Electric works Presentation techniques and artist statement

Presentation
I plan to present my pieces on A4 and A3 glossy photo paper, keeping a sence of simplisity with the development, they will be lit using either normal lighting or neon lights depending on how visable the photo is, I am mostly leaning towards just normal lighting since the different neon light colours may disorientate a viewer. They will be mounted on black card and placed in a random order for example A4, A4, A3, A4, and so on. I will be having signs in the building which directs views to the gallery and my neon/futuristic style photos. I will also have arrows on the wall which will guide the view in the right direction.

Artist Statement
The theme for my photos is everyday objects with a neon glow, I wanted to try and give things we see in everyday life a more futuristic feel to them this could be a reference to a possible future where almost everything has some form of neon lighting. But I also want to show that even the most basic of items we use or see can be interesting with alittle help from a good camera and photoshop.

This image has a good example of what I want to do in terms of layout, if you look at the mounted images on the left and right sides you can see they are mounted with neon lights behind them, this is one of the ways I wanted to lay out my work.

This other Image was a possibility, not having any neon lighting behind the images, but the images themselves having a neon theme to them and mounted in a rather standard fasion.

Mockups

From vistaprint I was able to create two promotional items the first been a set of buisness cards and the second been a pen, When i placed the order for these the total cost was fairly cheap and the delivery time was reliable and on time as predicted on the website.

 
 This is my buisness card design, as you can see ive made it so that the wording stands out from the background making it easier to read, my first intention was to have black wording but after testing the look out the wording blended in at the top and bottom of the card.

 This is my pen design if you look carfully you can see my photography name in dark red lettering, this colour seemed the best for the pen due to it been more visable from white, also on the back which you cannot see is my blogger address in the same colour.

Self Promotion Evaluation

Evaluation of my own work

I looked at alot of items which I could place my logo onto such as bumper stickers, key chains, clothing ect, I did finnally place my logo onto two items of clothing, a cap and a hoodie. I chose the hoodie because hoodies in general are popular pretty much everywhere around the world so putting my logo on hoodies would hopefully get me know in no time at all, The cap I chose mainly for when summer arrives, I have seen alot of people wear caps including myself so just like the hoodie hopefully people will take notice of the logo and take alook at my photographs. 

I then went about designing a pen and buisness cards with my logo on, all was well until a small problem came up involving my memory stick not saving my logo because of this I had to make a buisness card using the font types I had availble. Although it wasnt the design I wanted the outcome of the designs were overall good, the wording stood out from the background making them more noticable. 

The audience I would target would be people who'd be interested in Digital art, these are most likely to be under 40 when it comes to age groups. I would advertise around arts colleges, art fairs, Universitys, Art gallerys and places where art supplies are sold. 

The way I got into contact with these Universitys and Art gallerys is through twitter and facebook, the places have there own twitter and facebook pages so that the public can get information on what they offer and where they are based, It was just the case of sending a message to them and waiting for a reply. The various social networks have proven very handy for contacting Uni's, Colleges and art galleries and easier than traveling miles just to get a few details and using networks in general can help me promote myself to a liver audience and at low costs. To make my network consistant I have used the same logo on every website I wish to promote myself on, In the future I plan to link my blogger with facebook so that if I update in blogger it will auto update in facebook making my self promotion alot more interesting.


Evaluating work from others

We went into a group and took alook at each others promotional items, there many items such as mugs, bumper stickers, mouse mat all had a common theme about them, they all had logos which stood out from the background there was some designs which the logo colour would blend in with the item, making the logo difficult to spot at a distance for example one logo colour was dark blue with a black background. Another was the font size used on some of the logos I saw, one such design had small white wording with a black background, there was nothing wrong with the design it was just the font size that spoilt it. There was one item during this presentation which was a goodie bag full with verious other items such as a mug, a pen, a bumper sticker, a box design for a promo CD and buisness cards, the designs on the items were good, the logo stood out on each item, after taking a look through the goodie bag it seems the target audience would be aimed at possibly galleries and art/photography fairs. Dispite the good design and idea I think the idea of a goodie bag would be somwhat expensive, The mug seemed like the most expensive out of all the items, it would be easier to remove the mug but keep all the other items.

