ONLINE PRESENCE 3
Welcome back,
Before I get started, I would like to thank everyone who has given me support and feedback over last 13 weeks. Your support has given me motivation and assisted my design thinking process.
Now back to business, I have outlined the stages of my Digital Artefact (DA) below and the key learning moments that have occurred in order to get to this final stage of making media. These include ideating, retyping and making.
Short DA Recap
Over the last 13 weeks, I have been rapidly ideating, prototyping, testing, failing and making vector illustrations in relation to my Digital Artefact (DA) task. My DA begun with a daily drawing challenge, where I would post my daily sketches onto social utilities, such as Instagram.
I developed this project as I wished to create an online portfolio and presence for my artworks, while gaining an audience. However, this was not Fast, Inexpensive, simple and tiny (FIST) due to the style of the works as I was creating detailed pencil drawings. This practice was time consuming by nature. Thus, I decided to alter my DA to digital illustrations and building a portfolio online to display these works.
Ideating or Failing? Why not both!
I spent most of the first weeks of my DA conceptualising ideas, testing them and then problem-solving issues as they frequently occurred. This was achieved by thinking about new ideas, observing viewer interactions and beginning the DA early to allow for FEFO (Fail Early, Fail Often). Some of these iterations include but not limited to:
- DA Concept, from a daily drawing challenge to the present vector illustrations.
- Utilities, conceptualising the best platforms to use and researching audience engagement.
- Branding, ‘Amelia’s Daily Drawing’ to ‘Amelia Illustrations’, also known as ARJ (Amelia Rose Johnston).
- Logo iterations and changes.
- Art style and form.
The new style
Making vector illustrations were a lot quicker than that of hand drawn images- I used Adobe Illustrator to create my works. This software allowed me to easily edit mistakes out and to change colours simple in a few seconds. Therefore, I was able to work back on an image quickly if changes needed to be made. I would describe this new style characterized by big, bold shapes, sweeping lines, and strong colours that represent pop-culture subjects and themes.
Beautiful Beta
From the issues that occurred during the iteration phase, I was able to redesign my DA to target my intended audience better and have more appealing content. These were then promoted on a multitude of social media platforms to test for the best interactions and audience reach. Due to this testing, I discovered that Reddit was beneficial to my DA, which was a utility I originally had not considered. This discovery catalysed my usage of Reddit as a utility because I am able to target an audience group more clearly. As my popular culture inspired works can be posted within specific fan communities that will interact and hopefully continue to engage with my posts.
“Testing your prototypes with users allows you to gather feedback and correct your assumptions. You need the testing stage to evaluate your prototypes- it is the natural endpoint of prototyping” (Digital Artefacts: Testing 2019)
Based on my trial and error process and research on audience interactions, I decided to make Instagram, Reddit and Twitter the DA utilities. These platforms have been more beneficial to my DA online presences as my DA’s audience has gradually grown and have been regally commenting on my designs. Also, in this stage I began designing my own personal website to promote my illustrations on.
Prototyping like a Pro?
My understanding of prototyping can be explained as the experimental model of an idea, which includes the process of making, breaking and remaking. For example, having a drawing idea, sketching it, realising the faults and then re-drawing the subject to establish higher quality.
I watched the Rapid Prototyping 1 of 3: Sketching & Paper Prototyping video by the Google team to understand successful prototyping methods used by Google. In this video there are three methods of prototyping, the first-sketching, second – paper, and finally- digital. This was helpful as I used both the sketching and digital methods to develop my DA website wireframes.
During this process, I soon realised my website layout had issues that I had to resolve by remaking the design, the final product was made in the phase 3 of the DA- Making.
Making Media
Enough said from past stages! Let’s move forward and onto the Making phase-
I really enjoyed this stage as I could use my research and experiments from past weeks to inform recent posts with what works and what does not.
A clear example of this was my change in illustration subject from objects and animals to pop-culture figures. By targeting specific fan bases from tv shows and movies was able to target niche audience and cater for their interests and needs. In designing works for niche audiences, I was able to catalyse conversation and interest. Due to this unexpected outcome, I have continued to use pop culture inspired subjects.
“I like to leave the faces blank as the simplest of forms can often be decoded and understood universally. With any luck, this will force the viewer to imagine the character and link them to their TV show or movie.” -ARJ
I have recently created a website for my DA, ‘ARJ’. I chose to create this as I wanted one platform that my viewers could visit to be more informed about my latest illustration works, while being a home for my other media accounts that viewers could easily access. As this is a recent addition, I have not yet got enough data to see the websites impacts (this goes to show even in the last stages there can still be changes!).
In October, I worked in partnership with CHÀE Magazine by creating Halloween inspired Illustrations for their Spooky Spring edition. The collaboration was beneficial as we were able to promote each other’s DA and reach new audiences. This was a didactic lesson as pooling resources between two tasks can boost online presences and audience interactions with little work (FIST).
Also, in the theme of Halloween I created contentment (illustration artworks and a video) that celebrated the festive season. I aimed to expand my audience more and create more interest in my utilities through the hype of Halloween.
This was somewhat successful as post that were posted leading up to Halloween had more interactions than that of the Halloween Illustrations posted on the day.
This may be because the older post has had more time for interaction, but I am not certain as it was a bit hit and miss. However, I haven’t counted this as a fail as the interactions were still in line to the average of previous post, I just had my hopes up for more.
Future Plans
Now that I have learnt to create vector illustrations- a skill I acquired during this task- I hope to monetise this project over the summer and create an Etsy account. I had not created one during my DA task as I wished to build up a following first, to better understand my viewers inserts. With this information I can potentially market my DA as a product in the future and print off the illustrations as artworks, cards, bookmarks etc. I might even continue this into next year’s DA!
To conclude, my Illustration DA has strengthened my design thinking and has developed my prototyping skills. I hope to continue my illustration portfolio DA in the future as I believe I have built a foundation for future media curation. This DA has a lot of potential, that I hope to further test out and grow over time.
Thanks for the read,
Millie.J
Millie Captions 
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