Times Up & Me Too - purpose & context

While researching the current spate of revelations in Hollywood, it's been good to see the amount of positivity arising around the situation, especially in movements like Me Too and Times Up. The main thing I find inspiring about these movements is that they are positively feminist, something that the internet in general largely misunderstands. A lot of people see feminism as something that threatens masculinity, and that feminists want to be, or see themselves as, superior to men. That isn't the point of feminism, the point of feminism is equality. Feminism says that no one of any gender/sex should be above anyone else for any reason, that everyone is equal. So whenever someone is surprised at a man for being a feminist, it's largely because they misunderstand the meaning of what feminism is.
In this same vein, the #MeToo and Times Up movement really speak a positive message to me because they are focused entirely on equality. It isn't as if you have to be a woman to be a member of either of these groups, or that women have an authority over the groups. The members are equally comprised of men and women without discrimination, unified in support of those sexually abused in the industry.

In relation to my practice, and more specifically, the zine I’ve been developing, it is refreshing to see movements like this. Because this issue isn't something that directly affects me (and sexual misconduct from a woman's perspective isn't something that I’ll never directly experience or fully understand, purely because Im not a woman), I was conscious that it might not be my place to make this work or say the things I want to say with it. But seeing these movements taking place has shown me that just because this isn't something that has happened to me, doesn't mean I can't talk about it and respond to it.

Working on this has been a really interesting learning process for me and has helped me to adapt my work to situations I wouldn’t usually approach within my practice.

Twin Shadow ft. Haim - Saturdays

• Recommended Listening: Twin Shadow ft. HAIM - Saturdays
  
  Combining hand drawn elements with digital block colour is my preferred way of working at the moment. I think the solid line contrasted with the colours works well to convey a simple and direct message in an illustration like this one.
  The romantic and retro aesthetic of the song communicates a sort of happy naivety, and I thought that approaching this from a perspective of youth was the best way to reflect these feelings visually.
  The idea of making a mixtape for someone is something I would consider a classic romantic gesture, as it's a simple thing but clearly shows that it's taken time and consideration, and I wanted to get that across here. I wanted the cassette to be the only heavily coloured object in the frame, to accentuate it's importance in the narrative of the illustration. The hands I left without colour because the main thing I want the viewer to focus on is the gesture itself of someone giving the tape to someone else, rather than who the people actually are.

Dream Wife - Fire

Recommended Listening: Dream Wife - Fire

For this cover, I tried to find a way of illustrating the band without explicitly illustrating the band, by spending ages making portraits of them or drawing them as full fledged characters or anything like that, as thats something I would probably have leant on in the past.
The band Dream Wife is comprised of three women, so I wanted that element to be present in the design. While listening to the song I thought of the three fates of Greek Mythology, because of the way the three women seem to share a single voice between them, in an almost eerie way. I thought the defining features of these mythological characters would be either their shared eyeball or their hands, that were used to draw out the thread of mortal lives and cut them with scissors to measure people’s lifespan.

Haim - surprise competition brief

Create a poster designed to be sold at HAIM’s gig - Red Rocks, Colorado - May 28th
Communicate the bands sound

Their image? - don't focus on portraits
Instrumental, focus the piece of music - percussion and instruments, not on lyrics - could become too specific and alienate a certain audience

Themes! Work! Change!

The itsnicethat brief has given me a solid kick towards visualising this zine in a specific context. I think it should be linked to feminism as that’s something I often find coming up in my research but never properly coming through in my work. The idea of equal representation for women, especially in music and films, has always been something I’ve found myself very aware of, mostly because I don’t understand how in a modern society the misrepresentation and sexism is still so prevalent.

This has all been at the forefront of my mind with the almost weekly revelations about sexual misconduct in Hollywood. While it isn’t something that directly affects me, that makes me want to make work in response to it even more. I think that if I only make work that relates to me or my life specifically, my practice will just stagnate, so I’m conscious that I want to branch out into different topics moving forward.

Response to ItsNiceThat brief - International Women's Day

Having worked on early roughs for my zine based around the roles of Laura Dern, I found it quite organic to adapt one of these ideas into a response for this brief. From the get go I was sure I wanted to use the image of Dr Ellie Sattler from Jurassic Park, as I’ve always seen that character as a great and under appreciated female icon in a largely male dominated franchise. She is never made into the damsel, she doesn’t have to depend on the men of the story to teach her anything or patronise her. But she’s often forgotten because she never runs around with bravado in front of the T Rex or has as many quotable lines as Jeff Goldblum’s character.

But since being young she’s always been my favourite character in Jurassic Park, I suppose because above all she’s equal to the men in the story, and there is no patronising story trope that shoves that fact down your throat, it is just an element of the story and it shouldn’t be a shock to anyone that a woman can do a job as well as a man. For that reason, I wanted to illustrate her alongside my favourite quote of hers in the movie, when John Hammond stammers that it's too dangerous for a woman to go outside and fix something with all those angry dinos around.

ITSNICETHAT - itsbriefthat - International Womens Day

“Create an empowering symbol to celebrate International Women’s Day”.
This Thursday (8 March) marks International Women’s Day and in honour of the occasion our monthly brief is to create an empowering symbol which celebrates and unifies women from all over the world.

The symbol could be an illustration, digital design, collage or photograph, in fact disciplines of all kinds are welcome in this brief. The interpretation of what this symbol could be is also up to you. It could be a character, a photograph, or quite simply words.
There’s no winners when it comes to spreading a positive message, however we will highlight those who we think answered the brief in the most powerful way possible right here on the site, and on the It’s Nice That Instagram on Friday 9th March.