Blog 3- Project outcomes and personal development reflection
After six weeks of the project, we completed our moving image. It ended up being five different gifs for Lazy Oaf’s Instagram pages. Each gif is 0.3 seconds long and features the members of the group in three different images following the same aesthetic. Each gif has a different colour background and follows Lazy Oaf’s vision, colourful, minimalistic, and fun. While we were developing the gifs, we thought it would be nice to include captions that relate to the name of the charity “Time to Change”. Therefore, we created the following statements, “Time to Talk”, “Time to Listen”, “Time to Think” and “Time to Act”. We also included graphics, which resemble Lazy Oaf’s patterns. This was done with the purpose of making them more “Instagramable”.
The captions made the gifs more relevant to the collaboration, as it related to the necessity of talking, listening, thinking, and acting, in order to feel better with ourselves. Doing these actions can also help the people around you feel better. All statements are using the imperative, imposing that the audience should take part in the action. Furthermore, through the captions, the theme of Social Responsibility, which is the core of the brand’s collaboration with the charity, is expressed. The themes of diversity and sustainability are not visible at the first instance, but if the audience takes time to contemplate the moving image it will realize that the students represented on the images are diverse in the way of how they approach the problem of mental health, which is a serious issue among young adults. The theme of sustainability can also be identified after some thought, in relation to how the content was produced.
This project thought me several things. First of all, it showed me the importance of organizing myself and the group schedule in order to complete a given task. If we would not have arranged weekly meetings and kept up to date with our tasks, we would not be able to finish on time. Working with technologies like, photoshop and gifs, that I was not very familiar with, helped me develop my creative skills, which will be fundamental in my future career. Most importantly, it thought me that creativity can still bloom under restrictions. In this case, due to the lockdown, we had to work with fear resources and limitations, but this did not hinder our final outcome.
From my previous group experiences, I always felt like they hinder the outcome and that if I would have worked by myself the result would have been better. However, this project showed me that if from the beginning all the members contribute to the creation of the concept, the group work will only boost creativity. Each member came from a different course; therefore, more ideas were put into it. I felt that we manage to combine all the ideas in a balanced way. For these reasons, pleased with the result and with my personal development.