[Project 1: Que sera] Final

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Before critique

 

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After critique

Individual Composition and the respective write-ups:

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  1. … I want to a be scientist.

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I wanted to a scientist when I was young because I enjoyed science experiments. However, when I grew up, I realise I didn’t enjoy the theory as much. My dream to be a scientist was more like a child play. Hence. I designed it with motifs of science experiments and images in a hand-drawn manner to convey the child-likeness in my dream job.

 

2) … I want to be a stock broker

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As I got a little older, I started to realise the importance of money. I wanted to be a stock broker because I thought they earned a lot an could provide me with financial security. I decided the use the outline of the alphabets as outlines are like a barrier that builds around the fill of the alphabets – like how financial security could cordoned me off from financial woos in life.

 

3)…I want to an artist

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I wanted to be an artist at a point of time as it was an ego boaster for me. I often received compliments for my works back in secondary school (because benchmark was SO much lower) and thought I had the potential to be one. It was made-me-feel good factor too. Hence I weaved art materials as the shadow of the alphabets that spells my name. The shadows of the alphabets elevates a flat letter into a block form, leaving the plane- similarly, art was also like a ego boaster that often made me think too highly of myself.

 

4) … I want to be in a job which bridges art and public

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In recent years, I have dwelled upon the idea of being a museum docent/art educator- jobs that bridges art and public. I wanted to share the quality art education I had received over the years. The nature of this job was also altruistic in nature. Hence, I decided to use the negative space -space beyond my name – to convey my dream job. Vectorised museums, my school and group of people are placed alone the side of my name to convey the essence of my job.

 

Overall feedback from presentation:

  • Composition 2&3 could have been improved; they were weak in convey the job and the message of each job. The visuals used was much less effective compared to composition 1&4.
  • To be less nervous during composition
  • Presentation format could have been changed instead to better convey my idea – start with the overlapping full image of all 4 compositions before explaining them individually.
  • Also, instead of layering the composition 1 at the top and the composition 4 at the bottom, I could have reversed the order to better convey the pyramid of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
  • Generally, the idea of translating the pyramid into a transparency is well-liked.

Reflections:
I think the biggest takeaway from this project is recognising the importance of having an overarching message as well as message for individual works. Personally, I find it hard to come up with a strong overarching message right from the start. However, it helps to keep me in check. There’s a 100 million possible way to do a work but a message helps to anchor me and keeps me from drifting away.

Unfortunately, too much time had been spent on forming the message such that I had lesser time to perfect my execution. Had I been able to plan my workflow better, this could have been a better work.

Secondly, my presentation sequence could have been done differently to better explain my work. Instead of presenting individually at the start, I could have done it as one whole composition before breaking it apart. That would have given my audience a better idea of my work right from the start and not make it seem like individual the compositions are too empty. Also, I have to be confident during my presentation regardless of my work. I was apparently nervous during my presentation (because I felt mine was so different and lacking compared to the rest) and it jeopardised my delivery of the work.

Nevertheless, this project had taught me how spending more money on quality materials would make a significant difference to the outcome of the work. Had it been the old me, I would have printed on cheap transparency that would probably warp under the heat of laser printers and seem flimsy during presentation. But I’m glad I heed Joy’s advice to print it on hard plastic. (Tip: rarely do shops print on harder plastic but after a quick hunt, this shop does!) So, definitely some well-spent money there.

In all, I’m greatly thankful for the encouragement from my peers and tutor and hope to do a better job for upcoming projects! 🙂

[Project 1: Que sera] Work-in-Progress

  1. Brain storming for ideas:
    Upon receiving the project brief, I started to recall all the dream jobs I ever had. I realised that the nature of dream jobs I had since young were vastly different but the later ones were similar in nature.A list of my dream jobs in chronological order:
    1. artist
    2. scientist
    3. stock broker
    4. lawyer
    5. architect
    6. graphic designer
    7. fine artist
    8. (pseudo) shop owner
    9. museum docent
    10. art educator
  2. Execution 1
    To get started, I picked the 4 (bolded) jobs which I thought would be interesting to work with. The following were some of the layouts I had considered:

    forbes

    Layout #1 for ‘Stock Broker’

    I wanted to be a stock broker once upon a time because it provided financial security. Back then I thought being rich was a great factor to be considered successful.
    Hence, I decided to juxtapose myself onto a page cover of Forbes – a 21st century portraiture to define financial success.
    As this was one of the earliest dream jobs I had, I decided to use a younger picture of me in it to signify the immaturity and naïve thinking. I added a (bad) one-liner pun to intergrate my name into the work while reflecting message about this job.

    I wanted to be a museum docent because they bridges art and public. They help to make artworks come alive for visitors through their vivid explanations. While flipping through my book, I came across No. 227 The lights in the room goes on and off. Playing upon the controversy of this work when it won the Turner Prize Award.

    Animated GIF  - Find & Share on GIPHY

  3. Re-work on message of my work
    My work was lacking on overarching msg and I had to reconsider the main msg as well as the message for individual jobs.
    screen-shot-2017-02-12-at-11-10-33-pmThe final jobs chosen were:
    screen-shot-2017-02-12-at-11-13-10-pm4. Working on visualisations

    sketches

    sketches of my work

    While doodling my name in bubble letters, I realised that I could try breaking down the typography elements to represent each job and convey their respective message:

    [Scientist] Positive space: To show that I was still understanding about myself through science
    [Stock Broker] Outline: To show that I wanted to be a stock broker because of the financial security it provided.
    [Art-Related work] Shadow: To show that I wanted to be in art-related work because I was good at it and it was an ego booster for me.
    [Art Educator] Negative Space: To show that I enjoyed this job because of its altruistic nature of bridging art and public.

    There above 4 jobs also represents the 4 main categories of the Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs -basic needs, safety, psychological needs and self-fulfilment/self-actualisation.

    Most of the works were roughly sketch on paper and digitised on Illustrator

5. Execution 2
I decided to layer my work and have them printed on transparency. (I have a fetish for works on transparency) This would also cohesively bring the 4 pieces of work together and show that they all form a part of me.

And here’s a result of the test print:

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Test print: Transparency

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Test Print: 250gsm plastic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Final work here.