Multimodal Essay

How is the use of social media contributing to digital transformations in the fabric of everyday life?

Many changes and transformations are being made to the fabrics of everyday life because of social media. The idea of social media being an accessory for people to have and use to pass time when they want has become obsolete, as it has become a necessary for people to have. Social media is one of the most important parts of people’s everyday lives, from just having a browse through Facebook, to making a career from Instagram, it has changed the whole media landscape in which humans are living. People are becoming more and more reliant on social media, as the digital transformations have forced people to do so.

To conclude, The digital transformations of many everyday life’s fabrics have revolutionised the way in which people carry out their days. From something as simple as eating food, to the way in which humans are communicating with one another. The overarching idea of people being less consumers and more ‘Prosumers’ (Forbes, 2018) has allowed people to be more engaged with media content, and create a media landscape that allows for creativity and communication. This same idea can be applied to any of everyday’s fabrics to see how the transformations have been made.

Memories, Oh Memories

This task was to find a song and explain exactly what it meant to me. This was an assignment I knew I was going to enjoy! I had an instant thought as to what I was going to do, I knew what I wanted to choose. Keane – Sunshine. This song provokes many memories in my head and within the piece, I go on to explain why. My inspirations for selecting this song are mainly spoken about within the piece, but in essence, this song takes me back to my earliest skiing memories. As skiing has such a massive influence on my life, I only felt that it was fitting to select this as the song choice.

To complete this task I used Adobe Audition’s multitrack feature, allowing me to overlay tracks onto one another. Below shows both the overlaying of the clips, but it also shows the use of key framing to raise and lower the sound levels when I am about to begin and finish speaking. This was done by simply clicking where I wanted a key frame and dragging either up or down, dependant on whether I wanted it louder or quieter. Overall this was a fairly straight forward piece to create, I just had to export it as an mp3 at the end in order to upload it to Soundcloud.

I enjoyed this assignment as it forced me to be a little reminiscent and think about memories, which isn’t something I usually do. It was simple, yet allowed me to express my feelings surrounding the song and fully explain exactly why this song brings back the feelings, emotions and memories that it does. The song means a massive amount to me because of the reasons explained within the media, and is something I treasure quite closely.

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SoundCloud

RONALDOOO!

The animated GIF assignment asked me to create a gif for my favourite sporting moment ever. Being the crazy football fanatic I am, I decided to go with a Cristiano Ronaldo free kick. The motivations behind this were simple. I remember watching this free kick when I was a lot younger, live on TV. I remember how gobsmacked I was after seeing it fly directly into the top corner. This brought on the massive fan phase for Cristiano Ronaldo that I had. I also felt, and still do feel that this goal is the best set piece goal to ever be scored in the premier league. For these reasons, I decided to use this as my favourite sporting moment.

Here is the link to the GIF if image isn’t working: http://gph.is/2G6mWI0

To complete this, I used GIPHY, a GIF making site which allows you to create a GIF out of video. I downloaded the video and put it into GIPHY, where I then shortened it, put the text on, with the ‘Glitch’ Effect, and the sepia tone to the video. I feel that this effect looks relatively cool, and adds to the overall effect of the GIF.

It was an extremely simple thing to make and does look aesthetically pleasing, bringing a whole new dimension to whatever shareable media it goes along with. It would work really well on twitter, bringing it back up when Ronaldo scores, and could be easily shareable, therefore is fit for purpose.

To me personally, this goal means a lot, as it is one of the earliest footballing memory I have. With football playing such a huge role in my life now, it’s easy to see why its so important to me, and why Cristiano Ronaldo is a role model in that sense.

This Assignment was enjoyable to do, bringing back old memories when creating shareable media, which in my mind, is a great way to use social media!

Social Media’s:

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The perfect smoothie!

For the video element of the assignments, I wanted to do the 30 second documentary. The reason I selected this was because I believe I have the recipe for a perfect smoothie. Although its a very simple one, it tastes incredible. My main inspiration for deciding to do this, was because I spend a lot of time telling people how to make a nice smoothie etc, I felt that a quick documentary could solve this issue.

I’ve always loved smoothies, and have experimented with many different fruits throughout the years, however as I have now found the ideal smoothie, I felt it needed to be shared online. Although the idea of Banana, Strawberry, yogurt and orange juice seems simple, the fruits complement each other so perfectly that it must be the best smoothie out there, thats really where the inspiration comes from. If anyone else has a better recipe, let me know, I’ll be sure to check it out! I used to use this site for recipes!

I decided to film this simply with just a phone. Following this, I decided to use the editing software that comes with the iPhone, iMovie. This allowed me to quickly cut little videos together to come up with the final piece. I think the final piece shows clearly how I made the smoothie, and how to do it, therefore it is a video fit for purpose. I then uploaded the video to Youtube, as it allows people to see it from anywhere.

This smoothie is perfect for a breakfast when dieting, as it’s not too filling, yet has enough nutrients for  a meal, as well as filling you up enough to get to lunch time.

I feel that this was an enjoyable assignment to take part in, not just because I got to drink the smoothie, but also because I was able to use my recipe for a delicious smoothie, and share it with any readers of this blog!

