SECOND YEAR AND BACK AT BLOGGING

So I have accidentally taken a veryyy long break from my blog. I kind of got caught up in the craziness of second year and lost my mojo a bit but I am back for good and have so many things planned for my blog, specifically taking a beauty direction with a lot of my posts as this is definitely a path i'd like to go down in the future, so be ready to see even more beauty reviews and thoughts! 

Second year so far is 100x better than first year, it is so much more creative as we are doing a lot of print making, book binding and at the moment we are creating a group zine! This is much more me as I am more of a hands on, handmade, creative person who doesn't like to just be stuck at a computer screen all day! technology annoys me haha! We are running many other briefs alongside the zine project such as our self promotion brief. This is helping us discover who we are, what we want to be, how to achieve it and how to show our personality, identity and uniqueness though our work. 

As well as bringing my blog back, I have also started two new Instagram accounts fcpgeorgiacollins (as a portfolio of all my work and inspirations on the course and around me) and georgialewisloves (as a beauty account, reviewing, promoting and advising). My usual Instagram account is still my favourite though and I post regularly on it so I have to give that one a mention too! georgialewisc, please feel free to give them a follow if you want to see what I get up to and what products I am loving at the moment! 

I have also been doing so many extra classes and interesting things alongside my course this year so I want to briefly mention them in future posts. Another exciting thing coming up is two new places I will be visiting! Amsterdam in December and Berlin (with uni) in January! So get ready for the Instagram's and blog posts! I also visited Bali earlier this year so still want to show you all some of the images I took and experiences I had, it was definitely one of the best places I have ever visited in my life so I have to share it with you all!

Thank you for reading,

Love from Georgia

xxx

NTU DEGREE SHOW EXHIBITION

Last week I visited the NTU degree show exhibition (NTUcheckout) to see exactly what we will end up doing in third year! It was encouraging to see all of the different, individual ideas people based their dissertations on, I liked how they weren't all the same and boring. I also loved the whole 'checkout' theme with the supermarket trolleys and receipts being very effective. Whilst looking through everyones portfolios in particular, I was looking at their CV's to see what type of experiences they have each had, this has taught me that I definitely need to get my act together and get some more valuable work experience and internships. This is what made them stand out even more if they had great, interesting CV's.

I was so impressed by some of the completed work with the books they made, it definitely looks like a LOT of hard work but is equally exciting to me. I can't wait to design some of the content and layouts, this is something I hope to improve on in second year as I wouldn't say technology and computers is one of my strengths. I have also learnt that I definitely have to love and be really interested in what my dissertation is based on as it is a lot of work and research into that one idea, I don't want to spend so much time on something I don't find very interesting. 

I am so excited to see how our degree show turns out in third year and to see how much my skills ans ideas have improved! I definitely found this show helpful and it has inspired me for second year already! Bring on the work!

Thankyou for reading,

Love from Georgia

xxx

POST PRODUCTION EXPERIMENTS

For our current fragrance brand project we all had to create some print adverts for our fragrance brands and after the photoshoot we had to think about what we could do post production wise. My group and brand focused on natural ingredients and wanted to attract the consumers with a healthy, natural, honest and handmade feel so that they could relate better to our brand. So, after a bit of editing and adjusting the contrast and brightness and backgrounds on photoshop we decided to use paint to get our ideas across. One of the girls in my group is amazing at painting so we wanted to use her skills to our advantage! We began painting into the flowers on the image and expanding them. We tried to be really experimental and colourful with our adverts. Below is a few examples of my attempts.

With a few adjustments and adding in of the logos and subheadings we created some quite unique print adverts that I think stand out in comparison to all of the very neat, perfect, slightly boring existing adverts!

Thankyou for reading

Love from Georgia

xxx

PHOTOSHOOT IMAGES FOR OUR HAIR SMOOTHIE MIST

For our fragrance brand project each group has made their own brand and product up. Our brand is called Smooth and is a smoothie hair mist targeting millennial's who want a quick, natural fix to mask unpleasant smells as well as giving the hair added health benefits (much like a fruity smoothie would if we drank it). Our product also has a dial on the side to make the concentration of the scent adjustable and is cruelty free. So thats a very short summary of the concept we have been creating over the last couple of weeks! We recently completed out photoshoot for our brand which focused on the idea of the natural ingredients and the whole idea of a fun, exciting food fight with the props! It got very messy but we were overall SO happy with our final images. We will obviously continue editing the images in post production through photoshop and painting! (more images to follow). Below are some of our favourite images from the shoot.

So as you can see, our shoot was really fun, colourful and active. The fresh fruit, fresh flowers and bright fake flowers were great props and there was plenty of them! The juice from the fruit looked really effective when it was squeezed out and the leaves falling off of the flowers gave it a natural element which we all really liked. The models were amazing, they got stuck right in and didn't moan at all! Not even when we asked them to lie in all of the mess on the floor for the final photo! We asked them all to wear white tops for a pure, natural look and they had minimal makeup on too which was lovely and fitted in really well with the brand. I am very excited to edit all of these now!

Thankyou for reading, 

Love from Georgia

xxx

ALEXANDRA SHULMAN GUEST LECTURE

NTU were lucky enough to have a lecture by current editor in chief of vogue Alexandra Shulman last week at uni. I think everyone in the room was fan-girling big time! My ticket was booked for this event way over a month ago and I had been counting down the days until the day had arrived.

