I feel like my FMP has been my most experimental project yet, and for that reason my most successful.
I chose to look at Body Image for my FMP as I wanted to continue looking at topics relating to beauty, but also because body image is something that I personally struggle with so I wanted to learn more about the issues surrounding it.
I didn’t want to go into this topic to create graphic designs that told people to love their bodies regardless, because that’s not what I personally believe, but also because it isn’t helpful. I wanted this project to highlight and address how the media can manipulate our views of body image and how they use the negativity surrounding it to fund a multimillion-pound industry.
I began my research looking at Superdrug’s ‘Perception of Perfection’ campaign. This was a survey that asked graphic designers around the world to edit an image of a woman’s body to make it attractive to the people in their country. The different edits from each country showed how the beauty ideal can differ depending on different cultural factors. I used this initial research to inspire me by creating my own questionnaires that allowed me to get some information about how the people around me feel about body image and if they view it as a negative topic. I really enjoyed including questionnaires in my work as I think it’s an interesting way to obtain research. The results of my questionnaires revealed that although the majority of people were unhappy with their own bodies, they believed that ‘everybody is beautiful’ and there are more important things to worry about. Analysing these results showed me that people are much more critical of their selves and this is due to raising levels of body image anxiety.
Other research involved looking at how women’s bodies have changed over the years and pin pointing what affects the constant changing ideal. As I had predicted, the media is the main source for changing body image as women have always inspired to look like the models and celebrities that are seen in the media. I think this became an increasing issue from the 60s as this is when models became much thinner and the fashion industry have continued to promote ‘clinically anorexia’ girls ever since. Although during the 1980s and 1990s, fitness and a healthy lifestyle was promoted, the figures of these women such as Pamela Anderson, were still unachievable to the average woman as now they were not only wanting to look thin, but to also have a large chest and a toned bottom. The constant desire to look like the women in the media has caused not only a rise in the level of anxiety in women but also a huge rise in the amount of people with eating disorders, many of which can be life threatening.
I also looked at current events that were related to body image such as Kim Kardashians naked selfie and Iskra Lawrence’s fat shaming comeback. I thought it was important to look at current issues surrounding the negative views of body image to monitor the changes (if any) present in the way that society reacts to bodies in the media.
When doing my artist research, I wanted to look for graphic designers that would inspire me to try new techniques and styles rather than just looking for artists that had produced work related to my topic. I started by looking at Saul Bass as I liked the way he used bold colour and simplistic designs. I responded to his work by experimenting with lino-printing. I adapted one of my life drawings into a lino-print and developed it on Photoshop to create a poster. I think that this was a good starting point for me as it allowed me to play around on Photoshop and experiment with text and as an artist, one of my main aims for this year on a foundation course was to really develop my skills on Photoshop and broaden my understanding of graphic designs so I feel that although I didn’t develop much on this response, it was a good place for me to begin my project and play around with new styles of work.
The next artist that I looked at was Alan Fletcher, another well-known graphic designer. When I came across Fletchers work, it was his use of layouts that made me want to look at his work. I really liked how his posters were very simplistic but also very aesthetically pleasing with a nice use of colour. Again, for this response I wanted to use my life drawings as I felt they were a good way for me to include primary resource body imagery. I developed my drawings on Photoshop by using different watercolour brushes to add colour like in Fletchers Wild Flowers poster. The aim of this response was to experiment with composition and layouts for posters. I feel like this response was one of my most successful sections of this project as I really developed and expanded on my ideas and it resulted in lots of successful imagery that I developed into posters that I am really happy with. I went on to include several life drawings in this response as I wanted to experiment with the ideas behind the poster. I felt that using only one drawing was symbolic of how all bodies aren’t supposed to be the same, whereas when I included different drawings this was symbolic of how difference can be beautiful too. In hope to develop these ideas further, I made a third questionnaire that asked people to sketch drawings of their own body shape. I wanted to try this because all of my life drawings were of the same model, and therefore didn’t promote all body types. I didn’t receive many sketches back as I presume many people were not comfortable with this task, however, the sketches that I did receive were developed into posters as I had done previously. I quickly decided that these designs worked better with one drawing per page, unlike the previous posters that were about including lots of images and working on the layouts. I am now using these designs as postcards in my exhibition. I chose to use these designs because I developed them as campaign pieces by researching and creating my own hashtag to link all of the images together. I think this makes them work well as postcard designs, as they clearly promote body image and the composition works well as A5.
