freyalauben

[freyalauben]

Reference list

2022. [online] Available at: <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ultrafeminine> [Accessed 25 May 2022].

Andresantosmartins.com. 2022. drunk interview project. [online] Available at: <http://www.andresantosmartins.com/drunk-interview-project.html> [Accessed 25 May 2022].

Google.co.uk. 2022. Redirect Notice. [online] Available at: <https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fhigh-school-musical.fandom.com%2Fwiki%2FSharpay_Evans&psig=AOvVaw3XiLCcsiGg45SVSsGm-az9&ust=1649422162177000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjhxqFwoTCNDj8cL-gfcCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD> [Accessed 25 May 2022].

Google.co.uk. 2022. Redirect Notice. [online] Available at: <https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMiss_America_protest&psig=AOvVaw1GlAnzJOlAlHpWzjYfbAP9&ust=1649422201831000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjhxqFwoTCPDVtdv-gfcCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD> [Accessed 25 May 2022].

I-d. 2022. Celebrating 10 infamous issues of cult fashion mag Buffalo Zine. [online] Available at: <https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/5dm3pa/10-issues-cult-magazine-buffalo-zine> [Accessed 25 May 2022].

magCulture. 2022. Krass Journal #2. [online] Available at: <https://magculture.com/blogs/journal/krass-journal-2> [Accessed 25 May 2022].

Marina Hunter Photography. 2022. Marina Hunter Photography. [online] Available at: <https://marinahunterphoto.com/> [Accessed 25 May 2022].

Metro. 2022. Woman has no time for guy trying to body shame US Olympic gymnasts. [online] Available at: <https://metro.co.uk/2016/08/24/woman-has-no-time-for-guy-trying-to-body-shame-the-us-olympic-gymnasts-6087056/> [Accessed 25 May 2022].

MTL Blog. 2022. 10 Reasons Why Men Are Way More Likely To Hit On Girls With Tattoos. [online] Available at: <https://www.mtlblog.com/10-reasons-why-men-are-way-more-likely-to-hit-on-girl-with-tattoos> [Accessed 25 May 2022].

Pitcher, L., 2022. The Reclamation of Bimbohood. [online] The Cut. Available at: <https://www.thecut.com/2021/12/reclaiming-bimbo-bimbotok.html> [Accessed 25 May 2022].

the Guardian. 2022. Female athletes often face the femininity police – especially Serena Williams | Erika Nicole Kendall. [online] Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/14/serena-williams-female-athletes-femininity-police> [Accessed 25 May 2022].

[freyalauben]

Evaluation

Overall I am pleased with how my magazine turned out, especially for a first attempt. I do think I could of experimented more as I did come to very quick decisions, and with more experimenting I could of possibly taken the magazine to the next level. I also feel as though I could of made the magazine a lot larger. If I did another photoshoot and interviewed a few more people I know I could of produced double the amount of content. However I do feel as though I’ve learnt a lot and next time would be able to create content quicker and more thoroughly.

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Posters

For the exhibition I wanted to create some posters to place behind a table that will have my magazine on. This is important to make my section more visually interesting and intriguing. I wanted to include some images with the hand written elements as I personally really like the aesthetic of them. Here is a mock up of the posters laid out to test if the hand written posters clashed with the front covers typography. I personally feel as though they don’t clash especially with the two digital using the same models and the two scanned in featuring the same model.

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Print

Here is an example of one of the printed magazine. I got them staple bounded which means they’ve come out quite thick. Due to it being an 80 page magazine it would of probably have been better to get it perfect bound. This is something for me to consider next time.

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Final

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Final

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Development

To keep in theme with the rest of the magazine I changed the hand written photography pages to statement double spreads using the same consistent font throughout.

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Final interview layout

These are the final interview layouts with text used throughout rather than hand written elements as they apear more stricking and dramatic. Even though I liked the hand written elements on Sydney’s image I thought I’d change it to text to keep the magazine looking cohesive, the only scanned in part is Emma’s image as it doesn’t involve writing and therefore I don’t feel like it looks out of place.

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Experimenting interview imagery

Here I’ve experimented with hand written elements on the images for the interviews. I personally feel that both Sydney’s and Emma’s work well, however Holly’s and Kierra’s don’t work as well. Sydney’s images in black and white allows for writing to pop and look more stricking than the others. Emma’s fits the theme of her interview and creates a nostalgic innocent feel that will complement her words nicely. The images for both Holly’s and Kierra’s prevents the paint pens from standing out looking very rushed and inconsidered.

