stand aside from the crowd and make a difference.

To progress and improve as a person.

To learn and explore.

To be and experience.

To research and be inspired.

To be free and not scared of imperfection.

To work hard and always put full effort in.

To be both digital and physical.

To be literal and metaphorical.

To be careless and do what I want rather than what is expected.

To concentrate and not be distracted.

To be less focused and consider more options.

To question and understand.

To see barriers and leap over them.

To understand and explain.

To read and consider.

To see an opportunity and seize it.

To create tasks and complete them.

We were asked to write a manifesto to represent what we intended to create and how we intended to improve and represent ourselves over the term, above I have included my manifesto.

Process and Production ~ Working in Adobe InDesign

For the final process and production workshop before the holidays we were given the task of laying out a page of a magazine using techniques we would learn in InDesign.

This is a print screen of the document with the layout guides applied and visible. As you can see We created a series of guides to help us with the layout of the images. We were given the opportunity to decide on our own colour scheme for the title and header to which I chose a combination of bright and soft colours.
We were also asked to choose an area of text that could be considered important and make this a larger font size and put somewhere within the text. This is used to fill up the page so there aren't any wasted gaps or spaces! In addition to that we were able to scale images up and down to fill any spaces.
In terms of images we utilised the text wrapping tool for the parrot image and also the editing facilities to move and scale the image in the top right hand side.
I ensured that any coloured text was in keeping with the colour scheme used in the header which I also felt worked with the selected images. After altering the layout and experimenting a little I was able to produce the following layout.

I am really happy with the outcome, I feel that all of it works together and creates a very rounded layout to the page. The colour scheme works well with the images and overall I think the design is very sucessful.

Task 2 - Experimenting with Layouts

For the third task we were asked to begin thinking about the layout of the newspaper article. Using the pictures collected for the moodpboard I started to layout the text and images creating a series of thumbnail drawings to use an influence for the creation of the newspaper articles.

After designing the thumbnails we then started to physically cut out different pt sizes of text and titles and compose them into the layouts show in the thumbnails however we created them to an A3 size. I am not overly impressed with the first layout as it didn't not work as expected but am happy with the remainder of them.

I included areas for quotation marks and these would contain important information from the articles and this would be in a larger font size. I tried to utilise the grid layout found in many newspaper articles and i think the 4 and 2 column designs are the most effective of them all. 

There are some adjustments that can be made to these layouts and there is area for improvement however for draft layouts I am happy with the results.

Process and Production ~ Finished Product!

After Effects Trailer from Rebekah Hollins on Vimeo.

After creating my trailer I added some final touches to the piece including an overlay in which I reduced the opacity of to add a creepy, hand camera effect. I think this worked really well and am overall really happy with the outcome!