Re-Imagining my practice

Liverpool ONE - Research

I have looked at the website and the app for Liverpool One, and I have discovered that their advertisement for "Shopping until 8 on weekdays" is very poorly presented. I had the idea that Liverpool ONE itself, might advertise the birds better around the city centre. 

I took photographs of the areas I came across that advertised the 'Open until 8" birds, surprisingly, once again they only had one banner outside the Information Centre, that portrayed the "Open until 8" message. Although, it was very high up above peoples view, therefore not many people would notice it. The rest of the displays were just an image of the birds, displaying their names. 

After looking at the website I noticed that even though the birds are supposed to represent the "Open until 8" message that Liverpool One were trying to give, they were not present on the 'Opening Times' page of their website, however they were present on the Log In page. To me this was confusing, surely it should have been the other way around?

I then decided that I would look at the Liverpool ONE App, which surprisingly was just as bad. 

The app has an unusual tutorial that can not be skipped, when you first download it, although it shows the L1 logo, the birds are not present. I also noticed that there are no GIFs present on the website or the app for L1, this is something we can work on. 

I noticed that the birds were present on the 'Code Scanner' page and the 'Log In' page. Once again, I find this quite confusing considering the birds are there to represent the message that the shops in Liverpool ONE are open until 8pm on weekdays. 

For the Liverpool One brief, we have to change the "Scouse" Birds advertisement, so that the "Open until 8" message is clear to the audience.I have looked at the Liverpool ONE website to see just how much this advertisement is used, and wether it gets the right message across. After looking I realised that although the "Scouse" Bird characters are used throughout the website, they do not represent the "Open until 8" information very well. 

As you can see above, they are on the Log In page of the Liverpool ONE website, however, as you can see below, they are not on the Opening Times page. To me, this is unusual, considering they're supposed to be the icons/characters that represent the "Open until 8" message. Surely this should be the other way around?  This could be a problem my group could look at in the future when presenting to the client. Maybe by pointing out the flaws of the current advertisement, the client will feel inclined to appreciate our ideas. 

In a previous blog I explained the houses I had created so far, I have now decided to create some more houses. I had previously decided to choose different themes for each house however, I have now decided that I will have some houses themed and other with a more generic pattern. The houses with a more generic pattern will be buildings such as a Post Office and a Council Hall for the fairies. Other houses will be specific to their theme, for instance the tooth fairy's house will have teeth for windows and above the door.

As you can see I have also created a star themed house, which has stars and moons for windows. Because of my arrangements this page has leaves and a leaf themes door frame, from another house. On these houses I have added small engravings, as I plan to paint these houses, I have choses black to make the engraving as deep as possible. 

I initially created all of the houses separately, I then noticed that there were huge gaps on each page, so decided to mix them all up so that they would fit better onto the page, therefore saving wood. I separated some of the bases to the houses and put them on a page together, I labelled them with a letter that would help me to identify which one was for each house. These two houses are a mixture of paint houses and a swirl theme house. As you can see the paint houses has paint splatters for the windows, and the swirl has, well, swirls. 

I have shown this page in my last blog, however I have now re-arranged some of the items on this page so that they fit a little bit better, making sure to use up all of the space, so that no wood will go to waste. I wouldn't like to think that I was waisting materials, especially wood. 

This houses is one of the generic styled houses, these houses will be based upon places such as the local Council and the local Post Office. I will print a few of these houses, and whilst I have been designing them I have had ideas about composition in my head. I feel that putting these houses quite close together will separate them from the fairies individual houses. 

This is a leaf house, I have not used a leaf shape on this house for the windows, however I have used leaf engraving on the walls of the house and as I showed earlier, a leaf doorframe. As an extra, I decided to try and create some house labels, I have given each house a fairy-like name. Although I hope the house names will print right, I have a feeling they may be too small, and the engraving may be too light to be able to be seen.

The location drawing brief, is a great brief to get us thinking about the different shapes and areas of the city. When scouting for buildings to draw I realised that it is not only the buildings that give character to the city. After living in Liverpool all my life, I realised that the buildings are no longer an attraction for me, I see them almost every day, so I have decided to draw some of the small areas of Liverpool that for me are an attraction; the fountain outside the Walker Art Gallery, the christmas tree in the city centre.

During the altered Images workshop, I did not quite understand what I was doing. To me it felt like we were supposed to just be sticking and gluing different images together to make a new image, basically collage. These are the images I created: 

It wasn't until I saw some of the work that other students created, that I realised there was a lot more to creating an altered image. There are many ways to alter an image, however, the thing they all have in common is composition. What part of this image am I going to alter? After the workshop I decided to do a little bit more research and realised that artists as profound as Salvador Dali have been creating altered images for years. 

This image 'The Mouth in The Back of My Nurse' Is a classic example of an altered image. Dali has created a face amongst an image that is not related.I also realised that altered images do not just have to be images layered on top of each other to create another image, but can be images changed with different medias. For instance, Maurizio Anzeri, an artist I have particularly liked for a few years, alters his images all the time. Anzeri sews into his work, creating a patterned effect onto of the image, he can sometimes do this in a way that makes the face look distorted.

(images extracted from: http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/maurizio_anzeri.htm?section_name=new_britannia)