Studio Brief 2: Day In The Life - Given Text & Initial Ideas

Given Text

My given text was an article called 'Can Super Thursday Save The UK's Bookshops?', published in Vice magazine. The article describes the disappointment of bookshop owners towards peoples attitudes of bookshops, covering issues relating to competition with the internet, where people can buy their books from the comfort of their home. Other aspects covered were the design of the 'books are my bag' tote bag, designed by award winning artist Tracy Emin, that were created to tempt people to come back to bookshops and receive the full bookshop experience. 

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/can-super-thursday-save-the-uks-bookshops-328

Initial Ideas

To convey my ideas easily, I created a variety of 'roughs' (quick sketches that show your intentions before you finalise your idea), focusing on different frames and compositions. In my roughs, I explored a number of the issues raised in the article, but mainly focused on the concept of bookshops being empty. 

 

Another concept I thought about was using the Book as a doorway to a bookshop. I tried to create a surreal image where the bag would open up to have a bookshop inside, however, I didnt feel that this idea was effective, and that the visual side of the idea was not working very well. 

I then simply just looked at promotion of the tote bag, which is being used as a tool to help the bookshop industry. In the image pictured left, I wanted to create an idea of a busy highstreet, based around the idea of christmas shopping and Super Thursday.  In the image pictured right, I wanted to communicate the idea of the bag helping the bookshops, using the well known symbol of an hour glass to reflect the idea that time is running out for bookshops. 

Finally I played around with the idea of the competition against e-books and online bookshops. I really liked this idea but found it quite hard to explore and communicate visually, . 

Overall  I felt this initial task was quite difficult, as I wanted to really attempt to communicate a visual message in a simple but visually effective way. I feel that with this kind of task, It is creating ideas that I struggle with. To help me out in the future, I intend to look more at existing work, to give me a sense of how they visually communicate different messages.