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beatricemarx-selfreflective-blog · 5 years

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Inspiration:

When we visited the MUMOK Museum in Vienna, where we saw many artworks, including so-called „Installations“. Some popular artists like Cosima von Bonin transported their message within that kind of work and it was really interesting for us to analyze these different projects because it was such a different way to transport an idea and to

speak to the visitor.

We both really liked this type of art and agreed to include an installation into our group project. We both thought that it would be so helpful to receive honesty

instead of more medicine.

Idea:

Sarah and I both like controversial topics and social criticism. So we decided to go for something unique and

unconventional as our theme.

The thoughts we had in mind were that many people suffer today in our modern, superficial world from self-hate and mental disease. It is very important that you take care of your own well-being, but this is not always easy in our society. When you go to the doctor and ask for something to improve your mental health, you receive

nothing than pills.

Drugs seem to be a universal solution for everything.

Are you hating yourself? Pop a pill. Do you suffer from

depression? Take one more. We both thought that it would be so helpful to receive honesty instead of more medicine.

Execution:

We want to place a mirror in the shape of a human body to visualize the personal reflection of the visitor. Behind this will be a hidden music speaker with some self-produced sound. We are gonna record ourselves screaming and shouting swearwords, mean things and insults. The viewer gets the instruction to stand in front of the mirror and to look to their own mirror image while getting insulted shouted from our recorded voices. After that we are gonna ask the visitor how they feel afterward. Then we listen to the answer, diagnose the problem and give them a prescription with some advice as doctors do. But this help will be for instance to love oneself, to be grateful or to be more self-accepting instead of pills.

We want to see the prescription as self-care instruction for a better life because we think that nowadays

people should get other help than to take drugs.

The installation was a good idea for us because we wanted to interact with our visitors and to give them experience.

With our communication to the viewer, we break the 3rd wall and lead the contact, the impressions and their feelings. Without our presence, the installation doesn‘t make sense and so we, the creators are an unavoidable

part of our installation and of our own artwork.

Developenment:

Since the beginning, we had a very clear picture of our

end result in mind.

First, we started by thinking about our environment and what we don‘t like about it. We came to the conclusion, that many people suffer from wrong or bad diagnosis and don‘t get the guidance from the doctors they actually need.

So we wondered if we could do better.

Because we both like crazy and bald artworks, we agreed to design something similiar and to connect our idea with an extraordinary form of expression. We decided, that we want to design an „Installation“ because with this kind of artwork, we won‘t be as restricted in our creativity as with a normal painting or editorial design. We knew for sure, that this form of art would be

the right medium for our project.

The first ideas were just about getting honest and better descriptions from the doctor. We fleshed out that we wanted to confrontate the visitors with insults and to put them under pressure and to hand them the description after. This will lead to the effect of a more intuitive answer to our questions. So we had the idea to place the visitor infront of themselves (with a mirror in human shape)

and then place a music speaker behind it.

As soon as the visitor stands infront, we will start the audio. We came to the conclusion that it would be the best to use headphones instead of a Boom-Box. The reason for that is, that people will be more curious about our art and instead of standing next to it while watching, they

will try to experience it by themselves.

Final Process:

1. Insulting infront of mirror

2. „How are you feeling?“

3. Handing out prescription

Design Idendity:

It was important for us, that our project will have a consistent look. To give it a completed and rounded appearance, we first createt a Moodboard and collected multi-

ple ideas on a pinterest board.

Our main color is a „salmon pink“, similiar like the one used on professional prescription to keep the psychologic aspect in mind. We also played with red and blue as

secondary colors. This will be the guideline for every

piece of our project.

Prescription:

The difficult part with the prescription was to make it look like an actual prescription from the doctor but to

make it look more designed and modern.

We tried many different layouts and fonts and experi-

mented with different shades of the chosen colors.

Sticker:

Our Pinterest Board gave us great inspiration and ideas about the sticker design. We wanted to draw the lettering by ourselves and liked the idea of a 60s & 70s hippie font.

