Thinking of a consistent theme

I started off with the chocolate bar wrappers, I decided I wanted to use 40's/ 50's pin up girls combined with anti men or feminist statements. After experimenting with google images and cutting and pasting I came up with three chocolate bar Wrappers that I really liked. I liked this theme and continued using it when making the tissue box and wine packaging, making each packaging design suited to its content. However the results weren't great, I showed them to several people who all insisted that they looked too busy and that the concept wasn't pulling through. On the other hand people really like the chocolate bar wrappers so I wondered where I was going wrong with the tissue boxes and wine packaging. I asked people to chose their favourite wrapper and a majority chose the red and white Emergency Ration wrapper; this was because it wasn't too busy, the concept was there and the composition worked well. From here I decided that the packaging of this stuff should look quite pharmaceutical/ first aid box like, so I researched first aid boxes and pharmaceutical packaging. The red and white theme would be most prevalent rather than the medical theme, because some of the merchandise wouldn't fit the pharmaceutical packaging; cd, voodoo doll, pinata... I also wanted the collection to still have a 1950s look about it. Therefore the items I made would have some consistency in their packaging; red & white, medical and vintage.

A little less conversations a little more action please...

Noel also suggested that I start making this kit or party scene (the end product is still undecided) rather than talking about making it. However I had one last bit of research to do before I started trying things out, i asked divorced women to list things that they commonly utilized or did after a divorce.
-Drank more Alcohol
-Partied with their single friends more
-Worked longer to keep them occupied
-Cried a lot
-Read a lot of self help books
-Ate junk food; Chocolate, biscuits, take aways...
-Became angry and full of resentment
-Tried dating agencies
-Wrote or listened to music

From this list I composed a quick brainstorm on what I would include in this kit/ scene...

- male head pinata (combines anger and partying)
- Voodoo doll (relieves anger and stress)
- Divorce CD (music)
- Divorce helpbook in Zine format (reading)
- Wine, and cups (drinking which isn't advised but it will be done any how)
- Chocolate bars (junk food binges)
- Divorce Cake (junk food and partying)
- Tissues (to wipe away those inevitable tears)
- Balloons (party environment)
- Rings (A gift for the divorced woman so she can replace her wedding ring with a new one)

The end product will fit my Project Proposal in the sense that I am creating art from something that is broken and I think that it is great that we can create beauty from a pessimistic situation. I also came across this Divorce Gift list service provided by Debenhams, this has similar intentions and incentives to my own project.

The new service, launched January 10th, follows the rising popularity of 'congratulations on your divorce' greeting cards and divorce celebration parties, made popular by celebrities including Jordan and Heather Mills.

A divorce may not be universally seen as an occasion for celebration, but the divorce gift list could become the 21st-century equivalent of the traditional wedding list.

The tendency for modern couples to live together before getting married means the wedding list – designed to stock the newly-weds' first home with basic goods – has become somewhat obsolete.

Divorce, on the other hand, results in one partner leaving the marital home, meaning they may have to fit out an entire new house with cookware, linen and electric goods.

Divorcees are expected to list large plasma screen TVs, computer games and non-iron shirts high on their lists to help them get over their break-ups and readjust to the single lifestyle.

With the first day back after the Christmas holidays thought to be the most common date for couples in the UK to decide to separate, this week is expected to see an increase in the number of divorce petitions filed.

Peter Moore, Head of Retail Services at Debenhams, said: “Divorcing can be an expensive time and registering for a Divorce Gift List means that family and friends can help the newly separated begin their new life.”

With this in mind I started researching and designing rings (divorce rings)Which I thought would be a great gift. A ring to replace the wedding ring with a motive. After looking at some amazing ring designs by Gisele Ganne I was inspired to start making straight away.




I thought about cost effective processes and instantly thought of laser cutting, the results cant be quite beautiful...


I created several designs and chose 3 to make
- a bride running from a groom
- a black bird (representing freedom)
- and divorce in writing in a knuckle duster form

They looked great until I dropped the Divorce ring, Due to the huge waiting list for laser cutting i had to make do with the broken ring which I fixed myself using a 3d paste, I hope that it wont look too bad.

