Blog 3- Project Outcome: Fashion Activism
During the Fashion Activism and Creative Direction project brief, we were set the task in groups to make a moving image campaign for a brand’s (Nubian Skin) new collection. Initially, we had an abundance of ideas including making a short film but due to the unprecedented circumstances that were thrusted upon us, we had to reevaluate.
With only digital forms of contact at our disposal, my group spent a lot of time on video calls thinking about a new way in which we could communicate a fresher image for nude underwear brand aimed at women of colour, Nubian Skin. Frederique had seen a trend of supermodels doing FaceTime photoshoots and this became our main inspiration: to do a photoshoot with females of colour that showed them being comfortable in their own skin. This was ideal as it perfectly aimed at the brand’s digital native target consumer. With the plan in mind, we split to take on differing areas of research so we could put together a video made up of pictures to music that suited the audience. Sally made a moodpboard for the general aesthetic of the brand, Leshaun helped us understand the brand’s positioning so we knew what sort of campaigns competitors were making, Frederique analyses FaceTime photoshoots, Aarushi looked at appropriate music for the video (as his would bring it all together) and I took the pictures and made the final project.
Conveniently we had Leshaun in our group, a gorgeous black female who fit Nubian Skin’s demographic, that we could use for a FaceTime photoshoot. However, we wanted more diversity and I was lucky enough to be living with my boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend (Lalli) who is of Pakistani descent and willing to be involved. I had noticed that, although Nubian Skin aims at women of colour, the only women you can see on their social media and website are black. With diversity being one of the main themes of the Better Lives project, I thought Lalli was the perfect model to use as she allows the brand to open up to a wider audience.
The problem with having to work solely on my one computer and no where else was that I had to completely depend on it to not have any technical issues- something I did face. I intended to use editing software to make a video out of the images but my Mac proved to be unreliable and so I had to think of another way to use the pictures we had taken. When you take photos on FaceTime, they save as ‘live’, meaning they have movement, I was able to use this to my advantage. From our research of the brand’s social media presence and campaigns by other brands, I decided that a GIF made for Instagram would be ideal and a fun, short piece of imagery. I ended up turning the live photos into gifs, we music over them and Nubian Skin’s slogan of ‘A different kind of nude’, to which I added ‘A confident kind of you’ to. The GIF is completely versatile too in the way that it could be put on all forms of social media platforms.
On the whole, I found this project very interesting considering the unexpected turn that it took. An advantage of being in a group to take on this project, meant that we had multiple ideas and workload was able to be shared. I learnt to think on my feet by devising a contingency plan in response to my inability to edit how I originally planned. Our final product was also able to relate the brand to one of the major Better Lives themes of Diversity.