I can't believe that this is it.
Few days left and I am going to be done..waw.. when I came to England to uni I never thought of this moment and never thought that I will get here today ALIVE.
This project has been a real challenge for me. Before coming to uni I can't say I had really practiced with photography. I only had a compact digital camera which I was using on Auto Mode (oops). From that, I ended up creating a whole magazine. During uni I didn't have the chance to experiment a lot as I was working all the time so that's why this year has been a real challenge as I had to combine work with really hard work for assignments.
As I said at the beginning of the "trip", after I finish I want to work for a fashion magazine so the best idea was to try and create one to be able to have a minimum knowledge of what's happening in that world. First of all, the idea of obsession came from researching for other project and I thought it might be a great concept for a magazine. I did some research to see if there is anything like that out there but couldn't find any magazine that is about women's obsessions which made me happy. So I decided to develop my idea and to start working on it. As it's a magazine I wanted to make it interactive and as close to fashion as possible so that's why I chose the obsession for the colour red. I have seen so many women going for this colour to be elegant or sexy. I believe it's a very natural colour that means more than it looks like.
In terms of the title, I didn't want to go for the obvious - Obsession- I wanted something maybe a bit, just a bit different - I did find a magazine called Obsession or something like that so that was definitely a no. I looked for other synonyms for Obsession and I even looked for the word in other language like Obsesion in Spanish - the magazine won't have Latino influences so no need to us that word, in French is pretty much the same as the English version etc. So after all these, I decided to stay with the English world so everyone understands it but instead of using the classical Obsession I went for Obsess as it's shorter and more interesting and engaging that the full word.
I started really early to look for people who want to contribute and be featured and to be honest I had some really weird responses from people that had nothing to do with fashion and arts in general. But I tried to be polite when saying no. Apart from those, I spent so many days looking and looking for people and to be honest, from all the work that I have got now, I can't say that the final materials are exactly what I was thinking when I had the idea of the magazine. I was aiming for really fashiony images but you know I should be happy and say thanks for what I have got and especially because I managed to have some images in the end to be able to create my magazine.
At some point, I feared that I won't be able to do anything because of that. It was hard to ask people if they have certain images that would fit with my articles - weren't a lot of people anyway who had images with red. So that's why I had just asked for images with red and then I adjusted them to my preferences. I had to chase people a lot and while I was doing that I realized that I will probably have to do that if I work for a fashion magazine. The job would be even harder as I can't mess up and work with unprofessional people or anything like that. It was a very good exercise to start looking for people to work with - you have to be nice to those who have really good work as they won't give you their images like that and polite to those that don't have work that suits the style of your magazine.
I tried to use my work as well and I had 2 photo shoots especially done for the magazine.I wanted to have something that's mine and made for that as well. The first shoot was with Jade who is a make-up artist. She created around 4 looks for the shoot and then the second one was with Stefi which was the main shoot. Again, those 2 were another way of working with people as - probably sounds way too much for me now haha- a creative director and also organizing everything. Contacting people was a great experience as I made some contacts as well for the future which is amazing.
When it came to designing the magazine, I was really scared I wasn't going to do it or finish it on time. I struggled to finish with my dissertation so in those last weeks I couldn't do any work for any other project. But I promised myself I was going to do it no matter what and a promise is a promise. I spent nights researching and trying to create something that goes with the images and the concept and something that as a whole looks good. I knew and I know now that it's not the best magazine ever and I think there might be loads of things that I didn't do right when creating the magazine but now, at the end, after being at war with time and stress, I do feel proud of myself for being able to keep my promise and finish the magazine.
It's a shame the print space messed up my magazine. I really wanted to submit a proper copy but there's nothing I can do now other than accept the whole situation. The magazine, as a whole, looks good although at the beginning I had another image in my mind but ended up being a bit different. I learned bits related to printing issues which will help me in the future.
I personally don't think my research and this blog reflect how much time and stress and sleepless nights I have had doing this project and the others as well (I ended up being sick exactly a week before my deadline - great :|). I never had and I don't think I will ever be capable of doing a perfect research as it's very hard for me to write, in general, and to put all these posts in the blog. When I do research I gather all the information in my head and then I work with that. I tried to be critical about my work in my posts but I literally don't know what else to write apart from that. I express myself through images as I have a very good photographic memory but when it comes to talking I have a problem in general not with doing research only. Most of the times, even if it sounds weird and it doesn't help, I do things because I like how they look, it's how my eyes and mind see everything. But, unfortunately, I don't always have a specific reason to support that which I believe you can see from my posts.
Anyway, no matter the mark and evaluation I get I am proud of what I managed to achieve and doing this helped me a lot and now I know even more that that's what I want to do in the future. :)
I still don't want to accept that this is the end of 3 years of hard work! :(
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