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Experimenting fonts & layout

After going through Adobe fonts I selected a hand full to try typing full sentences in to see a more transparent version of what they’d look like in the magazine. From here I selected my two favourite, one for large sections of text and one for titles and made a first attempt at an interview spread. This confirmed for me that the typography translates well. I feel as though the titles are the right amount of harsh and boldness. And the interview font itself is far more simple not too take away from what it says and is easy for people to read and follow, as well as keeping it simple preventing the page from looking too chaotic and over crowded.

The image in the bottom right hand corner shows experimenting with hand written elements within the interviews. I personally feel that this doesn’t work too well as it does create an over crowded feel which I was trying to prevent with the simple font.

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Front cover

With the paint pens not working too well for the front cover I decided to play with fonts on in design instead. The font up in the left hand corner was placed there so it doesn’t cover the image, however I don’t think this example is bold and dramatic enough. Stretching the font out and making it large enough to cover the image proportionally has a more artsy eye catching effect. The first example of this in the top right hand corner with the text in black, then the two final covers being the same in white underneath. I feel as though the white looks better and complements the photographs better with a pop of white or pale colours in both photographs.

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Experimenting

I wanted to experiment with hand written elements similar to the magazine Buffalo. The eight images at the top I feel work nicely with chunks of text that evenly spread over the images creating a nice compassion. However I feel like the title pages don’t have a compassion that works as well with the word awkwardly slapped in the middle. Especially on the ultra feminine side with the the paint pen not being too thick the word doesn’t stand out well and I feel looks messy and unconsidered.

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Faith’s drawing

This is a drawing by Faith (Emma’s daughter). I wanted to include this drawing that is supposed to be of Faith and Emma. I feel like the image captures the purity and innocence of Faith and how precious she is, just like how their mother daughter relationship is also beyond precious.

I wanted to showcase her drawing in a visually interesting manner, I figured that when I was a child my mother would stick my drawings to the fridge and this is a nostalgic touch majority of people can relate too. The silver of the fridge comes out in a grey dull tone therefore I decided to photoshop it out and replaced it with a pink background that fits cohesively with the magazine as the pink shade is taken from other pages within the magazine. I also photoshopped out the postcard in the top left corner as it’s from Auschwitz which would contrast the tones of the rest of the image as well as the magazine as a whole.

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Nail pictures

To complement the inverview pages of Kierra (nail technician) I would like to include images of nails on a person. For this I decided to use images of myself with nails on. For the final image I wanted to make the nails look more vibrant to stand out more against my white t-shirt. I did this using photoshop where I upped the contrast of just the nails and left the rest of the image appearing paler.

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Playlist content

For the pages about a music playlist I wanted to experiment with different ways I could visually represent this. I decided to go through my own music collection to see if there is a visually interesting way to layout the pages. With these images I had the intentions of photoshopping album covers ontop of the ones physically in the images, however none of the images came out looking as professional as I would of liked. However there is the exception of the coloured vinyl records on the record player which will make great double page spreads introducing the reader into the music playlist, having a blue and pink record sticks to the two aesthetics fitting the images in perfectly with the magazine.

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Hot tub talks

The idea for a hot tub addition of tub talks came up as it’s a more feminine aesthetic to the contrasting toilet talks addition to tub talks. This works perfectly for the double sided magazine as the hot tub addition will feature in the ultra feminine half and the toliet talks addition will feature in the ultra tom boy half. Keeping a consistent contrast between the two half’s whiles still keeping the content the same.

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Holly’s response

Have you ever faced any issues being female in a male dominated sector?

Erm not me personally but I know a lot of people who have, especially where I used to work before here because I started when I was like fifteen to gain experience and then kinda just didn’t leave. People who worked in my old studio quite a lot of them where female and they were quite a bit older as well so they all kinda started when the industry was pretty much entirely male dominated, it’s not so bad these days. They used to have bosses who would make them go clean their bikes in white T-shirts and stuff like that, just really dirty purvey stuff. But I don’t think it’s too bad these days, the only problem really is the whole tattoo me too stuff. It’s more for customers than female artists, it’s started with a Birmingham artist being outed, and basically he just sexual assaulted a lot of customers and because he’d worked for pretty much all blokes they all turned a blind eye or also joined in with it so he managed to get away with it for years. The were quite a few as well it wasn’t just him, obviously it just had a snowball effect, once he was outer lots of other were outed and it’s shocking how many of them there actually are, it’s quite gross.

