Carousel Evaluation
For my FMP I decided to produce a sustainable magazine to showcase the creative side of sustainability. I wanted the magazine to be an artistic explosion documenting work by designers, artist and students of fashion. I gave my self the challenge to produce a magazine which expresses innovative, cutting edge sustainable design in a visually exciting format with concise articles creating a natural flow. My magazine aims to be visually stimulating with style and taste dedicated to a public that appreciates the sustainability ethos.
Before I started my magazine I had to come up with a clear target market, aiming it to a specific audience.
“At the moment the issue of sustainability is something which more of the older generation are involved in. So thats why i wanted to produce a magazine aimed at the younger audience to try and draw them into the sustainable issue. But still being suitable for the ‘already’ sustainable followers. Also my magazine is aimed at a person who is creative, artistic and interested in designer. Some who is inspired looking at amazing cutting edge design who wold appreciate the talent and design excellence in my magazine.”
My next step was to do a vast amount of research making sure I had enough knowledge to put in my magazine. First I started with the historical references looking at old magazine formats styles this really inspired me with there use off old illustration techniques which was the inspiration to illustration my own magazine and I find it adds that personal touch I was looking for. I also looked into the history of printing and paper making striping technology back to its lowest form, it was extremely interesting and gave me that insight in how hard it was back the to just create one sheet of paper1 when now a days paper is a every day resource. Sustainable communities like Romaine, Amish and Quakers also featured in my research stage of my project, I read into how they used to die there clothes with spices, how they used more electricity and lived of there own land not relying on any modern day help like we have now showers, cookers, supermarkets etc. I then changed my research direction and looked into the leading artists and designers of sustainability, finding my self amazed with the technology we have now to produce new fabrics which are fully sustainable and who designers and artists can create innovative work out of recycled or up cycled materials. I produced artist profiles on the artists and designers I research into ready to help me build up the body of information I need within my magazine.
Within my magazine I wanted to know more about the designers than the information you read on the website, I wanted to ask them my own questions, so I decided to email everyone I had research to hopefully get a few responses which would be amazing to feature in my magazine. I emailed many important contributor in sustainability like Goodone, Sean Avery, me and you, Christopher Rayburn, Partimi and Dr Noki and to my surprise I received quite a few emails with very positive responses. So keeping on track with who’s emailed me, who I needed to ring for a interview, who sent me which photo’s was a full time process and at the start of the project took up a lot of my time but looking at my magazine now I think the interviews push it that one step further so I glad I pursued the designers, artists and companies and grateful they replied.
After getting some emails replies I noticed that some designers and artists were wiling to send me images but were to busy to answer my question when some were the opposite and other kindly supplied me with both. But when the designers or artists didn’t allow me permission for there images I had to think of another option to show there work. So I thought I would illustrate there work instead of using there images. The idea of illustrating some work really excited me as I started to visualise how amazing some of my hand drawn illustrations could look elegant simply displayed on a page. For my magazine I had to illustrate for Goodone, Christopher Raeburn, Me and You and Katerina Hamnet. So to find inspiration of styles I researched into fashion illustrators which all used different drawing techniques to give me a range of inspiration. But after looking through all there work I decided t use my own style and explore and push my own creative style further.
After my research I decided to look into layouts, typography, and style ideas from other magazine. I purchased magazines (1883,LOVE,HUNGER,VOGUE),books (D&AD) I found exciting and took elements of everyone magazine I found innovative and produced layout boards, which provoked style ideas for my own magazine and I found this a very successful step as it help me in the future when I produced my magazine as when I maybe hit a block for inspiration id look at the pages and have ideas straight away, they were full of inspiring, imaginative layouts which led me to come up with my own magazine style.
