Studio_final Proj

Apr.9

I started off with this idea in mind that Consumerism is a society where the people purchase for the reason of purchase, for , and for ; in such system, people identify themselves through tags and brands, or the substances they purchase. I wanted to do a illustration book, not for children, but for we boring, brain-less, grown-ups. With mocks on how we define ourselves, I wish to evoke people from this endless chasing for our own tail and forgetting that we have souls. Our soul shouldn’t be a pile-up consumer goods. And the topic I’ve been researching in seminar class is more specified into the indie bookstore brand “Strand”, how it developed itself into a consumer product, but no longer a intellectual product, straying away from the path of knowledge.

So I think I’m having a few pages of this poetic lines:

I’m 4379681, 26 years old, male, 174cm, 71kg, (graphic: bedroom scene, organised)

I love books (graphic: (bed-side table) different kinds of lamps, google home, no book)

I love nature (graphic: (table) pots but one plant, whole foods, trader joe’s, ins food porn, balance water)

I believe life should be simple, (graphic: desk:apple product, beats headphone, Ikea, Muji)

I want to be an interesting person who dare to speak out who I am, (graphic: (closet mirror) clothes, brands)

I trust that people still think of each other, (graphic: (train) everyone head down on phones, friends on phone, not surrounding)

I work hard (graphic: (office) half a head shown per block)

I love my girlfriend (graphic: (amazon cart) roses, bag, lipstick, necklace)

I’ve been living 26 years 3 months 15 days. I think there might be other people who is 26, and love books, nature, family, work hard, and believe in simple life and trust (graphic: look up from phone)

But I’m unique (graphic: 1 in 5)

I’m unique (graphic: in in 20)

I’m unique. Why … I don’t know (graphic: 1 in 100)

I’m 4379681. (graphic: grey)

I think as for the material, since I want to create a rather dark story about someone so rigid, I should be using photoshop drawing, thus I can have perfect lines and shapes, and at the end be printed out on colour paper, and bind into a book form. I’ll be making the page size in a perfect square, also to add into the rigidness quality.

 

Apr. 23

From the feedback I got today, I’m going to keep working on the picture book, I only had the text, that’s why my classmates do not really understand what I’m talking about, since the text and graphic cannot be viewed together, but it’s said that picture book as medium is pretty efficient in bringing the contrast. But the text might be too obvious. I think I’ll work on the image first, but then try to figure out how I can make the content more metaphoric.

 

Apr.30

In this week I finished all the imageries and decided to take a risky step: reducing the text to one word per page.

Bryan asked me to do something out of the traditional way, like printing, instead of on paper, but on acrylic board or stone, mocking the temporarily of the commercial products, I thought of several options that could do:

  1. Plastic bag, plastic is permanent, tightly related to consumerism, and it would give the book (would it still be a book then?) a cheap feeling. And I’ve been keeping all the plastic bags I got from shopping. The problem is that I don’t know how I could print the images onto the bags.
  2. On the back of receipts. It has the exactly same effect as plastic bags. But I couldn’t find that many receipts at the same time.

So I think since I cannot innovate on the material perspective, then I’ll have to change the content. While I still like the graphic – I think my design of the character greatly fits the concept by being simple and hollow, and I think the barely saturated palette adds onto the depressing mood.

Can I change the length of it then? Making it shorter like a 20 pages long book with only 5 pages of content, to mock that the emptiness of Consumerism or making the pages repeat over and over again so that the tedious and confusing length gives the reader a anxious feeling or even anger, maybe.

But to be environmentally friendly, I don’t want to waste that many paper, and also doing long length has a risk of making the reader misunderstand this by “there’s no real useful content in a modern day book.”

So I cut the words down. Making there 1 word per page in wish that this would create strong contrast.

STUDIO_FINAL#2-12861cl

 

May.7.

Most of the feedback I got on class is about the binding and paper. I tried several times to get the right layout, and I had some extra pages to add on in order for the pages to work. So the pre and after are the play around one for me. The “for: ME” on the front  page indicates that in adults in consumerism has themselves taking 90% of their mind. The “this is a thought-free product” is mocking the GMO free, radiant free products which writes these to attract consumer, so for entertainment, the less thought required the better.

May.15.

The presentation was done!Personally I think it was great, because I spoke a lot more fluently than I did during all my practices, I managed to say a lot more than what I wrote down on my note – seems like my thought or idea flows better than when I try to organise them. But it is also because I got my ideas all spoken out, I find that this project is not what I wanted to talk about, it’s twisted from what was in my mind, both Studio and Seminar. I wrote that I wanted to say the work is about how people no longer reads while believing that they do, taking the product they consume as their identity. But what I began with in the beginning of the semester and during my reading of Amusing Ourselves to Death, what I wanted to research was really just what are the good and bad effects of Consumerism as the basic mindset of everything make. For the bad, people lose uniqueness chasing the same product and anxious about tagging themselves. On the other hand, focusing on the material life would make the society more stable. But the feedback Bryan gave me was that it was too cynical, everyone he knows read the books they buy. I think maybe I was having a too narrow perspective. Because the examples I have for not reading are all friends and family around my age or younger, I totally did not investigate into the world outside my own.

I think during the process the biggest challenge is just put all my messy ideas together, as I described above. And I still think I need to work on that even after this project is over. And time management is definitely a shortboard for me because I really loved this topic and wanted to know a lot more about it for myself, for my own understanding of this society, I couldn’t stop reading the reference books, all my friends tells me to just flip through it, while I just thought everything’s so important that I might miss something. While even now, I still think I lack something to fully understand Consumerism, maybe because I’m still a student not having my own income.

If I could time travel, I would still stick to this traditional material to convince that this is any book you can find. But I would keep up more with time. But I feel like book is really just a hard topic, if I want to do the topic that I could fully understand, I think I would stick to the original one of apple (grocery).

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