This week consisted of a visit to the Living Museum of the West to interview the infamous Donna Jackson and experimenting with graphic designs to accompany the “VALUES” artwork.
Donna Jackson has a mysterious persona that I am very intrigued by. With an abundance of ingenuity, Donna is one of those people with an impeccably earned creative reputation. She founded the Women’s Circus in 1991, although she is no longer affiliated. At the time, and to this day still, it was erected as a staunch feminist statement in humble retaliation to underrepresented minorities. Donna provided women with a creative and physical outlet, a fairly unique concept for an organisation at the time. She is an innovator to this day therefore having the opportunity to interview someone so inspiring was a great privilege for our group. She also provided historical context, which was something we were missing in our interview trifecta. Donna’s unique personality and take on past events was great to capture as it brought a certain nuance to the interviews. Her answers were thought-provoking yet succinct. She states things so matter-of-a-fact that you’re inclined to trust it as truth. Unfortunately the lapel mic was mistakenly forgotten by the tech men, therefore we relied on the attached mic on the camera. In post we luckily found that there was a fixable amount of white noise.
This week I also started to dig through the hundred of photographs taken last week to narrow down the best for the photographic essays. Whilst I was sifting through and cherry picking I was struck with an idea to pair photographs with the intrinsic values that the circus runs their organisation by; risk, empathy, innovation, inclusion and excellence. With this in mind I chose photographs that I believe best represent these values. Attached below is a preliminary trial:
I started to formulate a graphic design on Adobe Illustrator to further develop this idea. I experimented with shapes and colour schemes, matching distinct colours of the rainbow to each value; for example I associated red with the value of risk. I believe this design added another layer of meaning to the photographs. I experimented with different compositions, opacities and shapes until I chose circles due to their simple symbolism in harmony and unity.
Once the design elements and photographs were chosen, the colour schemes and their accompanying values were paired together. Attached below are the final products:
This week also consisted of composing the WIX website. We added a directory and created a domain. I have begun working on a circus themed design background. Rough edits of Penelope and Devon have been completed, their 30 min interviews cute down to 10 min. We decided on a 3 part interview series, rather than trying to fit the interviews together and weave in each contention. This way all ground is covered effectively.
