Subject Reflection

Editorial Project: Plastic Bags

The first editorial project this term was to choose an article from The New York Times. I wanted to take a step away from the politics so chose one more easy going from the Opinion pages. It was called Plastic bag fees make sense, just not to Albany and it gave me inspiration of painting plastic bags with character. I used real plastic bags as my models and sketched them in many different ways with different techniques including pen, paper, glue, collage, copy machine, see through papers and so on. Since I like to practise on layout making I wanted to put together the layout design for this too. I ended up changing the design three times during the rest of the term which ended up in a result that I now am very happy with.

With the important plastic bag theme as subject and with fun and educational process work I really enjoyed this brief.

 

Editorial Collaboration: Boyd Clack

For the second editorial project i chose to collaborate with journalist E. Hayes. He wrote an article about a welsh actor, writer and musician named Boyd Clack. My part was to do illustrations to it and together we did the layout design. The theme of the article was youth, drug use and the movie Twin Town which Clack starred in.

I ended up with two illustrations, one portrait of Clack and one with balloons. The balloons were deflating as a symbolic of the feeling of a afterparty.

Earlier this term I attended a gif making workshop which was really exciting and i could see the use of it. I ended up developing both illustrations into gifs which can be seen in a previous post on my blog.

I am very pleased with the collaboration and I see this as a starting point for collaborating with magazines and journalists in the future. These two editorial projects has opened doors in my mind of thinking.

 

Open Brief: Tales Become Textiles

Pattern making is something I can see myself work with in the future and before this project it was a while ago since I made patterns, that is why I decided to do patterns as the open brief. I set up a goal to make a small collection of three different patterns. I used a Swedish folk tale as a starting point and the tale i chose was Princess Cottongrass (Tuvstarr in Swedish). Written by Helge Kjellin and illustrated by John Bauer in 1913. The original illustrations are absolutely beautiful so I wanted to do something totally different, a new version.

I printed the tale and read it over and over again, highlighted the sentences that gave me inspiration and sketched many different versions of images. This time I narrowed my tools and techniques to fine liner pen and gauche paint and the colours to black and white, this is so I could have a red thread through the project and make everything work together in the ending.

i wanted to direct my patterns to textile and that lead me up to spending time in the workshops to make experiments and samples to show. Even in this project I got to use my new skills from a open house workshop in free machine embroidery.

It was a challenge to keep the soul of the tale in the patterns but it was a fun and experimental project. I am happy with the results but I feel that I have much more do develop in this design so I will go back to it in a short future.

 

Field Reflection

During the second term, I was partnered with Chloe Jago. Together we worked on the Atheletes of the heart which was an abstract animation. I enjoyed the project as it made me work with materials I had not previously worked with and most importantly I learned how to animate. We drew inspiration directly from “Kartell – 15 Years of Transparency”, “Kim Pimmel – https://vimeo.com/2830426”, “KNB121 – Animation History and practices – Assignment 2” and many other video makers. We based our animation around liquids, materials and certain colour themes.

We experimented by using bath liquids, by using stop motion we filmed from different angles and from here we added different liquids and colours of glitter to the formula we started out with. We both edited the footage and this worked really smoothly as we both had the same ideas and worked coherently to produce the final footage.

The final piece which we used consisted of bath bombs being filmed from different side angles but also from above. We both selected a piece of music we thought worked well with what we had visually and from there on in, played the music whilst filming and producing the final piece footage.

Due to technical difficulties on one of our memory sticks, we lost quite a lot of footage. We still had most of the final piece so we continued on trying out different techniques and methods. We made a second video with the footage and felt it worked best for the finished piece.

I find collaborating and team work really rewarding. Using different individual’s strengths for the final project can only be for the better. But I also feel that equal effort and work needs to be put in and this was the case on the animation which I worked on with Chloe. By both putting equal amounts of good work in we achieved a really nice final piece of work.

I feel that the Field project has been a great opportunity for my creative progression. It has enabled me to work with new materials and think about new ways of working. Working in pairs has made me think of potential future collaborations with other creators. In terms of the presentation, I was really sick at the time so I did not get the opportunity to present my work properly in front of the class and teachers which was dissapoining. I did however make the layout of the PowerPoint presentation together with Chloe where we included references and inspirations that we used for the animation. I would have loved to have the opportunity to present and talk about me and Chloe´s work but I was not able to attend.