My third artist response, in my opinion, was not successful at all. I think that I did not have very good photographs to work with and this made it hard to achieve that image I had planned and therefore made me regret my decision to work in this way. This response was to artist Angeret Soltau, it involved collaging celebrity body parts over the top of my friend’s bodies with the aim to show how they want to change their bodies.
At this point in my project, I felt like I had experimented with different ways to work and produced both successful and unsuccessful designs and I needed to find new inspirations to lead my work in a different direction. To do this, I reviewed and resolved where I was at in my project and went to Pinterest to look for inspiration. I feel like this was a turning point in my project as I had time to experiment with my previous responses and get into the flow of the project.
After reviewing my statement of intent, I knew that I wanted to look at animation as I had stated at the beginning of my project. For this reason, I began looking at photographer Jordan Clark as I thought I could create glitch gifs in response to his work that I looked at. The idea behind this concept was that I was editing celebrities features over the top of a photograph of Amanda and having the layer’s glitch. This showed how Amanda wanted to swap her features with Kendal Jenner (I chose to use a Kardashian as they are very influential celebrities, especially when it comes to beauty related topics) but the glitching of the gif was symbolic of Amanda’s broken self-esteem and how trying to change yourself doesn’t work. I continued to experiment with this concept and developed a barcode gif using the same glitch idea. I obtained this idea from an image I saw on Pinterest titled ‘Property of Society’. I love this text and feel like it perfectly sums up my project, which is why I have continued to use this text throughout my work. I tried to make a barcode using sections of Kendal’s mouth over the top of Amanda’s. I developed this by combining influences from Barbara Kruger and adding bold red and white text to the image and turning it black and white. I really enjoyed creating this gif and I am really happy with how it turned out. I think that this concept was successful as I learned a lot more about how to create an animation on Photoshop and continued to develop my knowledge and understanding of the software.
As my collage response to Angeret Soltau was unsuccessful, I decided to look at Martin O’Neill as I wanted to return back to using collage and see if I could develop it in another, more successful way. O’Neill has been the most influential artist throughout this project and I think that this is where my final designs started coming together at this point in my project. I emailed Martin to find out about how he creates his collages as I wanted some advice to help me avoid mistakes that I could have prevented in my last collage response. Martin replied telling me that he works by hand and then colour tweaks his collages digitally, and therefore I did the same. My initial response to this is part of my final exhibition work and the idea behind it was that when you rip away the exterior of women, they often have lots of negative body image related thoughts underneath. I did experiment by adding an edited version of this collage into a gif and I think it worked well but, I think that this image works stronger as a poster because it has a strong composition that’s effective on its own.
Next I decided to respond to the second image I looked at by O’Neill, which featured a man with lots of objects in the top of his head. I thought that this idea would be really effective to use for my topic and I tried to develop a collage in the same way. Initially I used only secondary sources to create my response, however, I later went on to develop this idea further and used my own photographs in my collage. I also tried to develop the second collage as a magazine front cover just to experiment with how my designs could be used but I didn’t develop this too much as it wasn’t where I wanted my work to go. However, creating the cover involved researching lots of magazine front covers and looking at the text on them and this influenced me to try and create my own typography. I really enjoyed doing this as it was nice to get away from the computer for a bit and play around with paint and ink to create the letters to work with. When I scanned the typography into Photoshop I recreated some of the quotes that I found while looking at front cover designs and I really like how it looks. I like how the painted letters look really raw and messy, whereas the stamps are neater but still bold and powerful. I think that creating my own typography is a good example of how this project has been really experimental and helped me come out of my comfort zone as an artist.
