Throughout this exhibition my main role has been documentation and social media. I really enjoyed doing social media in the last exhibition and I felt that although I did enjoy it, I didn't get much of say of how to lay things out or the style in which we post, so being the only one managing the social media has allowed me to be more creative and open with my skills and online curation.
For the instagram I decided to keep to the idea of posting in three's and I liked the idea of having grids of images with each grid being blocked off by graphics which either advertise the show or the events coming up. For the colour scheme I decided to keep it black and white to keep with the theme of the initial poster and I liked the ease it gave when editing photographs as well as the more academic feel it gave to the page, which is on brand with the idea of the learning curve and involvement of staff.
I started with posting an info graphic with the basic info from the poster, with photographs of my notebook showing the initial planning notes for the show. I felt that this would be good for gaining some initial interest. After posting the rest of the content, these initial posts didn't look as effective as they could have been, but this has been a learning curve and I can see what kind of posts work better and which don't. I then posted documentation of the construction of the model as additional promo content.
I then started to develop a series on the instagram page which involved me doing mini bios of the staff members involved in the show as I felt this would make the page look a little more professional and allowed me to develop my professional social media skills. It was also interesting learning something new about each of the tutors while doing this! I made sure to post these in the centre, with images of the posters in situ again to help build up interest and get people to be active in seeking out information about the show.
As well as having the staff bio series, I also had to create info graphics that would publicise information on the events as well as the show. This has allowed me to develop and strengthen my skills is using Photoshop, as well as developing more of an eye with graphic marketing and branding. For the infographics I made sure to use the same black and white colour scheme as the original poster, and used the same font. I wanted to make sure that these infographics were similar to digital posters and were appropriate to what they were advertising.
I made sure to post the infographics to separate each section of the images posted. For example, I would post a grid of 9 images of the set up, then post 3 graphic images, and then post another 9 images of the opening night and so on. I thought that this would look professional, as well as demonstrating my ability to curate imagery on a social media platform as well as curating art work in a gallery.
As well as the infographics, I also created the logo using the curve from the poster and adding the exhibition title, as well as creating the facebook banner by combining two parts of the logo that I had divided into 9 sections. The banner was difficult to get right as I was struggling to find a section of the logo that would work well with the curve section and not have a clear boundary line that was really obvious. Eventually I managed to get it so that the line between the two images was difficult to see and it looked like one big image. This process did force me to learn different techniques to blend and blur images which I think will be useful in the future.
The imagery used in-between the infographics are photographs that I took with my Canon 4000D camera. I've always had an interest in photography and for this exhibition I did want to have a hand in documentation for the first time, and documented the install process as well as the initial curation process. I have really enjoyed getting back into my photography roots and I think this is something that I might look into within my own practice going forward. I also enjoyed editing the photographs and cropping them down to the size of an instagram image. I definitely think I need to incorporate these skills into my own practice for future career prospects as well as developing my practice further.
Overall, I'm happy with how I managed the social media of the exhibition this time, especially as I was doing most of the graphics, bar the poster, on my own. I do think that I want to carry on taking photographs and potentially developing my own social media pages for my practice. I do think that fine art photography is definitely something that I want to explore further within my work and I think it will help to add context and shape the reading of my works. I think I need to plan out how and what to document, and to start to sketch out a theme.