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The brief that was set instructed us to take photographs of a particular shape around LCA and nowhere else.. Simon gave us all a particular shape each, mine was a square.
I decided to look at inanimate objects in the college that were square in their shape. I didn't really want to go for the obvious ones, for example - all of the square windows you can see around the university.
So I thought about the items you see everyday around the uni and just forget about, like the fire alarm buttons or the toilet door signs.
I then noticed all of the different types of light-switches that there were around uni, so photographed a variety of them, and then decided that I would use these photos of switches for my postcards and make the photos look a bit dirty and dark to give the switches a sense of slight feeling and emotion, rather than just being everyday light-switches. I wanted to make the light switches look as though they were sad and felt neglected.
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Research Into Postcards
After researching into several postcard designs, it became quite apparent that typical postcards consisted of a full image filling the A6 format (usually of a holiday destination or something relevant to the place that the buyer visited) and then the postcard usually has a small amount of furniture decorating the edges of the postcard, and the odd word like "Holiday" or "Cornwall" or "Wish You Were Here". I also noticed that typical postcards are quite kische, tacky and cheap looking. You never really get a postcard that has been designed to be classy or something that you would keep because of how well designed it was! People usually tend to keep their postcards because of the nice A6 sized photograph and the memories that come with the little amount of writing on the back of the card.
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I decided that I wanted my postcards to look quite cheap and tacky so that they were similar to the postcards you often send to your friends, however I wanted to create a postcard that you wouldn't really decide to pick up and buy, because of the sheer thought that it seems quite irrelevant and weird. I thought the idea of taking photos of lots of different light switches made the postcard set quite humorous and different from other ideas people probably came up with.
However, I didn't really think the light-switches looked like a complete series yet, so edited them in photoshop to make them darker, more desaturated, and a little bit more eery...
Here are my 5 final postcard images:
When it came to designing the reverse side of my postcard, I really struggled with ideas. I didn't want to do anything really 'designery' and well laid out, because I wanted it to look like a stereotypical post card that you would buy and send to someone in the post. Therefore I went for a really simple design that you would usually see on a postcard, and found a squarish font to write the word POSTCARD on the top, like old postcards usually have written on them. I also added two little squares to go with my square theme. I also added a little bit of information about the set of postcards down the left hand side of each post card to make them seem a bit more serious and like they were made for a reason. I called my postcards "A Series of Lightswitches".
I don't really like the reverse design for my postcard, however I've never really liked the way postcards look anyway. At least if someone wanted to send one of my postcards in the post, they'd have plenty of space to write onto, etc which is the main function for a postcard. I also thought that the fact that the reverse side of the postcard doesn't really look very considered, helps to make it suit the front of the card and make the set of postcards seem quite kische.
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