WEEK ONE

Introduction to the project, initial 3D concept boards

One of our first tasks this week was to create a 3D mind map on an A1 board using 10 objects/possessions that help to describe our personalities. The objects were based around the seven different areas that we are looking to develop; physicality, family history, likes/dislikes, genes, special objects, event, symbol and personality. 

The objects I chose were old photographs, an old teddy, Vogue magazine, "Friends", my camera and other objects that evoke different feelings and memories. A lot of the possessions on my board are based around my family and friends as they are highly important to me and most of the objects remind me of a certain family member or a certain place I've been to with friends. 

I like my work to be very tidy and organised therefore i wanted my board to bring this across. I played around with the layout for quite a while until i came up with the below picture. I think it works well because it displays all the objects clearly; I didn't want to just stick to the corners of the A1 paper so decided to have certain objects over the edges and lots of layering with the Vogue magazines and the "Friends" DVD's. The 3D mind map worked well for me as it gives me something to keep referring back to so that I can develop ideas further and it highlights what objects are more important to me and what aren't.

Personal possessions, five favourite objects

Here are the five personal objects that I find the most important to me out of the possessions on my 3D mind map.

These two rings are important to me because my mum gave me one of them and then the other was given to me by my Grandad but it was originally my Great-Grandma's wedding ring. My Grandad was the youngest out of his siblings and so it was given to him and because I am the youngest in my family, he has now passed it down to me.  

Photo's are one of my favourite posessions. I love to have lots of pictures because I think they are great for looking back and sharing memories. I have piles and piles of photo's of me and my friends and it's nice to be able to look back on all the things that we have done. 

As well as having lots of pictures with my friends and family, I also love taking the pictures. I'm constantly taking pictures of all my friends when we are going out, or on holiday etc. Also one of my biggest interests is Fashion Photography.

This hanging bird was given to me by one of my best friend on my 18th birthday and it's important because I have been friends with her for as long as I can remember; we've gone to the same schools and practically grown up together.

This bracelet was also and 18th birthday present from my aunty, I wear it all the time and it has my name engraved to make it more personal.

Further research development, mind maps, expansion

Once we had created our 3D mind map we were asked to expand this by creating another mind map but to make it more in depth and to take words about ourselves and abstract them. I started by putting my name in the middle of my sketchbook and using the seven different areas of development to expand it. 

I found this quite a difficult task at first because I don't really like to talk about myself because there are some areas that I find hard to talk about or write down. It became easier the more I kept going with it and began to find it easy to describe myself. However, once I had got the basic mind map, I was finding it difficult to abstract it to come up with different emotive words etc. There was a point where I was getting quite stuck but one of the tutors came over to help me develop in to my symbol, I chose my eyes as they are the first things that a lot of people tend to notice about me due to the colour. I have my dad's eyes so this helped to link with genes as well. The feedback helped my mind map develop and by the end of the day I had filled the double pages. 

Once I got home I wanted to expand my mind map a little bit more using some of the words and symbols from my book. I decided to use the 3D mind map as my focal point and then branch out with images and text. The words link to my likes/dislikes and some of my personality traits. 

I think this was more successful than just having text on a page as it shows more of my personality and the ways I like to work. By expanding my mind map further I now have more information to use and there is more detail about myself as there are images and drawings as well as simple text. I like to use minimal colour in my work; I tend to stick to a greyscale or black and white for my work with neat lines and cut edges.

Workshop on research development

After finishing the mind map we were asked to select 10 of the abstracted words from it and then research pictures that we think relate and link to that word. This task didn't go very well because it took me a long time to find appropriate pictures that I liked and so therefore missed the deadline for the next task which but me a little bit behind. I am not normally the type of person to miss deadlines so next time I will need to make sure I understand exactly what we are doing so that I can get the right work done to carry on with other activities. 

The ten pictures needed to be printed off in a variety of different sizes, colours, etc. We then did a workshop where we had to lay out these ten pictures on to an A1 sheet of paper in a way that showed the message. Once we had done this we then moved to each other's work and re arranged the pictures in a different way to how they had done it themselves. We did this quite a few times so that it became easier for us to decide how we wanted to arrange our own pictures. At first I had mine very spread out and with lots of gaps in between the images but the workshop gave me different ideas of how to lay the images out. I also decided I wanted to print some of the images on to tracing paper and acetate so that the pictures behind could show through. By the end of the workshop my images were much more clustered together and I liked to layer the pictures over each other to make it more visually exciting. 

Above are some examples of the different layouts that other people came up with for my images. It was interesting to see how different people interpreted your photos and used different ones as the focal images. 

A1 concept board showing the ten emotive images that represent myself and personality

This is a picture of my final arrangement of the images, I took some images out as I decided I didn't want to use them. I am pleased with the outcome of this piece of work because I think that using different scaled images and on different papers helps to see the links between the images. For example the tracing paper allows the images behind to show through but are less clear. I like this as it shows how the images relate to one another and what is more important. The focal image of the blue pebbles was printed on acetate, I think the acetate has given the picture more of a meaning and helps it to stand out. The blue pebbles link with the symbol of my eye because of the icy blue colouring and the different tones of blue in the image. Having layers of images brings them all together.