Video on Socials:

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Youtube

The South African Safari

For my web assignment, I came across a dream vacation assignment when scrolling through the assignment bank. I wanted to do this, as I thought I could plan for a potential future, dream holiday. I used Pinterest for this, creating a new board, and pinning all relevant and potential things to do on my vacation, onto the board.

My Dream Holiday

I decided to create a holiday to South Africa, to stay in a jungle lodge and go out on safari to see animals in their habitat. The reason I decided to do this was because of my ever-growing love for animals. I have always loved animals, from when I was young (I even wanted to be a zookeeper for a while). I felt this would be a magical and exciting holiday for me, which of course I intend to do in real life at some point.

Seeing incredible animals be so gracious in their homes would be a sight not to be forgotten, along with the amazing views mother nature has provided, it would prove to be a holiday of a lifetime.Images like these really get me excited to try and make a holiday of such magnitude happen for real, as it would really be a dream come true… I guess thats why this assignment was called a dream holiday!

Of course to go, I would have to up my photography skills in order to capture the true sights of this holiday, I would more than likely have to plan for all of the vaccines I would have to have too. I feel this is a realistic holiday idea, as I’d be able to do it all in an extended period of time, potentially when I finish university, and get to know what life out there is really like.

Overall, I massively enjoyed this particular assignment, as it forced me to think outside the box and really come up with a holiday that I know I’d love. A little bit of planning for the future too!

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Mr Incredible and his family of supers…

For the Mashup part of this section, I went with a task that would bring some comedy to my blog. I decided to get a picture of my brother and I, and edit in two superheroes into the photo. This was enjoyable to do as it was comical and made me laugh at times. I was inspired to use Mr. Incredible because he was always my favourite childhood superhero, simply because he was so strong, something I had always wanted to be. I wanted to use an image which depicts my brother and I in a place we love, and a place which would be massively unlikely to see a superhero (on top of a mountain).

I also decided to place Superman in the corner too as I thought it would be cooler to imagine a world full of superheroes, as opposed to just the one. I also wanted to include him as the other super power I always wanted, was to be able to fly, something that superman can.

I did this piece on Adobe’s Photoshop, as it allowed me to easily place certain things into the image. The layers were made appropriately, with the image as the background, and the other features arranged around the image and transformed in whatever way necessary. This meant I had to rotate the Superman to make him look more realistic overall. To finish, I wanted to make the Mr Incredible the same size as the two people in the image to make it more realistic and life sized. This meant changing the scale of the image. It was then exported into a PNG file to be uploaded.

The story behind the story for me was basically around how much I used to love the incredibles. Being a massive fan from an early age made it an easy choice, given that if i was to choose someone to meet, it would most definitely be him. Not only that, but a second Incredibles film is scheduled for release at the end of the year, therefore it is somewhat suitable timing.

I enjoyed this task, as I thought it was something that I hadn’t done before, as well as being something funny and enjoyable to do. I feel it is a good thing to do, to take your mind off things, having a mess around with fictional characters and Photoshop.

Image on socials

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Twitter

 

 

Visit Great Bardfield!

For my design assignment, I came across a brilliant retro poster task on the assignment bank. I wanted to do something that that would mean something to me in the long run. This particular task caught my eye, as I enjoy the colour schemes and pixelated effect used in many of these types of posters. The dated fonts and the use of shape and colour remind give the pieces and ‘Art Deco’ feel. A feel that I personally can really appreciate. A lot of my inspiration came from this page on Pinterest.

Many of the posters used within this interesting effect are advertising a big city under the lights, Paris or New York for example. However, my thoughts brought me to an idea that contrasts this. I decided to glamourise and sell my small, picturesque village, Great Bardfield. I thought it would be an effective use of the style, however used for a different purpose to many. Essentially, the story behind the story mainly comes down to me wanting to create and share something that meant a lot to me personally. After seeing a consistent style with other art deco posters Such as the images below, I wanted to use a similar style as inspiration, but adapt it to fit my situation.

Here is the finished product alongside the original image:

I feel that in terms of style, the poster I have created really does follow along the same lines. looking at the use of font for example, I have used both the sans serif, large, bold fonts, as well as using the cursive, more stylish, informal font. I’ve also changed the images pixelation to make it more of a sketchy, cartoon sort of image. The image I used was one I took of my dog out on a walk in her favourite place, back in the summer last year. It is one of my favourite images, therefore it only felt fitting to use it.

To do that, I had to use the load the image into Photoshop and head over to the ‘filter’ tab, followed by the ‘filter gallery’ setting. It then comes up with an option menu like this. All of these different settings give fantastic effects. however, the effect I had intended to get was most like the one achieved when using the ‘Cutout’ effect. The preferences on the right hand side were the ones I used for this particular image. This gave the more pixelated effect, a more cartoon look to the image.

The next settings to change were the ‘Curves’ This changed the colour of the image. I only edited it ever so slightly, as I didn’t feel a huge amount was necessary. The reason I decided to do this, was to take a little of the vibrancy out, as the other posters similar to it weren’t so vibrant.