Self promotion.

I went to many sites in search of items and clothing to place my logo and other promotional images, here is what I found 

Ill begin with a hat I found on customink.com, the design was good and with my logo added would make a nice promotional item but there was two problems. 
1: I could only buy a certain amount and not just one hat. ($204 for 6 hats minimum)
2: the site only delived within the US.


 

The next item I found were hoodies which would be ideal for my promotional images since alot of people wear hoodies, again I came across a problem when looking it up which was that like the hat I could only buy a certain amount of hoodies, I checked how many and the price and it would be fairly expensive. ($308.28 for 12 minimum)





 The third item I found was simple buisness cards which are fairly cheap and come in sets of 10,20,30 ect.
I added my logo to the cards and the design was pretty basic the prices after I added the design bearly changed at all still maintaining a cheap result.

Feedback 
I presented my findings,designs and prices to the rest of the group and i received some feedback some of them are that the cards may be basic but the fact I choose to use black writing on a white background makes the logo and wording stand out. The hat were a good idea but way overpriced, they suggested I find another source or possibly look up beanie hats for the winter. The hoodie stands out due to the bright colours I selected and that I choose to use a black logo again.

When I presented my work to the class i received good feedback involving my logo, What they liked was that the logo was simple and it stood out from the two examples I showed ( the hat and the hoodie ) I also showed them my buisness card which again was liked due to the simple design and how it stood out from the white background.

CD package ( Self Promo )

The task today was to research several designs for CD packaging, it took me a while to find a couple of images which i liked the look but the problem was when i visited the products website and found out that the prices wernt available to view, to get a price i would have had to email the company and get a quote. 

I didnt go forward with emailing the companys because it may have taken till the end of the lesson to get a reply from them but from looking at the designs of the packaging it looks to be not very expensive but still somthing noticable.

This design caught my eye while I was browsing the google search engine, i was only able to get an image of the design as I mentioned before i could only get a price via emailing the company which may have taken too long for a reply. 

The design i would place on this package would be of blue flames with my logo in the centre and my details at the bottom of my logo, the disk itself would be the same as the package but with red flames insted of blue ones. 

This design is more simple than the one above, it dosent have any extra parts or fetures, its just simply a wallet type CD package. Evan though its design is more simple it still maintains its professional look. Again I was unable to get a price for the pacakge. 

The cover for this design would a mix of flowing colours maybe mostly blues, reds or yellows looking like there moving at speed, my logo would be presented on the front and possibly on the disk itself along with my website and other details in small print in a corner or below my logo.

Heavy Industry

Heavy Industry was the theme for this project, we had to take photos of things related to industry such as factories. What I wanted to do is take photos of several large cylinder containers and several industrial buildings and give them a dark coloured tint similar to what Paul Seawright did on several of his photos.

This photo was one of my first; I used duotones in photoshop in order to get this photo to appear dark red. In duotones I used the colours black and red, red for the overall tint to the photo and the black to add a level of darkness to it. 


I was originally going to have the sky a lot brighter but after looking at the contrast of the sky with the complex I chose to keep the sky how it is.



This is one of my other more favourable photos which I took; once again i used the duotone colours black and red to create this. What I like most about this image is the very darkened top left corner which covered up the containers around the top to make it seem a shadow is forming over them.


When I look at these photos i get the idea that its either a Mars colony from some sci-fi movie or like Im looking through the eyes of the Terminator. 

Image in another Image

This is another post which was some how removed from my blogger.


During the lesson we had to use a image provided then carefully go around the image with the crop tool, once that was done we simple took the image out which we have cropped then place it within another background type image. It worked but when i did it the image i cropped came out black and white evan though the image was in colour. I did ask my tutor as to why it happened but he couldn't figure it out either. 


This screenshot was taken just after i placed the image of the woman into the background image. As you can see the woman has come out black and white instead of in colour.