First we wanted to write our actual project name, but got

the idea of visualizing the phrase „flying fuck“.

We started with designing the wing. Working within our colors the wing itself is pink and the outlines red. The wing is in a simple shape and bold so it fits with the text. So we tried a lot of different fonts and ways out how the wings and the letters are fitting together. Then we settled down with the last motive and put an white outline around the fuck. Barricada Pro was the font we find the most fitting.

Sound:

We booked the sound studio of the POP in Berlin to record our sound. It was a very funny and interesting experience. We as graphic designer normally just focus on the visual parts but this time we worked the very first time

with the design of sound.

We prepared ourselves with a list of swear words and insults and experimented with our voice as a tool while we recorded our sound. We tried to scream, whisper, sing

and speak in different ways and loudnesses.

After we got the Audio done, we cut it with premier pro. The original audio was 9:50 min. long. After cutting out all the non unusable audio, we where left with almost 7 min. of content. We decided that wie want the audio to get louder and louder. So we first separate all the screams on one layer. After that the words that we spoke together where separated from each other, so we can intersect the audio. Then we sorted out the sounds of disappointment for the start, text that has similar themes and find an audio how we wanted it to end. We decided for the end a audio with screams that end with one singing sentence.

The audio starts with sounds like : tsk, hm , no and continues than in asking the hearer what he/she wants here, the the theme shift to the appearance that switching to suggesting that the person should die. After all this die Audio screams and more and more of the audio is overlaps. The now finished audio is 1:56 min. long. Not too short, but long enough to get entertain.

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beatricemarx-selfreflective-blog · 5 years

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The idea:

Compared to other countries, we live in heaven. We don‘t have to be scared of destitution, starving, diseases or war. In our modern world, we have literally everything: health, a home, food, money, family, wealth, friends, a job, hobbies. Basically everything you need to live a happy and fulfilled life.

This project is about problems and suffering in first-world-countries. These issues would probably not kill anyone but there are still quite a few humans affected by it. We always say that there are worse problems than our depressions and burnouts. When we hear about a difficult life, violence, and mental diseases we are not shocked anymore, because it is just a present topic and moreover the children in Africa starve from hunger. Of course, feeling lonely between all those people on social media isn’t as hard as losing your family in a war. And having a broken heart might be harmless against a broken and paralyzed spine.

Nonetheless, our society suffers from many mental disorders. Burnout, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar, anxiety, borderline, hysteria, psychosis; the list of our diseases of affluence is long. These issues would probably not kill anyone but there are still quite a few humans affected by it.

This project is about problems and suffering in first-world-countries.

So is it justifiable that we don’t care anymore about unhappy teenagers with eating disorders and adults with sleeping problems? And would those people have the same problems if they were forced to live in destitution? I asked myself: Why are we still suffering and ill if we have everything a human being needs to be happy? Why can‘t we just not be completely fulfilled and why do we humans always discover new problems and reasons for unhappiness if we got basically no big reason?

story behind:

This project is about problems and suffering in first-world-countries. These issues would probably not kill anyone but there are still quite a few humans affected by it.

We always say that there are worse problems than our depressions and burnouts. When we hear about a difficult life, violence, and mental diseases we are not shocked anymore, because it is just a present topic and moreover the children in Africa starve from hunger. Of course, feeling lonely between all those people on social media isn’t as hard as losing your family in a war. And having a broken heart might be harmless against a broken and paralyzed spine. So is it justifiable that we don’t care anymore about unhappy teenagers with eating disorders and adults with sleeping problems? And would those people have the same problems if they were forced to live in destitution?

In my theory, people just can’t get completely happy and would always create problems by themselves to just have a problem, no matter how good their environment will be. We will always find an issue to complain about apart from our level of wealth. It seems that I‘m not deeply moved at all by the first-world-problematics. But this topic is basically about my life. I had a good childhood but when I became a teenager I suffered from bad depressions, an eating disorder, and other mental disorders and at least everything I painted in this project. I had everything you need to have a successful and good life: A family, hobbies, rich parents, friends and a home. I couldn‘t believe that I was usually feeling so strong and healthy but was on the other hand so sensitive and fragile. I never had an obvious reason to feel that bad, ill and sad and besides a few bad experiences, I never went through hell as others did. I just couldn‘t understand why I was feeling and suffering that way and if it was okay to feel that way, because others had obviously a way harder life than me.