For my final piece I wanted to continue to develop the idea behind the collage with lots of body image related pictures in the mind. This time I decided to use my own photography for the main image as I felt this worked better because it shows a picture of how a normal girl/woman worries about body image. I used similar images in the collage and my aim was to keep adding pictures of bikini bodies, weight loss pills and celebrities until Amanda’s head was really over crowded with negative body image thoughts. I also included my typography in the gif to emphasis the negative thoughts in her head. I finished the gif by having her head set on fire as this is symbolic of how overwhelming and soul destroying it can be if you let these thoughts get the better of you. Finally, in the end of the gif I added the text ‘Property of Society’ from my previous work because as I had mentioned, I think this text really sums up my project perfectly and I wanted to include it in my gif. I am not completely happy with this gif; I don’t think it is as successful as some of my previous gifs but I am still going to show it in my final exhibition as it fits in with my posters better than my previous animations. I’m not completely sure why I don’t like this gif as I was able to create the idea that I had in mind, although once it was made it didn’t visually look as though I had envisioned it. I think it may be because it’s quite boring to watch, or at least in my opinion it is. However, it was definitely a beneficial learning experience creating it as it involved spending lots of time on Photoshop trying to develop and change it until I felt it was finished, and it still conveys the message that I wanted to achieve so it wasn’t totally unsuccessful.
For my final exhibition I wanted to display two A1 posters, the first being my initial collage response to Martin O’Neill, and the second being a collage derived from my final gif. In order to turn the image in my gif into a poster I began creating different collage backgrounds to go behind the image. I then scanned them all into Photoshop and began editing until I was happy with some final design ideas. To help me assess which designs were the most successful and which ideas were working best, I asked my class members to answer some questions about my work. I also got back in contact with Martin, asking him for advice. He told me that I should try creating the collage again, but by hand. I explained that my image was a gif and that’s why I had done it digitally but responded to his advice and made the collage again by hand, and I am glad I did this as I much prefer the composition of the image. I think that it works better because the images in Amanda’s head are larger and this was something I was struggling with when creating the gif. For this reason, I continued to develop the handmade collage by editing the colours and curves in the image until I was happy with how my final design was looking.
In an attempt to try and make my final gif more interesting, I experimented by trying to change Amanda’s facial expression throughout the animation, as well as making her black and white and having only the objects in her head in colour. I think that the image looks better in black and white as it draws more attention to the images in her head and diverts attention away from Amanda’s face when it isn’t changing. However, when I played around with changing her facial expressions it did make the gif more interesting to watch, but not for the right reasons. Some of the edits blended well and looked realistic, whereas the others blended but they just look odd and unflattering and therefore I am not going to show this edit at the exhibition. I think that this would have worked better if I had more photos to work with because I would have been able to make the expressions flow from one to another better.
Overall I have really enjoyed this project. I think that it has enabled me to really grow and expand my knowledge of graphic design and further my skills on Photoshop which has been my main aim for this year. I feel that I have stuck to my SOI really well and developed on my initial ideas surrounding body image that has involved lots of research to lead me to my final designs that I have produced. I knew that I wanted to create graphic designs suitable for posters however, I didn’t vision going down the path that I have to produce these collage designs.
I am happy with both my A1 prints as posters and feel that they are a successful depiction of my topic Body Image without being too obvious. However, if I was continuing this project I would definitely want to work on my gif, and even start a new one. Possibly doing it by hand as I did when I recreated the collage. Although as I mentioned previously the gif is successful in the sense that I was able to achieve what I had planned on doing, it’s just a shame that it doesn’t look as visually interesting as I had hoped.
I am looking forward to setting up the final exhibition and seeing my work come together as a final body of work.
