Interview for Publication

Remington Manning

What are you studying?
Bachelor of Fine Arts at Massey Univeristy

What’s the most exciting things about being a part of an exhibition?
Working with others and being forced to convsider howyour work functions within a group. The context can change within a group so you have to be careful

What was the most difficult part about having an exhibition?
I’d have to say responding to and dealing with unpredictablilty. My team mate got tonsillitis so the group had to hang up the work for her.
The exhibition may not be what you dreamed but you have to work with it.

How long did it take to get everything together?
9 weeks overall, but if it weren’t a part of uni it would have been 4 weeks.

What kinds of spaces are most affective for holding an exhibition?
It depends on the work. The space we used eas most cohesive due to the works relating to one another so well. There should be enough room for peoples works to be comfortably displayed without stepping on eachothers toes.

What advice do you have to offer first-time exhibitioners?
Definitely write a plan of exactly everything you want to do. I.e: the catalogue is a nice little momento that contributes to the exhibition, and makes it look more professional. Little things like that can make a big difference.

Remington Manning is a third year Fine Arts student at Massey University.
Although Fine Arts is commonly a very colourful place to be, Remington is heavily colourblind and cannot see colours such as pink, red and green. When certain colours such as these are placed side by side or on top of one another, he struggles to find any difference between the two.
However, this has not stopped him from continuing his passion of the arts. Remington just has his first exhibition at Massey where he displayed his work (___), a massive compilation of charcoal sketches taken from close ups of the human body and rearranged to make an abstract work.

Timeline

Week 9 (currently this week):

- have all info gathered that is needed from the community (bella will take down sheets of paper that people have written on around uni).
Questions will help us understand what people would be willing to participate in.
- have information collected together that will go in the publication: who will be there, what is our aim, who we are, what we're trying to create, etc... essentially explaining the assignment
- from all this information, refine to what will be used on the cup

Week 10: 'design stage'

- Have theme, layout and imagery sorted
- MUST come up with title for project and branding image.
- Design grid-layouts for publication
- Gather photos of people needed for profiles, and other imagery needed to create this
- Do a mockup of everything for user testing

Week 11: Refining

-After using testing and creating a theme we are now able to start finalising everything
- this stage will be the refining stage
- Spend the entire week working on the presentation of our assignment: does it communicate what is needs to?

Week 12: Hand in!

- Advert (cup cover)
- Publication
- Event Plan
- Rationale

Poster References

 This is a poster for a design conference. I appreciate the colour palette as well as having a large image in the top half with following information below -- font is rather small and laid out weird though.

 I thought this poster was clever and appreciated the more visual aspect behind this. The simplicity in the lay out is purely for aesthetic purposes. This would presumably have a follow up page with further information.

 A very fun poster, cute palette. The satire is more in the image, but the image does not neccesarily relate to the event theme.

 This image purely updares the viewer on the need to know information -- since it is a conference based more around a certain group of people they have limited the visual imagery and had more of an information-based poster.

 The contrast between the normal and inverted poster I thought was quite fun -- maybe laying out the poster as a split-in-two imagery and info landscape would be a different way of approaching this.
Since this is a 'creative' workshop we want to approach advertising in an eye-catching way.

Below are workshop posters.




 Simple, straight to it poster: title, who's speaking, date.

 This event is essentially what we're doing, so this is a good poster to reference. Creative often implies messy, i.e paint, spilled paint and pens etc.. so showing creativity would involve lots of colour and lots of movement.

Quite a nice layout, although rather 'blocky'. However it provides the 'need to know' information while providing icons/imagery that represent the important ideals this workshop will provide.

 This is showing the three groupings people are sorted into, along with contact info and prices -- straight to the point.

 A very simplistic layout, with an app-like grid. This goes well with aiming at their ideal demographic -- a storyboarding workshop with a poster doing exactly what a story board needs to do. It also lays out all the neccesary information

25/9/16 Editing our brief

Lydia , Wendy and I decided to slightly develop our assignment.