I never complained a lot about my issues and wondered, why others did for a way smaller reason. I came to the conclusion, that wealthy and sound people have to make themselves sick to have something to complain about. Is it deeply rooted in our character to always search for a problem? And do people really love to create problems for themselves to just have one?

work process:

My first priority for this project was to draw something. I already did an editorial design, collages, a branding and more but I haven‘t drew something until now. I wanted to do something metaphoric with social critism and a hidden message. At the beginning, I was quite unsure about how to

visualize my idea.

I decided to draw people with distructive behavior (throwing up, cutting oneself, taking pills or drugs, smoking, drinking alcohol) and to replace the harming part with glitter. This represents the implicitness of the diseases presence and the fact that no one is really shocked anymore. The size should be as big as a postcard to sell copies of my work on the exhibition.

To connect the idea with the topic, I decided to pick the issue of mental diseases to connect my idea with the given theme „Urban Warrior“. In my opinion, nowadays it is unavoidable to be confrontatet with mental diseases within our modern, urban environment and many people have to deal with them. So going through your daily life with having one of these diseases makes you kind of

an warrior.

The insaneness I picked were domestic violence, broken heart, insomnia, eating disorder, ruffled

ego and addiction.

Paintings:

Normally, I never draw that small (A5) and so it was quite hard for me to paint that detailed on this small space. I started my first canvas with a pencil, fucked up and wasn’t able to erase the pencil. So I changed my tactic: I drew the contours on pan liner (I had no professional transparent paper which can be very expensive and so I had to improvise) and then drew the lines on the back again with a bold and soft pencil. After that, I placed the paper on my canvas and rubbed with a bold pen over the front to transfer the lines on the back of the backing paper to my canvas. This actually worked quite well. For my paintings, I used aquarelle color with opaque white to increase the covering of the paint. I’m broke as fuck so I couldn’t afford the missing aryl colors I would need and I improvised.

This is really time consuming, as my self made gouache technique is cheaper than buying very expensive special color, but very difficult because the paint drys very fast on my palette and also on the canvas. I’m used to draw with aquarelle and so it is hard for me to draw with fast drying paint.

For getting as straight lines as possible, I used tape and painted over it to create a clean area.

I ordered a huge pack of glitter from Amazon with 25 different colors.

For placing the glitter on the canvases, I uses glue on the areas and putted glitter on it after. For straight lines, I used tape to delimit sharp areas.

I spend most time on finishing and improving the paintings with the glitter on it. I’ve never worked with glitter before and it is mostly difficult to handle. As my plan is to print those paintings as a postcard, I took a photo of the canvases and edited them with Photoshop. Moreover, I filmed my Photoshop workflow to show it later on the exhibition and to add it to my creative journal.

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beatricemarx-selfreflective-blog · 5 years

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At the very first beginning of my project, I collected many ideas and did a lot of brainstorming to get to my final topic.

After I collected every raid, assorted it and concretized them I decided to use the topic „Urban Warrior“ literally as my brand name.

The reason for that is because of the organization problems at the beginning of our trimester. I was afraid that the topic could change one more time or that the rules about the implementation would vary and so I decided to work extra safe with the topic as the actual brand name. In my opinion, this isn‘t very innovative but my project will be absolutely on topic. I didn‘t want to take big risks and risking my grades.

I wanted to create a Corporate Design for a fictional firm that produces and sells perfumes. One of the reasons I decided to choose the topic perfumes is that I wanted to do some packaging.

My plan for the project was to design the following:

- Corporate Design/Corporate Identity for the fictional brand „Urban Warrior“ (Logo, Business Cards, Letterhead, Website)

- 4 Fragrances with individual packaging

- Packaging photo for every fragrance

- Mood Photo for every perfume (with a model)

Corporate Design:

I knew that I wanted some colorful packaging and advertisement, that‘s the reason why the Corporate Design had to be simple and uncomplicated to avoid an overload of impressions.