As an outcome I have some amazing contacts that could definitely be future collaboration partners which I appreciate a lot.

Hanna Peterson

Tales Become Textile

With inspiration taken from the old Swedish tale of Princess Cottongrass (Tuvstarr in Swedish) written by Helge Kjellin and illustrated by John Bauer in 1913, I created a collection of three patterns intended for garments and other textiles.

The story is about a princess that follows a moose into the dark forest to find adventure. Around her neck hangs a golden heart and after dropping it into the mesmerising pool, she sits by the edge for years looking for it. She is under a spell and eventually she becomes a slender plant of cotton grass that can’t move.

My patterns carry different parts of the story and I wanted the pieces to be just as strong individually as they were collectively. In the little booklet on the wall there are three sentences from the story that I focused on.

I find abstract patterns on garments timeless. Having a longer lifetime it will mean they will become less harmful to our planet.

On the wall hang hand painted originals, digitally reworked versions and textile samples. Some of the hand paintings are the ones that I later developed into patterns.

The textile samples are an experiment I made to give a feeling of how the patterns would work on fabric.

Hanna Peterson

Dissertation Proposal Summary

Name: Hanna Peterson
Subject: Illustration

Description
For dissertation proposal I chose to do research around the area of fashion zeitgeist, which can be more specifically described as how garments can specify a particular period of the history or present time. It is all about how the fashion and the current trends can work as a definer of the spirit of our time. My examinations reaches between the human psychologies of nostalgia to important fashion history and brand analytics of our present year of 2017. I also involved studies of sociocultural, political, environmental and psychological aspects. My goal was to keep the subject of “fashion zeitgeist” narrow but to have a wide amount of research to be able to get a fair overview of the topic.

Interpretation
The most meaningful outcomes of my dissertation proposal research was the realisations and my new knowledges of how I could create connections between nostalgia and fashion theory. I collected different authors informations about nostalgia with connections between other subjects such as music, product design and emotions, health and sentimentality. I followed it up by pairing the information about nostalgia together with fashion theory and history, which lead up to some interesting links and associations.

What it seems is that as humans, as much as we like to be a part of the trendy present, we sure do like to take a trip down the memory lane once in a while to get the feeling of nostalgia. In the book Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource (Routledge, C. 2015) I read that nostalgia is triggered by psychological threat or negative affective states, although when it comes to product design, nostalgia has for a long time been used as a strategy by brands with the intention to appeal to costumers by getting closer to their emotions and sentimentality (Vong, K. 2012). Katherine Vong writes that nostalgia brings a pleasurable feeling, so especially when a person is feeling miserable or stressed, an item or advertisement with a nostalgic touch can bring back memories of a better time.

An interesting parallel between the emotional affects from music and the same from garments was made during my research. Woods writes in the book Arts In Society (Woods, M. 2015) about how The Beatles contained and radiated future in both their music and their personalities, even though, they were also full of nostalgia. An example is their song “there are places I’ll remember all my life” which is obviously about taking a trip back to the past in some way. Something that I discuss in my text and that I find very interesting is how music can tell a story and that fashion can too. Clothes can definitely bring nostalgic feelings in similar ways as music can. What it seems is that more people reflect over music and its affects than over the garments.

My knowledges around fashion history have been developed during my research and also my understandings about the fashion developments though the years is much more improved compared to before. I have for example come to understand the very importance that the Victorian corset have had for the evolution of fashion. The enormous amount of years that the Victorian corsets had its lifetime, and how it actually effected people, is something that i truly believe that more people should know about. The dangers about wearing it and perhaps most importantly, that the aspects of the body norms which was pending along with it is an important part of our history and to have the knowledge about that would most likely bring awareness to the body norms of todays society.

Outcome
In the beginning of the project I had a hard time to find a subject that felt interesting and suitable for me and that I additionally would be able to write 4000 words about. But at least when I found my topic, I did not have much trouble about collecting content.

My intention was to collect a wide amount of information around the topic fashion zeitgeist, because I wanted to define what fashion zeitgeist actually can include and also to get a good picture of how the zeitgeist is today and also how it has been in our history. I do feel that I have a lot of good and relevant content, but if there was something I would work more on it is that the content might be experienced as a bit sprawling.

As an upcoming professional illustrator and with my extended interest in fashion I do believe that a wide knowledge of fashion history can contribute to my creations. My goal is to establish a big amount of awareness and understandings of present fashion trends as well as knowledge about the history of fashion.