The final thing I did was the text. The colour scheme was selected using the eyedropper tool from the beige, wheat field in the middle. This was to give a consistent look to the image and so the text didn’t stand out too much. The cursive font was simple. I just put it in white, transformed it and rotated it slightly and put a drop shadow on it. All of these pieces of text complement one another to give the desired effect.

Overall, I decided to do this assignment, as I felt that it would be clever to use a very well-known style of poster, yet develop it and adapt it in my own way, to create something that I was proud of and could look back in the future. Using Art Deco as an inspiration, I feel that the use of this image was effective and worked well with the selected style.

Visit Great Bardifeld – Design Assignment – Best work

Image on Social media –

Flickr

Twitter

 

Vintage Helvetica Quote

For my Final Visual Assignment, I decided to go for a more meaningful task. Something that would means something to me. The task I decided to attempt was to get hold of a bad quality picture, put a vintage effect on it, and finally put some text on top in order to create some sort of quote image for people to read and use as motivation.

my Inspiration for this image was to bring motivations to people that read it. I am a massive believer in motivation and I think reading quotes that make you think about things can be a huge help. After researching the topic, I noticed that a lot of these sort of images had negative captions. I wanted to juxta-pose this, giving a differ

ent meaning, a positive one. The quote I decided to use ‘Difficult roads often lead to the best destinations’ is one that makes people want to work through hard situations as they know they can come out better the other side. I really appreciate the meaning of this quote!

To do this, I used Photoshop. After finding an image that I felt was relevant to the quote I had planned to used, I imported the image and began editing. Firstly, I put a mask on the image to make sure any edits I made could be reversed should I decide to. I then used a colour grading preset, giving me the vintage look. After this, I put text on top of the image in the Helvetica font. This is an extremely simple technique and task, yet it’s results are evidently impressive and impactful for the viewer.

I thoroughly enjoyed this task – Vintage Helvetica Quote.

2 stars.

Image on Socials:

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Splash the Colour

For my second visual assignment, I thought it would be nice to continue using Photoshop, as I am enjoying learning new skills and using them for my assignments. Today I am using a colour effect that makes an image pop and helps draw the eye to certain points of focus within an image.

The assignment required me to get or take an image and manipulate it using certain techniques within Photoshop in order to take the colour out of it but leaving only one section in colour. This effect is really useful and almost makes the image feel like a completely different one.

The image I decided to use, was one taken of my girlfriend and I looking at a fantastic sculpture in the reception area of the Atlantis Hotel in Dubai. Here is my attempt:

My inspiration behind choosing this particular assignment is that I wanted to create something I could keep and use in the future, or at least look back at as a memory. I selected this image because I loved the colours of this sculpture and think that when everything else within the image is black and white, the colours really stand out and create a really cool effect to the overall image. Another inspiration for me is an image I see fairly often, ‘Lovers in the rain’ which depicts two people in a black and white image, however there is a red umbrella, forcing the focus towards the couple.

In terms of how I actually did it, the technique is fairly straight forward and isn’t hard for anybody to do.

After importing the image into a Photoshop file, I created a new Layer Mask, meaning that whatever I do to the image, I can revert it back to normal by just hiding the mask. Following this, I click the Black and White Button, which takes the

colour out of the image. Then I used the eraser tool to get rid of certain parts of the layer mask, in this case, the sculpture itself. This leaves you with the image in black and white other than whatever you have erased.

This images looks good and means a lot to me, as it is a great memory from a holiday I had been on. However, I felt that I could improve it if I made my girlfriend and I in colour too as it would give an effect as if it was just her, I and the sculpture there, as this is where the focus would lay. Here is my final attempt:

I really like the final image that I created, as the intended effect worked exactly as I’d hoped. This Assignment was really enjoyable and I made an image that I really appreciate and will use in the future.

Visual Assignment 2 completed – Splash The Colour

3 and a half stars.

Image on social medias:

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Stencil Drawing

For my first visual assignment, I thought I would choose a task that would bring me some pleasure in what it is I’m creating. I decided to go with creating a stencil out of an image. I decided to use an image of myself, as I was interested in what the final product would look like.

Here is the final product:

To complete this task, I had to use Photoshop. The first thing I did was import the photo into a new file. Following this, I created a new layer and used the posterise adjustment on level 5. This distorted the image somewhat, but did not give me a stencil effect. Following that, I used the threshold adjustment and put it on 82. This gave me the final product. I was happy with this in essence, however the background was slightly irritating, as the colours were not allowing the background to be seen properly. To fix this I decided to go one step further and use the eraser tool on the background to change it back to normal. Here is the final product:

My inspiration behind this was based purely on stencil paintings I’ve seen on the walls in the past. Specifically, I have seen many photos manipulated with this effect using Marilyn Monroe and I do appreciate the art in it. I really like the effect and believe that it is something that, if done correctly, can bring a whole new dimension to the image. I really like the final product of this assignment and I will be using it in the future.

Anyway, that’s it for my first visual assignment – The Stencil.

2.5 Stars

Image on Socials:

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