In a continuation from my post on labels, I will be examining another area of my practice…

Instagram 

Instagram is a social media platform where users share images and short videos with their followers. There are around 500 million active users. It is therefore a perfect place for businesses, artists and influencers to access a global (often millennial) audience. However, with an average of 95 million photos and videos being uploaded every day, the curation of content has never been more important.

How I use Instagram now

Date Started: 18/07/15

Date Now: 08/08/17

Number of days used: 752

Post Regularity : post on average every 3.9 days

Followers: 271

Following: 1,207

 

Findings: I post on a wide variety of subjects and this does lead to a lack of professionalism and continuity on my feed. I post far more often when I am away from home. Therefore, I need to go to more effort to create beautiful images while at home. I feel that my art/design work is lost amongst other images, of my dog for example. I don’t want to lose the fun in posting so I think a separate more design focussed account is what I need. I will keep my personal account active too.

Inspiration and Ideas

Flat Lays

I would love to experiment with taking some flat lays. I first started thinking about this at the Natural History Museum in Oxford (I discuss this trip more in this post). I was taking images of exhibits in cases from above and finding the combination of objects and drawings very aesthetically pleasing. Furthermore, the camera angle seemed an effective one for taking a clean, shadow free image.  Flat lays are images that are taken from above and are often of beautifully curated objects. They are popular on Instagram among fashion and lifestyle bloggers. Experimenting with this would fuse two of my interests: photography and objects. It would be a great way to photograph the tools I use in my work and my favourite things. Below are some inspirational images.

 

Mood Board

I have always enjoyed collage as an art form and being asked to create a mood board at the start of a project is a dream! I have been looking for some more unusual Instagram layouts and came across the fashion designer Roberi Parra. His feed when looked at as a whole resembles a mood board. It is a well curated collage of images and text. This sort of layout appeals to me in several ways Firstly, because it would ensure that there was a lot of thought put into each post. Despite the mood board effect only being visible when you view his entire page, each post is still beautiful. Secondly, as we begin to digitalise everything, creating a tactile and physical mood board before uploading it to Instagram would ensure I still have a physical connection to my work.

Time Lapse and Work in Progress

Inspired especially by printmaker Aftyn Shah I thought it would be good to try and include more of my work in progress. This is not something I have considered doing before but it would give my followers more of an insight into my practice. Furthermore, it would mean I could use my feed to look at how work has progressed. Shah is also very good at including objects (such as plants and tools) around her work in images that don’t detract but complemeant. I would like to also take inspiration from this.

A bold colour scheme

One of the best ways to catch a person’s eye and to inject some joy into the world in my opinion is through colour! I am hoping to develop a bold colour scheme for my new design feed perhaps using some turquoise and pink (one of my favourite colour combinations). Art Director Andoni Beristain has an Instagram feed that makes me happy to look at. It is cohesive and professional but also joyful! It is important to inject a bit of personality into any platform that is showing your work.

That’s all for now. I will post again once I have started to implement some of the above ideas.