We gained a lot of interesting insights and what her job role was really like! She spoke about how relentless the job was and you never have a sense of achieving something because there is always something else to do and it doesn't stop! However on the 24th June she said she will probably wake up and wonder what on earth she has done! Shulman spoke about her decision to leave her job later on this summer after an amazing 25 years. Its crazy to think that I wasn't even alive when she had started her career at Vogue and her career has laster longer than my lifetime so far! She felt like she had the best final year with the centenary year, having the Duchess of Cambridge on the 100th cover, the BBC documentary and the collaboration with the National Portrait gallery. She talked about it being difficult to work with certain people sometimes but not getting on with people is part of the job. Even the Duchess of Cambridge had her own set ways when she had her shoot, she wanted it to be as natural as possible and not so over the top and royal!

Shulman's love of journalism was clear and this is probably something she will focus on now as she will have more time to herself. She is very proud of her book 'Inside Vogue' and described journalism of a way to tell your own story and how she sees it as a privilege to be able to tell people things. Her role in Vogue however was not to write it, not to style, photograph etc. It is to oversee everything and enable all of the people work together well which is difficult!

Shulman spoke about her own influences with David Bowie being one of them. His death had a massive impact on her as she grew up listening to him and his music. At the age of 14-15 music helps to form our identity and this is what Bowie did to Shulman, he was an influencer without trying and we all have our own influences. The issue dedicated to Bowie showing Kate Moss is one of her favourites.

When someone questioned her on fictional portrayals of the fashion industry and brought up films like 'The Devil wears Prada' she said that it is a difficult industry to fictionalise, you can't make up anything that is better than the reality- this made me even more excited for future jobs I may have in the ever so exciting and competitive fashion industry!

Shulman described her own style as 'schizophrenic' and also spoke about how Edward will do when she has gone. Her own take on Vogue is very British and many people notice this, however Edward has been working in America, he has a lot of interest in diversity and is very into styling, this is something he is apparently very good at. Things will change but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Thankou for reading,

Love from Georgia

xxx

CALM

Whilst researching into broader ideas to gain new insights for my perfume brief at university I came across a book called calm. This book is originally for people who suffer with stress, anxiety, depression and mental health as a whole (a very taboo subject usually). My friend owns this book because of her anxiety and she said it really helped her. I found it a very interesting book, it was very visual and very interactive and focused on calming you down and distracting the mind from whatever is bothering you at the time

Main aspects to the book were nature with the whole idea of using natural ingredients and scents that could calm and relax you (very useful for my fragrance project!). It also focused on meditation and improving sleep as a lot of people suffer with insomnia too. Instead of counting sheep it gave you different ways to help and actually be able to fall asleep easier. There was tasks to do in the book like 'what has made you happy today' as well as including a lot of art therapy (a great way to distract the mind).

Whilst researching into this book more I realised they also have a website that is equally as useful. Whilst clicking on different links and tabs on it it made noises for rain and wind (etc) which are seen as very relaxing. I recommend this book, website and app for anyone who suffers with stress or lack of sleep in particular.

Thankyou for reading,

Love from Georgia 

xxx

MOMA

The MOMA was another place visited on my New York trip. I found this museum a little too contemporary for me and some things in there baffled me a little! Especially as some artworks were sadly not explained. I am going to include some of my favourite pieces of work from the museum in this post.

This piece was very visually pleasing. The Woven Chronicle uses electrical wires rolled up like yarn to represent a map of the routes of contract workers, indentured labourers, asylum seekers, refugees and other migrants. The wires are acting as a conduct and a barrier. It shows the idea of us all celebrating our lives whilst others cant because of the barriers created. Sounds could also be heard from this piece to highlight this idea. 

The excitement of space travel in the 1960's. This piece shows peoples wonder and fear mixed together for the fact that man and technology were getting so close. (Robert Rauschenberg).

These series of photographs were taken by astronauts and machines in space. I love how it documents the process of humans in contact with the moon. (NASA).

This series of screenprints celebrated feminism and women challenging the public to engage with a 'real woman' instead of just images on a screen or photo. (Valie Export).

The artists inspiration for this was peoples laundry hanging outside their windows. The work is gathered at three points and pinned to the wall. It reminds me of something someone did on my art foundation last year who did fine art. I love the colours in this work. (Sam Gilliam).

Who doesn't love a classic neon light?

This Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe piece is probably one of my favourites, and not just because i'm obsessed with her! I love the minimalistic but glamorous feel with her face being so small but also on top of a gold coloured background. The bright colours on the face wouldn't typically go with a brassy gold colour but this just works. This was made just after the actress committed suicide in August 1962.

I hope you enjoyed my small photo series on what I liked at the MOMA. 

Thankyou for reading,

Love from Georgia

xxx

DOVER STREET MARKET- NEW YORK

Dover street market was a last minute decision for us to go to but I am so glad we did! We were lucky enough to catch the re-launch and so got to see all of the new visual merchandising and new garments and collections out. It was lovely to browse around and was definitely worth a blog post! However it was slightly upsetting watching everyone around us going crazy buying things I could pay my student loan off with haha. I am going to show you a little photo series of what I captured whilst browsing. Personal favourites of mine were the Gucci interiors, the fact that Supreme related well to my trend in some aspects with the tartan shirts and skateboarder vibes. Other favourites were the skateboard interior wall (perfect for the tough 90's trend) and the Balenciaga pink and white striped bag. The shoes and Comme Des Garcons also really made me sad as I couldn't buy anything!

Thankyou for reading,

Love from Georgia

xxx