The aim of this project was to create an
online forecasting space for the public in the form of a magazine that explores
the upcoming hair and beauty trends for the season ahead. The online
magazine combines high fashion catwalk imagery as well as some of my own
interpretations of future trends to bring together an overview of what can be
expected within the beauty industry in the season to come.
Throughout the production of my final
major project, I have grown as a creative practitioner and developed skills in
multiple areas that I would not have comprehended before starting the
project. This project has allowed me to create an online space that
explores the future of hair and beauty, through which was possible with extensive
research and evaluating, henceforth introducing The Beauty Prophecy.
The final output of this project - an
interactive, online, forecasting magazine. The title The Beauty
Prophecy was chosen to represent the element of forecasting in the
magazine, as ‘prophecy’ means ‘a prediction that will happen in the
future’. Creating the online magazine single-handedly in three months has
been an extremely ambitious and challenging task. I knew that it would be
tough and a lot of work, however I wanted to challenge myself, which the
production of this project definitely has done. From organising
photoshoots and trying to find a willing team, to constructing the website for
my online space, the production process has not been an easy one, especially as
I have done a lot of it by myself due to having been let down by a lot of
people.
Through undertaking research, I found that
it helped me to gain a good background understanding of my concept and what
should be expected of the online magazine. I began my project by researching
into current forecasts for Autumn Winter 16, as well as looking at the catwalk
shows that took place in February. I found that this helped and inspired
me, because trends that I had intended to forecast in my magazine had also been
seen on the catwalks, backing up my ideas.
The difference between my trends and those from the catwalk is the idea
behind them. For my forecasting
magazine, I began by distinguishing an overall trend theme that would run
behind and support the creative make-up and hair ideas that I devised.
Successes within my project would have to
be the majority of the photoshoots that I undertook to go on my website. Overall I did seven photoshoots and two still
life photoshoots, however not all of them made the cut for the final website. Each set of images that was created were good
and as I had hoped them to be, however when it came to putting the whole
magazine together, not all of them fitted together nicely like I had expected
them to. Out of the seven photoshoots
for the different looks, I only ended up using five image ranges. This is because some of the models were a bit
awkward in front of the camera, which is something that I should make sure for
in the future when I am organising photoshoots.
Also, there were only a few small shots from my still life imagery that
I was able to use in my magazine, due to the pictures being quite dark in a lot
of them. I think that this was because I
had been let down by my photographer and so had to shoot the products by
myself, and I had never shot still life before.
At the time I thought that I was doing well, until I got home and looked
at the images in a larger format on my laptop.
This showed up a lot of errors in lighting and positioning of the camera
when trying to shoot.
Although there have been some positives in
the outcome of creating my magazine, there have also been a lot of things that
could have been done better and with more time to spare, which would have
resulted in a better final outcome of my project. Key points of production that stand out to me
for improvement are; sticking to my time schedule with better organisation,
having reliable team members to help me out with my project, and being sure to
achieve everything that I set out to do in the first place.
My organisation is usually not great, but
throughout the production of this project it has been even worse than
usual. This can be put down to a number
of things, but in my opinion the main reason for me falling so behind so
quickly was because dissertation was still ongoing when I started this
project. I also feel that having the
reflective blog alongside the major project has been overwhelming, as it is
almost like having two projects at once.
I found that once I was slightly behind with my work, trying to catch up
got harder and harder as the weeks went on, but my organisation is something
that I am trying to improve on.
Similarly to this, I was unable to achieve everything that I had set out
to do, due to my lack of organisation.
Examples of missing elements from my project would be the project social
media platforms and a page from my website.
Alternatively, trying to organise a team
to help me on specific dates has been really difficult. I have been let down my numerous potential
models, and the majority of my imagery has been shot by myself as I have not
been able to find reliable, dedicated photographers. However because of this, I do feel that I
have learnt a lot about photography since the start of this project, and I feel
a lot more confident taking photos now.
This said, I would still prefer to have the help of a photographer in
the future, because they’re a lot more knowledgeable than I am.
The most challenging stage of the project
was producing and developing the website that would hold my online
magazine. Originally I tried to get the
help of a web designer because I thought that this would help to make my site
look more professional. When my
contacting calls did not receive any response, I seeked John’s help with Adobe
Muse. Although Muse has created a lot of
boundaries when it came to creating my website, I am proud that I managed to do
it by myself, along with some of John’s help.
One of the main problems that I had with Muse was trying to get the navigation
menu to scroll with the page as the reader scrolls through the website. This was so frustrating as it was one of the
key features that I wanted to be able to make the website’s pages easily
accessible at all times for the viewer.
I had planned to give up and just deal with the fact that my menu was
not going to scroll with the page, when John found the solution. It turned out that I needed to have a fixed
width in the version of Muse that I had downloaded, but when we changed the
width settings it still did not work due to a glitch in my system. We discovered that the sticky menu worked if
we created a new website plan, so I transferred everything that I had already
done into a new document. This was not ideal,
but it meant that I could have my desired scrolling menu, and I am very pleased
that I made the decision to do so.
Further improvements could have been made
to The Beauty Prophecy, had I allowed
myself more time to do so. I feel that
the content of my magazine could have been a lot more detailed and that there
could have been a lot more to it.
Although I am happy with what I have managed to produce, I just wish
that I had produced more content, which is something that I’d like to
explore. As I am doing a Masters Degree
next year, I think that this would be the perfect opportunity for me to
continue to work on The Beauty Prophecy,
by creating further issues and making the improvements that I wish I had
allowed myself the time to do originally.
