9. ArtBar Development W/C 13th and 20th March

ArtBar Zine

We are creating a look-book that visitors can buy, they can choose what they want in it from their favourite art and design from the gallery. We have put one together and I have included my ‘Beauty and the Media’ poster which has been scaled to A5 to fit in the book. Olivia asked me to write a short description of my practice and something on the artwork I have included. Here’s what I have submitted:

Christine Gale’s focus is on graphic design and marketing, with skills in logo design, brand strategy, creative direction, advertising, and design for digital and print. She’s worked at several agencies in the Yorkshire region and with clients in both B2B and B2C marketing. From Marshalls, Robinwood Activity Centre, and CNA Trading which sells through B&Q, – to name a few. During this time, she has helped companies tell their stories, change perceptions, and created effective visual design solutions to reach new and bigger audiences.

For her Master of Arts final major project, she is researching ‘Beauty and the Media’ which is targeted at 18–25-year-olds in Spring/Summer 2023. Focusing on social media, the web and other media channels that influence the appearance and mental health and well-being, resulting in ‘compare and despair’ syndrome. This is for a good cause campaign which will unpick how culture and community support young consumers and bring new insights for the beauty industry to support a positive change. Christine felt the campaign suited ArtBar as creative students from the University can showcase their art within the venue and the topic is based around the body. There is a questionnaire for university students to download here https://designedbycg.co.uk/beauty-and-the-media-questionnaire/ which will be anonymous and could help make an effective difference within the industry.

Damian has designed the cover for the zine which is shown below.

Aqeel Zadi Batool’s artwork shown below of colourful eclipses, cones and lines to be displayed on a interactive gallery wall that visitors can interact with, the elements of the artwork will move via sensors as you move in front of it.

Arduino IDE Training (Interactive Wall)

On Thursday 9th March, we did some practical action research, Cathie and Aqeel organised with Stephen Calcutt, training on Arduino IDE (Integrated Development Environment) an open source Java application that uploads code to an Arduino board which is used to operate interactive wall displays. Stephen shared some examples of this in use here: https://youtu.be/BZysu9QcceM and here https://youtu.be/7gszLbrJJXU

This is known as physical computing and relies on you being inventive and creative. We were given some components shown below:

Stephen explained each component which included a potentiometer, a variable resistor that sends data. Servo motor, that you can tell which part to move, some can move 360⁰. Sleeper motor sensors. Stephen said a continuous server can control speed but not movement.

These can be obtained from RS Components education and https://www.rapidonline.com/education. Shown below is the code we wrote into Arduino IDE.

The interactive part is shown on a Arduino Breadboard, we placed an LED light and a sensor on there and connected up the wires in place as instructed. The LED flashed for us and the sensor sent information online telling us when the light was either on or off. We switched it on or off by placing a finger over the sensor. I filmed this working on my phone and it is shown here.

The fashion installation photography was taken this week too of Cathie’s dress, the photographs are being imported into applications called Blender 3D to be shown in 3D at a 360⁰ and then imported into Rhinoceros 3D. Rhinoceros 3D is the application for the ArtBar building that has been designed. We are will use this application to present our collaborative project, the building will have all our art, design and marketing within it and will be seen using the VR equipment in the Create Lab at Huddersfield University. This includes Olivia’s and Caitlyn’s photography and furniture shown below.

Stakeholders and Research

Within my blog entry written on the W/C 20th Feb click here to see. I spoke about stakeholders and how we had thought about them within our presentation. We had considered online access, local artists, designers and post-graduates, i.e ranges of customers and stakeholders. A co-ownership, ethical and eco-thinking business model.

I looked at an article online on ‘How works of art impact hospitality spaces’ written by Dr Nicole Hinrichs, as a team we had spoken about the clients, artists, designers, students, and visitors, this article mentions the employees who would be stakeholders within the venue. The employees would benefit from the environment of culture and hospitality within ArtBar. The focus on well-being within the last few years has grown, and people are more aware of the emotional impact environments make. The article states “A study from the University of Westminster shows that simple lunchtime visits to an art gallery can cause rapid normalization of cortisol levels from the consequences of high stress on office workers.” https://hospitalityinsights.ehl.edu/works-art-impact-hospitality-spaces, although this article refers to art in the hotel industry and its research, resonates with our venture

Working with creatives from different disciplines will bring varied perspectives and solutions and will generate an identity that will attract out-of-town and local visitors.