We want to hold an event that provides an opportunity for all creative people alike to share information, advice and banter.
The event will be held at Massey, but the room will be adjusted to become a more suitable environment for creativity and interaction.

We will advertise the event with a publication (i.e booklet, pamphlet etc...) that will inform the audience of who will be there -- we will select  or so5 people from varying degrees who will explain what they intend to talk about at the event.
They will not neccesarily have to talk about anything in their degree -- if theyre a nursing student pasisionate about photography they are more than welcome to offer advice on either of those topics.
We will also advertise the event by making a piece of card that wraps around coffee cups so that when coffee is served they can read about this up and coming event (Guerilla marketing).

Then, on the publication and coffee cup advert, we can tell the viewer to go check out our website. The website will have more information that will persuade the audience to go to the events themselves, rather than explaining the people who will be there.


My task I've been designated currently is to create a space that is comfortable, creative and leaves room for open communcation.
Using the profile of "Bonezy" from last semester, some people may be shy and not want to talk but still have questions. I considered the possibility that a whiteboard be floating around and if someone wants to ask a question they write it up and anybody can answer.
In this space there is no hierarchy -- we want to make this as comfortable and even for everyone.

13/9/16 our brief

For our idea we would like to promote connection and well being through artistic examples

We would like to create an app which people upload paintings based around the theme of “wellbeing”, with a blurb underneath explaining their idea (each week will have a new question/theme based around well being).

Through our app people can create an account then upload paintings or drawings based around each theme of the week.
Other accounts can see the images and the information written about them, then vote to see it in the pop up exhibition.
The most popular 5 images will be put into a pop up exhibition and the exhibition will be limited to a day or so.

Then, in the exhibition some images will be for sale, with profits going to mental health charities, while others (such as post cards, prints etc..) will be for free, purely for the sake of sharing art.

We will create a campaign video to make sure our pop up exhibitions and app is becoming more well known. 

Feedback

The presentation was fantastic and the illustrations were wonderful, enjoyed the metaphor of putting on a brave face. Although we need to watch out for how much we expect from the audience, something as simple as introducing our character as 'here's Bonezy - he puts on a brave face' was needed and we wouldn't have to mention it again. The illustration for our insight nailed it, but needed to be celebrated more as it's such a lovely moment - I feel so alone but am not alone in feeling this way, there's many of us. As the designer it is our role to curate the information so that the audience follows what it's all about.

This is what we need to watch out for. Getting the information on point and relevant to the objective. 

Our character should meet up and get social support - good.

The street chat and talking to strangers - a bit loose.

The justification of why he should socialise - on point, good research.

The comfort zone - too broad and get's lost. For this we offered a variety of opportunities - language, body language, environment but just needed to be a bit more assertive in defining what. So saying something like 'here are the opportunities, we've had a think and we believe tackling the environment is the way to move forward.' Perhaps this happened because we started thinking about the solution too much and not the objective.

The narrative needed to be clearer, we talked about him being down and out and the city and then shoot over to the university which over complicates the narrative. This is just a matter of curating the information better and what is needed to be known. The extra information we provided needed better context, 'other things you may want to know' but keeping it as secondary information.

The use of the word stranger is quite heavy, it's an intense word. Describing the university as a hub of social interaction is a lot better and a really strong point - there's lots going on, our character just needs to get involved. This of course still means interacting with strangers as they are people you don't know, but it has a different feel to talking to strangers on the street. The university has some great resources and assets so are we talking about interactions within the university as a student or are we talking about it as strangers in the city streets. Just a case of exploring the 'how might we' questions. All the information is there, just needs to be simplified to what will contribute to solving the problem. The angle we are coming from is what will contribute and help them overcome the hurdle rather than attempting to solve the solution as a whole.

In a nut shell curate the information better, prioritise and consider what will be permeate to the objective . Any added information for texture should be secondary.