The main colors for Firm Identity are black and white. Those colors are very calm but look still expensive and high quality.

It was important for me, that all of the designs are functional and clean.

Also, I used many bold outlines or squares in my designs (Logo, Website, Letterhead), because I wanted a geometrical element for some diversification.

Logo:

I went for a Logo out of Text with a square around. It still has a high recognition but looks classic, premium and significant.

Without the square, the logo looked a little bit lost and not that expensive.

I will use the Logo both in black on white or white on black.

I also designed a Brand Expansion Sign which I used for instance on the Packaging and my business cards.This will help to clarify products as pieces from my brand without putting the whole logo on it.

Website:

The plan was to add a lot of color with photos, so I also didn‘t use color for the website. I realized, that 100% black looked very bold and heavy and experimented with the covering and shades of grey. I finally used a covering of 88%.

I designed a landing page you are able to scroll through, out of 3 parts with information about the ingredients, a link for a member card and a link to the perfumes for men and women.

Brand Story:

As the topic is „Urban Warrior“ I thought about a fragrance for kinds of people who like to go on the adventure and live an exciting life.

I didn‘t want to write just the actual ingredients like „blossom“ or „lemon“ on the packaging, but to use some words causing a mood and a picture in the head and describing the type pf personality the perfume is made for. I got this idea from the brand „Axe“ which produces deodorant and perfume with the smell of „leather and cookies“ or „graffiti and fresh forest“.

I wanted to do two perfumes for men and two for women.

With my fragrances, I wanted to describe 4 different unconventional and modern lifestyles in the city.

First of all, I collected ideas and thought about different lifestyles my perfume could represent and finally imagined one storys for each perfume.

Second, I gave each one a smell. I collected many fragrances for every one and then decided for 2 per perfume.

And third, I associated colors with the story and smell.

Packaging:

I did a lot of research on how to design perfume packaging and what kind of styles are in trend right now.

My inspiration for the color gradients were sundowns and the sky. I was not quite sure what kind of colors and gradients to use unless I thought out of my window in the sundown and knew that the best gradients existing come from our nature.

It was important for me, that the gradients look natural and logically.

Pastel colors and not completely covering tones were my favorite.

I created over 40 gradients with Photoshop.

As the gradients are the main part of my packaging, I had to chose wisely.

The packaging was printed by myself.

I tried many different types of papers: Glossy, natural, thick, thin, very thick, extra white, recycling paper. Every time I thought I had finally found the perfect sheet, another problem appeared. It was very important that the color wasn‘t fading in the paper and that the color won‘t break off during the folding process. It was also important for me to do many test prints because it is the best way for me to correct the packaging for the customer‘s benefit because on the printed version it looks often a bit different than on the computer screen.

I tried many different types of paper and decided to go for a 140g extra white.

I decided to keep the front simple, clean and minimalistic. The bright colors should dominate the whole packaging. I wanted them to create a mood which describes the smell of the perfume on the other way.

When you do packaging it is important to chose the right colors. They all have a psychological effect, describe the smell and it it obvious that you buy either a pretty product than an ugly one.

First, I designed the front of the packaging and tried many variations. I decided to make them all similar except for the color variation.

The only two fonts I used were the Brand Typeface „Amplitude Comp“ and the „Helvetica Neue“ for the ingredients on the backside because it was hard to read the small text with the brand typeface because of the hight.

Advertising:

Every brand needs some advertisement. I wanted to do 2 posters per fragrance.

For every perfume, I took 3 different types of photos.

First, a standard photo of the packaging and the flacon just showing the actual product.

Second, also a packaging photo but in an environment where the perfume belongs to.

And at least a mood-photo with a model and without the packaging, describing the vibe and smell of the perfume within the picture. I wanted one specific person representing the group of people my perfume is made for.

I collected many ideas for every fragrance and did a lot of scribbles.

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