The bar, restaurant, lookbook, and some events we will partner with will be the revenue stream for ArtBar. We have also looked at symposium events.

A journal called From Pitching to Briefing: Extending entrepreneurial storytelling to new audiences, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01708406211024564?utm_source=summon&utm_medium=discovery-provider discusses how to frame storytelling when pitching to investors but argues that depending on the audience the process of how to meet expectations when storytelling will require revision. It also says that digital ventures are expected to do industry analyst briefings.

Our Summative Presentation W/C 20th March

Our group wasn’t ready for the formative presentation on Friday, 17th March. Shinto and Zaki needed to finish working on the building. Damian and Olivia showed me the zine and asked me what I thought, so I said “I don’t like justified text because it creates gaps between the words, I prefer left aligned copy” then they said Alex had said the same. The following Monday, Damian messaged me on Microsoft Teams with a page sample, I sent it back with an enlarged headline and a 2 column grid of left aligned copy. After watching the other groups presentations on the 17th March, I said “Graphics need to sort the presentation.” On Monday, I received the Powerpoint from Cathie and started to work on some slides, I designed them in InDesign, imported the mp4 files and exported from InDesign as an interactive pdf. The pdf had glitches, it would get to the first mp4 play it and froze. After showing the team we decided as a group, I should use After Effects. I started working on the presentation in After Effects and got this far, mp4 shown below.

Caitlyn and Cathie wrote a script and were working on recording the audio, Shinto was working on the building and video and once Caitlyn had the audio and video she synchronised them in iMovie and edited them. Caitlyn, Cathie and I, had a meeting on Wednesday afternoon / evening about the presentation on campus. We was struggling on how to get the iMovie from Caitlyn’s Mac to me, so in the end we improvised, I said “Can you create mp4’s in sections from iMovie?” Caitlyn said she could, so I said “If I send you my After Effects document with file dependencies, you can drop the mp4 files in where you need them.” So I sent my work via wetransfer to Caitlyn. The following day, I spent it designing more slides, I suggested we also do a ‘thank you’ and ‘produced by’ page. Cathie had asked me for a ‘open call’ page which I now had time to do because Caitlyn had taken over the presentation in After Effects.

Thumbnails shown below are the extra pages, I designed for the presentation. I did the best I could in the time we had left to get them done. To view the thumbnails as single large pages click here.

I was thrilled to see my abstract art, seen in the thumbnails above in the video as rugs in ArtBar, this links to the marketing and became a part of our branding. Cathie’s and Caitlyn’s work is abstract in form, therefore adding to the synchronicity of the brand theme.

Cathie messaged our group on MS Teams saying “Just asked some people I know if we could mention them by name. Mark Hobson owns Corporation night club, Local Authority events. A wedding venue, property investor and Trafalgar Warehouse events space and artists studios in Sheffield. His partner Shona Monroe is a professional photographer and from an Architectural background. It is exactly the kind of thing they would be interested in. I have the go- ahead to mention them by name and use their profiles.”

Cathie sent me some copy and images and I put these layouts together which is shown in the video below.

Rehearsal lighting effects for presentation day shown below.

On the day of the presentation, I thought ‘Why didn’t I suggest to the team, this would be a great place for musicians, I play the piano, I could have done something. It could be something to consider for further development for ArtBar.

I am so proud of our 8 interdisciplinary members who created this collaborative project in 8 weeks from concept to completion. I feel privileged to have been a part of the ArtBar group. Imagine what we could have achieved with more time.

Final video presentation shown below.

Our presentation included:

Presentation graphics
Stakeholder and users
The building design (In the shape of A and B)
Interior design and layout
Furniture/product design
Software/technology use
Interactive wall using VR technology
Branding, marketing and graphic design which will include PR, social media, website, digital display advertising
Look-book or zine
Fashion installation
Photography
2D artwork
Further developments