Designs & Future Accessibility

During the week off I wanted to work on my design skills, mainly my logo design. I decided to use a prompt generator to help me with a brand name and details on it, instead of trying to come up with that stuff on my own. Here's the prompt I got:

I knew right away with it being a vegan brand that I could turn that V into some kind of plant. I wanted something fun and friendly. I was so happy with the end result, colours could still be worked on. Here's the design I ended up with, with a few variants for flavours:

I finished the Your DNA poster, I haven't heard back from Rav yet about his thoughts but everyone else thought it was great! Personally I think it could be better but the biggest critic of your work is yourself.

In wheelchair news; a new aeroplane seat concept that allows wheelchair users to stay in their own chair throughout a flight was revealed this week by a subsidiary of US airline Delta, a move welcomed as a “huge step” by potential customers. Read more about it here

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/travel/delta-flight-products-wheelchair-airplane-seat-design/index.html

I am so excited for this! Though it will definitely be a few years before all planes pick up on this, it's fantastic it's even being made. I always get so uncomfortable and anxious flying, on top of that I have to leave my wheelchair in the hands of strangers and just hope it makes it to the destination with me or else I'm completely unable to enjoy my time. My wheelchair is a big part of my independence, I feel safe to leave it in my own house, other than that I do not feel comfortable to leave my chair at all. Buses and trams allow me to travel safely in my chair, I am shocked it's taken so long for planes to take this concept, I'm glad it's here though. Sadly for my next trip this definitely won't be available but fingers crossed for my next holiday it will!

I went to see Spider-man: Across The Spider-verse with my brother, he has seen it 3 times already. I definitely can see why he had to see the film so many times! As an artist and creator it was a beautiful film to watch. It featured so many types of art styles and mediums like watercolour, inks and collage with so many more! I was having the most amazing time watching all these styles and so many fun Spider-people! I think my most favourite part was when a Spider-woman named Sun-Spider, who is a wheelchair user and she uses her crutches to shoot webs, appeared (with a speaking role) and her wheelchair had spider legs coming out of them! This movie is for everyone, even if you don't enjoy Spider-man just go enjoy the story, character development, art and diversity. I could tell that the artist on this film loved making it, so much care went into every scene!

This Barbie Knows Advertising

I hope everyone had a lovely May! I know I did, I had a lot to enjoy and celebrate. I’m not at DISC this week so I have no work to show or any updates really, been spending time outside and with loved ones. But that won’t stop me from talking about my favourite design trends, advertising, and social media news!

In the world of advertising, Barbie has taken over AGAIN! It’s no surprise this fashion goddess is everywhere at the moment with the new Barbie movie, starring Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, being just around the corner everyone is hyped, and yes I mean everyone! The newest trailer even pokes fun at this with the words “If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you”, this movie is made for everyone.

Since 1959 young girls have adored these dolls and as years have gone on the love for this doll has only grown and their audience has expanded to adult doll collectors over the years, I myself even own a Barbie doll, a wheelchair Barbie to be exact. Speaking of that, Barbie itself has grown from the blonde hair, ‘can do anything’ Barbie into a diverse line of characters and Barbie, with many races, disabilities, and even body types. The Barbie movie even plans to show this diversity with the movie's cast, it’s already clear to see and I’m so excited to see all these Barbies and Kens on the big screen.

Onto my personal favourite thing about this movie, the advertising! Taking over social media back in early April, the Barbie movie team put out some fun and colourful posts:

There is so much to unpack here! The diversity, the beauty, the girl power, and best of all, the humour. ‘Barbie is everything’ and ‘He’s just Ken’, this can be seen on all these posts, ‘This Barbie is…’ and then just ‘Ken again!’. Barbie for years has shown girls that they can be whatever they want to be, while men have run the world for years, Barbie has been a motivation to young ages to be who they want to be.

The advertising team didn’t stop there, they made a generator so you can join in the fun. By going to https://www.barbieselfie.ai, you can upload your own image, edit it a little and make your own ‘This Barbie is’ post. Oh my did people LOVE this, my whole social media feed was full of these posts by people, adding in their own images. I even talked to a few people who didn’t even know there was a Barbie moving coming out but saw this trend everywhere and looked into it. Everyone was doing it and it worked, everyone knew about this movie!

Bear in mind, this was before any trailer was released, so they had a lot of hype to live up to because though everyone was excited, little was actually known about the film. The official trailer only came out on the 26th and they have definitely lived up to people's expectations, to the point where they accidentally started a whole new trend!

Seriously, these screenshots were taken 3 days after the release of the trailer.