I wanted to create ring coffins for each divorce ring so that the divorced lady can use it to bury her wedding ring. However the boxes i had created were too small and the making process was costly and time consuming. Due to the rings odd shapes I decided to create 3 broken heart boxes that were black stuffed with black chiffon for a sinister effect.

Tutorial

After my tutorial with Noel we discussed my idea and I had only looked at divorce as a celebration which was slightly impractical. So I thought about devicing a divorce kit which would be comprised of everything a divorced woman would need. I began to research artists that had also created kits the most intriguing was Geoffery Farmer who created the Hunchback Kit (2000 – 7) which is a collection of objects and documents that comprise a do-it-yourself kit for staging an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831). Several of the items in the kit can be seen as props and costumes for an actor wishing to assume the persona of Hugo’s hunchback bell-ringer, Quasimodo. Other items relate more broadly to the events and characters in the book, and its numerous adaptations on stage and screen. Alongside the kit hangs the rope of a church bell and on the floor beside it the bell itself, which, we are told, has rung in a distant forest. Many of artist Geoffery Farmer’s works consist of accumulations of material related to a given subject, typically drawing upon images and narratives from popular culture and literature. With this in mind I have decided to create essentials for a woman to get through divorce however I still want to take an optimistic stance when creating this project, something that could cheer a divorced woman up no matter what phase they are going through.

Divorce Party Products

Interim crit

After putting my project ideas forward in the crit I got some great feed back, Some people suggested that I should take my love for fashion and photography further and create a photoshoot, whereby the models tell the story of divorce. I liked the sound of this idea however I felt as though it was a cop out and I would be cheating by letting other people tell the story I wanted to make it my interpretation of divorce. Others suggested working with cakes so perhaps create a Divorce cake? This would be an exciting project, it would also delineate the celebratory side of divorce, which I would much rather display. Rob suggested that I could create a divorce shop as opposed to a wedding shop therefore a complete subversion of the wedding industry. I loved this idea, it is original, satirical and humorous. I began to research this further. First of all I thought about all of the things associated with weddings; cakes, rings, dresses, music etc. So I started designing and creating samples of Divorce versions of these. I started to research divorce celebrations, and suprisingly divorce parties are a big thing in America (they turn any matter into a commodity). Some of the products I came across were inspirationsl whilst others.. not so much.

Phillip Toledano

To me this image suggests letting something precious go and to me it could represent the process of divorce reluctantly letting something beautiful go... I like the idea of working with Balloons and I may come back to this idea.

Trash the dress

Trash the dress, also known as fearless bridal or rock the frock, is a style of wedding photography that contrasts elegant clothing with an environment in which it is out of place. It is generally shot in the style of fashion and glamour photography.

Usually brides decide to have pictures taken on a beach, but other locations include city streets, rooftops, garbage dumps, fields, and abandoned buildings.

Some sources claim that the trend was originally started in 2001 by Las Vegas wedding photographer John Michael Cooper. However, the idea of destroying a wedding dress has been used in Hollywood symbolically since at least October 1998 when Meg Cummings of the show Sunset Beach ran into the ocean in her wedding dress after her wedding was badly interrupted. Since then the style has spread around the world and most notably in the UK, with photographers like Steve Gerrard and Mark Theisinger, amongst others, shoot their unique ideas of Trash the Dress.

A model often wears a ball gown, prom dress or wedding dress, and may effectively ruin the dress in the process by getting it wet, dirty or in extreme circumstances tearing or destroying the garment.

It may be done as an additional shoot after the wedding, almost as a declaration that the wedding is done and the dress will not be used again. It is seen as an alternative to storing the dress away, never to be seen again. I thought about destroying wedding attire in order to convey the gradual break down of marriage, however after speaking with tutors they suggested that using wedding attire wouldnt be the best way to portray this and that I should think of something original, something that hasn't been done. So I will research the concept of divorce further and perhaps find another medium to work with, I also need to think about the purpose of this notion and what I want to communicate.