Having analysed fashion zeitgeist, It become clear that it made me excited and while I was digging around in the subject I realised a lot of possibilities on this theme. First of all what I noticed is that there is a limited amount of research material such as books, articles and other discussions about zeitgeist as a topic. During my research I got to know that fashion theory has not been a respected subject to study for very long. It was as late as in the 1970s that the actually studies of our history of garments started (Steele, V. 2015) and still today the subject does not always have a high status in social communities. Some of my ideas to take the fashion zeitgeist further to the public is to write an article about it, with my dissertation proposal research used as a base for it, and also to make illustrations on the theme as inspiration.

As a next step, I intend to continue with the merge between fashion zeitgeist and the emotions of nostalgia, pair them together even more and end up in projects that I first of all can use my new knowledge in and then perhaps even spread it further to more people.

Hanna Peterson
19 April 2017

Fashion Zeitgeist

Lately I have had some hard times to decide what to write my dissertation proposal about but I have landed in something that feels very inspiring and also useful for my future

My dissertation proposal will be under the theme of Fashion Zeitgeist- which refers to how fashion is defining time epochs, past and present.

I have found books about fashion, psychology and the impact fashion makes on the environment, economic aspects and sociocultural change. And I will make connections between those aspects and the past and present trends.

I want to get a wide perspective of a relatively narrow theme. How is fashion defining the different periods of our history and how is it defining our present? Is it important to feel connected to the present, and how do we show it through what we wear? These are some questions i want to work around and these questions will be the base of my dissertation proposal.

The theme gives me a lot of inspiration and I can see how my research sources will come to use in the future. Also I can see how I can use parts of the upcoming text into an article and also extend the words to illustrations.

Hanna Peterson

Boyd Clack – Editorial

As part two of the Editorial project I chose to do a collaboration with a friend of mine who is a journalist. He wrote the article and I made the illustrations. The layout we made together. We both are very happy with the outcome as well as the collaboration.

Here is GIF versions of my illustrations:

In the pictures I tried to capture the melancholic and closed feeling that can appear in mental illness. The deflated state of mind and the shadow that comes creeping in.

Before I started with my illustrations I put together this collection of pictures which is mood- and color inspiration from the movie Twin Town and my first balloon sketches.

Hanna Peterson

Plastic bags & fees

Yesterday I got some good feedback about the last field project which was Editorial Illustration. Throughout my process I worked with a picture with a lot of details but in the ending I ended up with one much more simple version of it. Both my tutor and classmates claimed that the detailed version had more feeling and interesting elements that goes on well with the article that the illustration is made for. I decided to work more on my detailed version and here is the two finals, both separate images and set in layout.

My first version:

After critique:

 

Hanna Peterson

Research/women

Emma Watson – human rights activist

Picture from The Book Fairies Instagram.

Emma Watson is an world famous actress who takes the opportunity of being famous to use it for something good. Emma started a project called The Book Fairies were she is placing books around in the London underground stations. The reason and the goal with the organisation is to help educate people and also to start a habit of exchanging books instead of piling them up on your shelf after one read, in the same time as some people can not even afford books in the first place. This project has an own Instagram page which makes it accessible to the public. Emma is also an active feminist and once in a while she shows it by leaving books around on the theme of women rights.

Emma and her ongoing project makes me think about how valuable the spotlight is that a famous person has and what an opportunity it is to use that spotlight for something good. Famous people have the privilege of reaching out to a big group of people in a short time, which makes the topic spread rapidly.

Instagram:  bookfairiesworldwide

Link:       https://www.instagram.com/bookfairiesworldwide/

Editorial illustration

This week the editorial illustration project started, which is an very exciting brief that will be useful for my future carrier. My project is anchored to the article “Plastic Bag Fees Make Sense. Just Not to Albany.” posted at The New York Times Opinion Pages in February this year. I chose it because it seemed like an easygoing subject that still include importance.

The introduction workshop was a good start-up for the project. It gave us inspiration to generate loads of sketches and ideas without feeling the pressure of that it has to be done perfectly, but instead putting effort into the ideas.

I also want to mention that I really appreciate the information, tips and talks we already have had in class about our professional futures. That is one thing I have been missing in my university in Sweden, to get some proper suggestions of how to survive after university.

Thank you.