What’s your favourite aspect of being a tattoo artist?

I think it’s probably when you do a tattoo that’s really important to someone, so like you’re covering up something really horrible for them or something that reminds them of someone horrible like an abusive ex’s name. Or when you’re doing something that going to be on display on their wedding day, you know something really personal and meaningful and you can see how happy they are it’s quite emotional. One time I had a lady who had been in an abusive relationship, a really bad one, and he strangled her quite a lot and so she had so much trauma with her throat and she wanted to get her throat tattooed but she was scared to even be touched there so I had to book her in for the day for something that would usually take a couple of hours, and had to take it really slowly, she numbed it and I had to try not to touch her too much, had to warn her which bits I was doing and stuff but at the end she was crying because she was so happy she’d done it and I felt a bit emotional myself. Obviously we try and be accommodating for everyone anyway but for something like that it’s something so important to someone and it’s such a big traumatic things I need to do it justice and make her feel as comfortable as possible.

What one design you’d love to do but no one’s ever asked for?

See that’s most of my designs I’ll be honest. When I did the tattoo convention in February I set up a couple of designs as available and that I’ve been dying to do for ages, there’s a really silly one that just says “ur mom” in a heart, I’ve been dying to do that for ages, that one is probably my number one design I wanna do that no bodies had. Quite a lot of the stuff I draw like the “totally fucked” stuff and there’s a few like BDSM things, a lot of it’s a bit more risky. Personally I have a porn VHS tattooed on my leg, I had some random bloke stop me and ask if he could take a picture of it the once. I was like it’s a cool tattoo and I get that but are you just being a creep cause I’ve got porn VHS, out of all the tattoo I have it was that one, you can never tell if the intentions good.

How have you found is the best way to promote yourself?

To be honest it just sort of picks up once you’ve got a couple of regulars because they recommend you to everyone. I pretty much only use Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. I know a lot of people do the sponsored ads and stuff but the algorithm is a bit of a nightmare, apparently if you pay for the sponsored ads then it shows the rest of your stuff to less people because it wants to encourage you to pay again. So I’m always really paranoid with the algorithm what’s the best thing to do, and sticking to all these stupid little rules, trying to stick to posting at certain times etc. So yeah for me it was just really getting those few regulars and they pretty much do all the work for you, they recommended you to everyone. The conventions are also good, people will take your business card, that sort of thing which gets your name out.

What’s something you wish you knew before starting this journey?

I’d say it’s probably in regards to apprenticeships, a lot of people in this industry treat their apprentices like complete shit, especially older men, but I did my first apprenticeship under an older lady who was almost just as bad really. There’s obviously an element of you have to work hard to get to where you’re going, it is unpaid and you have to do the crappy bits like cleaning and stuff in return for the knowledge you’re gaining. But some people take it a bit too far and basically just treat their apprentices like slaves. And obviously as you progress it should sort of tip so you’re doing less cleaning and more tattooing or drawing etc. My first apprenticeship I started at fifteen and it look me five years to get to the point where I was tattooing people properly. So I think the thing I would’ve wanted to know before is that you’re going to have to do some crappy jobs but you should still be treated like a human being, you should still be getting to actually tattoo and learn and stuff.

Have you had any issues with bad clients?

Not particularly bad ones it tends to just be ones that are a pain in the arse. It tends to be people expecting more than you can give them, the pain issue is with deposits people will no show you and then expect their deposit back. I’ve not had customers be rude to me in person, had a few pestering online but generally once they’re here they’re all really nice. I’ve been quite lucky with it really, I know a few of the girls here have had some customers who have been awful to them. One of the girls had a death in the family and the customer was like “can you just come in anyway I don’t care if you’re crying”.

Do you find there’s a stigma when you tell people you’re a tattoo artist?

Not particularly, it depends who you tell. I find older people are quite disapproving of it, a lot of people think it’s not a real job. But then the other half of people will just list out every idea of any tattoo they’ve ever had in their life to you and then never book in with you. I think it’s mostly just older people especially older womxn because they have this perception that it’s not something very lady like, it’s not something for womxn to do. It’s something that’s progressing even me ten years ago I thought I’d never get the top of my arms done because that’s butch. But a bodies just a body, decorate it with anything anywhere.