#creative conscience

[greaterthanfan]

Creative Conscience: Mental Health brief.  (Read more below.)

For the Creative Conscience awards, I was working towards showing the darker side of mental health - more often than not, mental health tends to be kept tight to the idea of someone is either anxious or depressed and there isn’t anything else. I wanted to create art that resonated and represented people with personality disorders and mood disorders, since a lot of time they aren’t seen at all in the media. 

I started by creating these pen drawings because I wanted them to be simplistic and to the point, while still having some raw emotion to them. I quickly decided I wanted to create a little more than just a black and white image, and started toying with the idea of collaging and working with newspaper as I liked the symbolism that went with it (as in, everyone is talking, but it doesn’t quite match the actual topic), so I went with a hefty job of creating an A3 piece with text pasted onto a plain background and then pen and ink ontop of it. These were all preliminary sketches and pieces leading up to my final outcome for the Creative Conscience brief. 

[illumimarty]

I made a doll for the creative conscience brief. its a topsy turvy doll which represents four different colours and a bunch of faces. the faces are removable and replaceable and it comes with a little booklet with colour psychology related tasks.

by the time i had to submit it i was tired and done with it. i hope it was worth it.

[greaterthanfan]

Creative Conscience: Mental Health brief. Final hand in. Ink and marker on newsprint.  (Read more below.)

For my final piece for the Creative Conscience brief, I decided I wanted to combine the ideas I had been playing with to create something that off-handedly showed the decline in mental health and how it always finds it’s way to the front. 

Reflecting on this piece, I think that it could’ve been better communicated, maybe with a written comment added as part of the piece - I feel as if the brief was very hard to respond to as it wanted people to take a positive approach to mental health, but for me mental health has always been quite a hard thing to think positively about. As someone who has been suffering with mental health, I wanted to create something that resonated with how I felt and something that would make me feel seen and good about myself and my experiences (although I think in doing this I isolate anyone who hasn’t had a firsthand experience with bad mental health, because from the outside this looks quite sinister and mean) and this really worked for me.

I think also that if I had created something else, I wouldn’t have felt as proud as I do of this. This piece is without a doubt one of the most important pieces I feel I’ve created, and really manages to get across the uneasy atmosphere I felt at the time of creating, despite the fact I think it has very positive aspects. It is one of the best pieces I think I’ve managed to create this year in terms of Illustration.

[greaterthanfan]

Creative Conscience: Mental Health brief.  (Read more below.)

Here are some of the other preliminary sketches/pen drawings I did before I decided on my definitive concept for the competition. I decided against having the faces horizontally because I felt that by having them cascading down in the same way water does has a lot more of a visible impact for a viewer, but I still wanted to keep with what I’d been doing with the newsprint and collaging. 

[rhiannonstreet-blog]

We are very excited to be partnering with London’s Design Museum for a new higher education talk series called ‘Design Change Makers’. The first in the series will be a special event focusing on mental health. The event aims to inform, engage and inspire creative thinkers to explore positive design solutions. We’ll be showcasing some... Read more »

So on the 28th, I went to the design museum to see Creative Conscience’s talk on design for change and mental health.

The talk was really great to be able to see, I’m so glad I went along! Helena Jennison, the marketing director of Movember spoke about how they want to create more of a campaign around their bid to increase men’s mental health awareness and a bit about what they’ve already managed to achieve. The whole tone of the Movember campaign is fun and for lack of a better word ‘trendy’. It’s all cool guys enjoying life whilst making a difference- which is inspiring! It’s the whole admiration thing too- ‘I want to be like these guys and they’re part of a really cool movement’ sort of thing. 

Movember go about things in a very light hearted way and one of the things that they are weary about it that they can’t be too light hearted when it comes to the issue of male suicide. Helena was looking for suggestions on how to approach this without it being too bleak. In my opinion, I think you can probably just market the campaign with a really positive, hopeful outlook rather than a funny one. Give people hope and a sense of community without dulling down the facts.

The graduate panel were fairly interesting to listen to. Although I don’t really want to do a campaign, it was interesting listening to how Ashley started his typographic campaign without knowing much at all about mental health and still managed to produce a really lovely and empathetic final piece. 

I really liked Lucy Cripps’ children’s book as it was along the lines of the sort of thing that I want to do- something physical that my audience can interact with. She made a good point that if children are taught early on that it’s ok to speak about their emotions and not to be ashamed of what they’re feeling, the sentiment can continue into adulthood.

Lastly, Ben Akers, the Creative Director of the Ethical and Sustainable Ad agency Republic of Everyone spoke. He spoke about his past in BBH and Droga5 etc. Amongst this he spoke about his 4320 LA campaign to sell weekend getaways from Sydney to LA. The film pitch that he showed put a giant grin on my face- it was insane. Teams of friends had to tweet for every 4320 minutes that they were in LA and were followed by a live stream. The campaign reached over 15 Million people worldwide and was just incredible. He said he barely slept during that campaign and his mental health took the toll for it.

Akers is now working on a film documentary about his best childhood friend, Steve who tragically took his own life a few years ago. There aren’t really words for how I felt after he showed his proposal video for the project. I think sharing stories is really important as everyone feels so isolated and ashamed about their own problems. In the video, Ben expressed the fact that Steve was a friend, a son, a father and so much more. But he didn’t see that. There are so many things we take for granted each and every day and I think what I really want to be able to do is bridge the gap for people to talk about these things and make people realise they’re doing good! They’re loved, they make people smile and they can only do the best that they can do. And if it’s the best you can do, then hell! Congratulations! Seriously! We’ve got to stop worrying about what other people are thinking of us and begin to realise that we can be proud of ourselves. And that’s enough.

[ellieroseillustration]

Gender Equality // Final Work Review

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For the Gender Equality project I created a zine titled ‘Fuck Your Gender Bias’ which revolves around different things females are judged upon, mainly by males. For each different judgement/ concept I I based an illustration of a celebrity, some which relate very closing to the text and others just general topics that many women face. The idea was based around the ladybird books for adults, where I wanted to create something that was very tongue in cheek and also revealed something about the image that wouldn't have been apparent on first glance. The text is meant to empower women, by backing up the female standpoint in a tongue in cheek/witty way. 

I like the way it turned out, something that was eye-catching through the different backgrounds I incorporated into the design concepts. The images are meant to by simple, not too over the top, by representing the females in a generic way so other people who face the same judgement can feel empowered and feel free to outwardly express themselves with confidence. 

The Different areas I focused on were:

Changing Hairstyles and Colour // Playing Video Games // Topless Selfies // Dressing Provocatively // Not Wearing Make-up // Wearing Extravagant Make-up // Fertility Treatment // Tattoos // Casual Sex // Being into Sports // Being Gay // Not Shaving Body Hair // Not Strictly Dressing Like a ‘Stereotypical Girl’ // Drag Queen // Not Wearing a Bra // Not Just Somebodies Wife - Actually Highly Respected in their Chosen Field of Work

[ellieroseillustration]

Gender Equality // Final Zine - Part II.

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The second half of the zine (not including the back cover) I have designed and in the process of getting printed. These are the JPEG spreads saved straight from InDesign showcasing my work in it’s best format.

[ellieroseillustration]

Gender Equality // Experimentation

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Messing around with some of the art I created in order to try to produce interesting outcomes. Mainly focusing on ‘glitch art’ where, through photoshop, things are made to look like they haven’t loaded properly or the images have been distorted in some way. Unfortunately I didn’t end up using the glitched hair images but I liked how the images turned out, yet couldn’t quite work them into my final work.