And this isn’t even ‘Barbie’ themed, no pink or beauty. It is literally a mugshot and Barbie made it a trend. But really, it’s the comedy behind the photo, with Barbie holding her sign and being actually worried while Ken on the other end looks like he’s having a grand time, his sign even reading ‘and Ken’ like the two are meant to read together. Already we can see how comedy will fit into this movie and how many people will enjoy it already.

I really can’t wait to see this film, and if your social media feed is filled up like mine too you are either just as excited or you really hate going online right now, either way, you should go see this film when it comes out. I expect it to be a big box office success and to be a film that will be remembered, referenced, and memed for years to come.

On The Boat About AI

I’ve finished the GOM Booklet! Awaiting some feedback but the main body of it is done. My goal was to get it done before the end of the month and I have very easily met that deadline. I’m very happy with how it’s turned out, there’s some things I would change if the brand book let me but I have to stick to those rules! It was a fantastic project, I really loved it, I can’t wait to do more projects like it.

Because I’ve completed that project, I was left without anything to do, which meant I had no good excuse to deny a project I previously said no to. The project itself is fine and I can do it, it’s the deadline that’s the issue, which is today (25th) and I only got given it 2 days ago. So 3 days to complete a flyer where I have little knowledge in flyers/posters. In the span of 2 days I’ve done the quickest research possible to get some ideas, found colours and fonts, now today I have to throw it all together into a beautiful masterpiece. Due to this project I know how the Hex colour for the Digital Advantage green memorised, it’s not hard to remember but it’s harder to forget, I just have #52AB57 repeating in my head. I was working on many devices and I needed the colour for each so instead of finding where I wrote it, it was easier to remember.

I was lucky enough to be featured as part of Greater Manchester Digital Blueprint alongside many great people, one of them being the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham. It was a lovely opportunity and I have had a great time working with them! You can watch the Greater Manchester Combined Authority video here:

https://youtu.be/CZf4R96L55E

Probably one of the funniest moments this week was on Friday. I went to the cinema with my dad and it was a lot. Losing each other in the maze of stairs, elevators and escalators. Trying to guide my dad using one of those on screen drinks machines! It was a funny adventure, the best part to me was the story I put on Instagram. I got the phrases ‘on the fence’ and ‘in the same boat’ mixed up to make ‘on the boat’.

Rant about AI…

In the media lately the biggest thing is AI, the good and the bad of it. An ongoing fight from people for and against AI, I see it everyday. Over the last few months DISC has been advancing and bringing in the use of AI to help interns. I haven’t really joined in this new change. Honestly I stay quiet when the talk of AI is brought up, I haven’t shared my opinions on the topic. I’m definitely stuck between two rocks in this situation. As an artist some aspects of AI anger me a lot and how some people use it. The other half of me has people close to me who use and support it. I don’t go one way or the other, AI is the future, no one can change that. AI has never been the issue to me, I support the idea of new technology, the biggest issue is the people who use it and sometimes the creators of the AI.

One of the biggest AI issues that caught my attention in the beginning was the DeviantArt update that added AI. With this update your account and any new accounts made are automatically opted in to let their art be used to support the AI. This caused a lot of backlash and it seemed like the company made this choice without acknowledging this feature in the update. You had to go into your settings and opted out when you didn’t even have the choice in the beginning. They got so much hate that they finally changed it to your account is auto set to opting out and you have to opt in if you want your art to train the AI. But websites like DeviantArt and ArtStation where people could share their artwork and use it for portfolios started getting overrun by AI images, everything started looking the same, no unique art, all the featured work was by AI generators. I don’t believe in AI Artists, just because you typed keywords into an already made and coded website and it popped out an image, it doesn’t make it yours. If anything, the person who created the AI generator is the ‘AI Artist’. Most AI art generators don’t even credit the artist used to train the AI

December last year ArtStation got overrun with artists posting an image saying ‘No to AI generated images’, hundreds of these images took over ArtStation to get rid of any AI images shown, the featured page was covered in these images. Even putting their own artist twists on it.

I even joined in with mine:

It was a great moment where artists were winning and artists of all kinds came together to fight against something. It did get better, laws are now being put in place and credit is being given to those who deserve it. Though AI art isn’t as big of an issue as it was in December, it’s still there.

I recommend looking into AI and the Writers Strike going on in America, that’s the current AI issue going on and it’s really interesting. It’s sad directors and writers are already struggling with getting paid for their work but now they have to compete against AIs like ChatGPT. I won’t go into this too much as I’ve already had my rant and it’s kinda all the same argument. At the end of the day, we should blame the people using the AI for the wrong reasons, not the AI itself. We can work alongside AI and not compete against each it.