BA3b: Degree Show Piece Developed....

After working on my digital prints and screen prints, as well as my embroidered fleeces, I decided to develop my degree show piece further and change what I proposed to show. I really liked my screen prints and how they demonstrated all of the elements that I wanted to demonstrate really successfully. I therefore decided to showcase these instead of my desk and chair idea. I felt that having these and the office set up with my fleeces would be too much, and felt that these prints needed to be showcased in Degree Show because of how successful they are as standalone pieces.

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After much discussion with my tutors as well as brainstorming and creating digital collages experimenting with different compositions, I came to the decision to having a wall space as opposed to a floor space. We found a space in PS2, which is a large wall space, and I'm really happy with the amount of space I have. It allows me to really explore different ways of showing my prints, as well as giving me the option to display more things potentially.

I originally had the idea of showcasing all 12 of my screen prints in a grid like fashion across the wall, with my fleeces potentially hung up at either the end of the wall to represent the end of a long day at work. I really liked this idea initially as I did love these prints, and felt that I could still incorporate my fleeces which were the starting point of this unit. However, I was still toying with the idea of possibly having digital prints in there instead as I felt the colours were stronger and you could really see the logo elements clearer in these prints in contrast to my screen prints.

After much research and experimenting, I came to the idea of potentially creating large scale posters in the same design as my digital prints, with text going across the page, highlighting how I felt working in this specific workplace, and how I was treated in this workplace. I was inspired by my experience in working in the retail industry and how we use large scale posters to push certain products, offers or seasonal products. I decided to design 3 A1 sized posters using the same colour theme and text used in my smaller A3 prints, and ordered 2 to see what they looked like. I sourced these from Vistaprint as I wanted the more commercial feel to the posters, as opposed to the more graphic style from the design studio. I also felt that is was interesting to go through the process of having something made for you specifically to order, and is something that I may end up doing in the future.

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After receiving the 2 posters that I first ordered, I really liked the print and it worked really well. I do think I might buy an A0 size just to see how I can increase the impact of the piece, but overall Im happy with how these posters look. I'm really happy with this idea an I think having these spread out across a wall space will easily resemble that of a shop window, and I think this really further establishes the theme of the workplace and the elements of a retail job that I'm trying to get across. I do think I will try and get my fleeces shown as well, and I think I will look into getting some single coat hooks and experimenting with how they look alongside my posters.

Overall I'm really happy with how the posters look, as well as the idea of having wall based work. I think these are the stronger pieces and I do think that the office set up, all though was an interesting idea, I feel would have been too much, and I think that these prints really encompass all of the elements that I wanted to explore and demonstrate, and successful in capturing my concepts and themes of workplace harassment and raising awareness of this topic. I think that the next steps is to continue to experiment with composition and to continue to do digital collages and experiment with different ideas and placements of my pieces so I have a good idea of how I want it to look come show install.