Landings 2018 Design Team: Part 1

3rd July Exhibition Designers announced and I am one of the three with Ant and Andrew. I am delighted to be working with these two great guys and experienced photographers (in the same cohort who I met at the Amsterdam and Falmouth course events) and really appreciate others’ trust that we will get the job done by voting for us.

For me I expected it would be a journey of discovery, challenges and leaning new things, not having done this before. The journey started straight away with needing to arrange a designers meeting through canvas and organising live webinars to inform all those associated with the MA Photography (staff and students) what our three themes are and what those who want to take part will need to send to us.

4th July meeting with Ant and Andrew to decide themes and the information we required from participants. What a great meeting to start the process. Not only did we complete the planned purpose and agenda but we also added plans for additional activities beyond the initial remit and specification for our roles.

I shared ideas I had had based on studying the five words, sentences and two images people had submitted to express an interest in taking part. These were Identity(ies)=9 Memory(ies)=8 and Transformation/Consequences=7. From these with Andrew’s ‘way with words’ emerged the theme titles.

Ant had been in touch with Gary and shared the Landings 2017 information which showed the format and potential design specification and limitations set by the webmaster. Ant’s suggestion that we have circles rather than squares for each person/theme was agreed subject to the template allowing this deviation (we later found out this was not possible). Ant also informed us that Gary had set up a Slack sharing platform through the Falmouth system for the four of us to communicate.

We also looked at Wes Anderson’s Color video by Andres Pena  as used in his films (https://vimeo.com/182987900) suggested by Andrew and agreed to research more on colour combinations and ideas for those relating to the themes and background for the exhibition page. Ant directed us to a brief video of an exhibition viewed while a man was on a running machine for a minute which became a source of inspiration for our film.

We also agreed that we would ask participants for the information needed for the template; up to 14 words describing each individual’s work, a thumbnail image, name and url link to their own site where they would show their work for Landings 2018. In addition we were to ask for a ‘best of’ image that would be in each person’s exhibition that we could use to make an accompanying film, showcase in a zine/catalogue and using our designer hats judge one to be the best of the ‘best ofs’ to place on a promotional poster. Ant and Andrew suggested they use InDesign and Camtasia respectively to start work on these activities. Given my lesser competence in these areas (not knowing InDesign although I have used Camtasia) I agreed and offered myself as a port of call for the information to be returned to as I could set up a shared excel sheet for the data collection.

A great start to our working as a team with each of us contributing ideas and shaping those of each other and naturally falling into undertaking activities within our competencies that reflected the different tasks we needed to achieve.

5th July I held the first webinar for those interested in taking part. We had agreed each of us would host one to maximise opportunities for those based in different time zones and with working and family commitments to take part. Due to the proximity to the designers meeting the previous evening I did not have a well prepared presentation but did manage to post up brief notes about the themes and what we required. Unfortunately due to audio difficulties communicating well was hampered. I was also not as familiar with the operation of webinars to know that my logging out and then in again would not stop the webinar altogether. I also forgot to ask people to close down their video and mute their microphones which would have helped, an omission for which I kicked myself afterwards!. …attended.

Andrew created a page of information for participants which included our agreed clarification of the themes and this was made available at the next two webinars. I placed copies on the Surfaces and Strategies and Photography Hub pages where people were signing up to take part. We began with a sub-title in addition to the themes (following the pattern of the previous year) and dropped this following discussion when Gary pointed out it was not essential.