Art Direction

As Art Direction is my speciality I want to be the brains behind the amalgamation and the harmonious display of every element in my inspiration/trend book. I visualised a vast amount of my magazine being made up of a photo shoot styled in Sport Luxe whilst integrating my mechanical and futuristic themes. The model I selected was very petite with a very striking face with a strong jaw line that I thought would work well in the shoot. I originally wanted the location to be in a metal scrape yard, however I was prohibited to enter the yard let a lone have a photo shoot in it due to health and safety. Therefore I decided to have it on the roof top terrace at Manchester School of Art, which worked to my advantage due to the silver-matte backdrop and the black geometrical structured chairs reinforcing my futuristic theme. 

I researched certain poses I wanted my model to mimic and they were very successful. I wanted to make the overall style quite simple and predominantly use white, as I wasn’t sure if I wanted to displace anything onto the garments during the editing process. I kept her make up minimal and used white eyeliner and silver/gold eyeliner on her lips, which are both on trend. 

(Haunted Barque Editorial) 


Due to this shoot being so successful I wanted to do another one but with a male model to contrast with the female shoot and possibly edit them into each other’s shoots. I found a male model that I felt would complement and contrast with my female model. I used a similar look in this shoot mainly being influenced by Sport Luxe however bringing in some metallic items to accentuate the futuristic theme. The hardest part of the whole photo shoot process was selecting the images that I could move forward into my book and which ones would work well in a layout.

Creating HUMANOID

I wanted to develop my concept further therefore I created the title HUMANOID combining human and android, giving my concept life. In moving it forward I decided to seek inspiration from ‘pinterest’ to see what other magazines had done with futuristic spreads. Making my concept as current as possible, as I would like to end up with an inspiration/trend Magazine as my final outcome. I decided the current trend that I wanted to use as inspiration was Sport Luxe. It seems the fashion world has integrated sport brands such as Adidas and Nike into current fashion trends making them marketable for everyone. 

(pin interest Fashercise)

An element of the human body I believed I could focus on and make more futuristic is the face, experimenting with creating a mask or eye wear that reflected the viewer. Similar to Alexander MQueen eyewear from his 2012 collection.

(Alexander MQueen eye wear 2012)

In developing a mask/eyewear I experimented with tin foil on the face creating a mask by moulding the foil onto the face to get a feel of the features. I looked at the fine artist Dominic Wilcox because he created really interesting sculptures of an old model of his face with tin foil.Once again I feel my photo shoot of tin foil wrapped around the face of my model is more development for the project, because I think these images could later inform my photo shoots and make me consider using reflective surface.
(Dominic Wilcox)

(Dominic Wilcox)

                                                                                                

                                                                                                                                              

Developing Imagery

Creating primary images from which I could develop my concept from, I thought I would start with different objects that would reflect my themes of futuristic and mechanical. I achieved this by breaking up a VCR and photographing a metal flour whisk up close so that it resembled an air vent fan. By photographing these different textures I created a good base to develop my themes and began to combine them with some architectural structures that I felt were futuristic. I wanted my style to develop and mature organically and I believe that the Future and the Mechanical are the natural progression from my practise unit 'Coding'. I wanted to be linked to spreads and trends that I have seen in current Magazines such as VOGUE, F. TAPE, FLAUNT and MUSE. The fashion industry is more interested in the unknown due to its ambiguity, no one can predict what fashion will be like in 50 years.

(VOGUE, AUG:2013)

I wanted to develop and push the images I produced further. Some positive feedback came from my practise Unit when I projected images on to a figure so that I could see how they looked on the body in a 3-D format developing my concept. I did this by projecting these images on to both a male and female figure to see which worked best. Some of the images were very successful, however they felt more developmental and therefore are not going to feature in my final Magazine. However this process of selecting images that work and those that do not is very key to my practise as an Art Director.