After looking at all the magazine I decided I wanted to do something different I wanted a landscape magazine. I choose a landscape format after producing a landscape and portrait print of one magazine and decided the landscape format helped me create the dramatic layouts I wanted, the long space helped me produce a dynamic interesting magazine style. But a few weeks after that I found my printers and typed in 20 magazines portrait and it came up £160 so I thought that’s great and assumed landscape would be the same but I was wrong landscape changed £160 to £460! That shocked me and forced me to change my magazine as £460 is extortionate for 20 copies. So me next challenge then was to produce this dramatic, creative, imaginative magazine in a portrait format which didn’t inspire me a first. But once I produced a few pages a found my stride and to me have produced some very professional, classy but innovative articles.
When I started producing pages for my magazine I started to feel over whelmed with all the information, layout ideas, orders, typography going through my head so I produced planning sheets, which was on of the most beneficial processes I have done during the project. I planned every page, how many pages for each article, it gave me a gage on how many pages I would have all together and showed me clear and precise every article I had o do to complete my magazine.
Students work was something I really wanted to feature in my work as I am a student and would be grateful for the opportunity to be promoted like that. I decide to feature the botanical menswear shirts as it was a project based on sustainability. This meant I was to do a editorial spread this needed planning I looked in photographers, stylists and was inspired my Sato and Pratha and Haley Louisa Brown as there work has been featured in LOVE, 1883 which are very popular magazines, also there work is very current and now and pushes photography to the maximum really drawing my self into there work as it it fun, different and edgy. This drew me in so would hopefully draw my target market in to. I decided to suspend the botanical menswear shirts, playing on the idea that they are floating and at one with nature. Hopefully my edgy, different slightly amusing shoot would help my magazine stand out and the quirkiness makes a statement that I'm trying to do something different.
The shoot for the shirts weren’t as easy as I thought and if I was to do this magazine again this is something if would think and plan a lot differently. I underestimated how long a shoot takes, preparing the equipment and how the weather makes a huge difference. Relating it to my shoot I was suspending the shirt with wire and was extremely lucky on the first shoot there was no wind but the second and third shoot I did were a different story, the wind was strong and detailed my shoots even further back getting close to me deadline putting my pressure on me. I needed to plan my time more wisely and gage how much time a editorial shoot would take out of a project more realistically.
But I have successfully kept to a strict time scale this project and it has really helped me become more organized and calm. During my project I keep referring to me timetable and diary this helped me keep on track and document all the important convocations, information and thoughts I have gathered throughout my project. The diary helped me give my own time scales which helped me in the completion of my magazine as the diary helped me gage how many pages I needed to do a day in the week building up to my dead line and my strict timescale helped me keep on track on time, organized and under control.
My FMP to me has been very successful and I have gained so much knowledge by doing it for example, computers skills, email skills and interview techniques. The most successful and element of my magazine I am most proud of is my exclusive spread on Teresinha Roberts. Teresinha is a lady who creates natural dies, cloth and has a working sustainable magazine, she works at the custard factory and usually charges for interviews. But I managed to get a exclusive tour around her allotment with a thirty minute interview. Before this project I was very confident talking to people and producing questions but preparing for this interview and others has improved my confidence and I now feel calmer and reassured when contacting and talking to new people. Also the spread in my magazine I have produced of magazine is in my own magazine style I really tried to think of innovative imaginative layout ideas to show of my achievement of featuring Teresinha. Successfully my spread on Teresinha was one of my favourite but most accomplished and something I am proud of.
I conclusion I think this project has been very successful and I have produced a magazine which succeeds everything I wanted. I find my FMP has been the most organized and planned project I have completed since the start of my course. This project has helped me gain confidence in interviewing and contacting new people. I have gained skills in photo shoot, illustrator and a completely new program called indesign. I also find I have found my own style in layout designs and am extremely proud and impressed with my final outcome; it looks professional, creative, and imaginative and expresses the ethos I wanted to portray for my Carousel Magazine. I think a main element to my success is my methodical continuous evaluations through out my project assessing and writing my thoughts down in my evaluation diary, it keep my thoughts focused and always pushing forward. My project meets my brief and I am very impressed with the sketchbook and final outcome I have achieved.
