What's Your Viewpoint?

For this unit, I have been doing research into magazines and posters aimed at the 18-30 age group. I looked at magazines such as Ray Gun, Vogue, Elle, Wonka Vision, Marie Claire and then started focusing more on environmentally themed magazines such as Organics Recycling, Earth First!, E The Environmental Magazine, and a few others. I also looked at a few posters with environmental themes.

 



Poster

I then went on to look at possibilities for my final design. I thought about different themes/subject matter that I could use for a magazine cover and centrespread and came up with ideas such as fashion/accessories; recycling/environmental stuff; crafts; etc. and did some sketches of what I thought they could look like...

I decided to use the recycling/ environmental stuff for my final design because this is a topic that really interests me. I am always trying to find ways to Reuse and Recycle things (and therefore Reduce waste). For an earlier unit, I reused bottle tops and crisp packets (amongst other things) to make jewellery and found it very interesting. I wanted to continue this area of work and thought a magazine centrespread/main article was the perfect excuse.

I knew that packaging waste was a big problem and thought that making it the topic for the main article and the format for my final magazine would make it even more interesting. I thought about different presentation ideas  such as using a card coffee-cup, or a cardboard box, or a plastic bag, or a bin bag liner, etc.

I decided that I would use a cardboard box that was just sitting under one of the tables in the classroom to present my magazine and thought it would be ironic and appropriate if  it was used to hold an article on packaging waste. It was quite a large box so I had to enlarge everything that I was going to use for it and carefully stick it where I wanted it to be e.g. the magazine title and sub-title; the headings for some of the sections in the magazine such as "How to... make your own Crisp Packet Jewellery"; the picture for the cover; etc.

After some research I found these pictures for the front cover of my magazine.  They both show packaging waste but the top picture was too blurred to use at the scale I needed for  the box/magazine.

 

 

 

For my final, I decided to print my own eco symbols for the sides of the box. This was quite fiddly to get right as it was difficult to judge the size to print off and my first attempt came out too large, but I was successful with my second attempt. I decided to put my first attempt  in my sketchbook as examples of my eco symbols so they didn't go to waste!

These are the symbols I used for my final magazine:

 

 

Overall I found this unit more difficult to research because of the wording in the brief. I felt it was too wordy without getting across what the task actually was. Also having two units to complete within the same week (as well as a class day trip to the Modern Art Gallery in Edinburgh!) was exhausting.

I enjoyed putting the final piece together as recycling/upcycling is a topic that does interest me and I look forward to doing more with shoeboxes, for example using them as shelving which I discovered during my research.

I am very pleased with my final piece because I feel it shows a creative way to reuse packaging which would otherwise be wasted. I am also glad I managed to include a picture of crisp packet jewellery that I made myself as I think it makes my final more personal.

I am looking forward to thinking of other ways to reuse different things.