Frame (Photoshop) Interim Crit

Today was the interim crit for the frame project. The questions I asked were:

• Which was the most relevant concept and why.
• What sort of shops could you see that concept being in.
• Have you seen anything similar in your research.
• Who do you think would buy it. 

The feedback was very mixed. A lot of people thought the ruler concept was most relevant to the brief, but then it would be in shops such as Ikea, which is something I wanted to stay away from, hence the more quirky concepts of the other two. I think subconsciously I had already written this idea off. 

There was concern within the Goldilocks idea that the violence (to a very slight extent in my opinion) was in a design primarily aimed at children, and this could detract parents from buying it. I'm not sure how true this is, because to be honest, if I was buying a photo frame for any reason, I wouldn't even consider the background photo. What was encouraging though was that like me, they'd not seen much like it in their research, because I wanted to do something new. 

I think the most positive and useful feedback came on the Betty Boop idea. Although no-one really answered the question of what shops they'd be found in, there was positive feedback about the idea which I hadn't considered. Someone commented on the fact that the eyes are looking in different directions involves the buyer more, and someone said the the fact that Betty Boop is a brand would help the frame sell. I'm quite sure not everyone read the spider diagram I drew explaining the idea, because those two comments said nothing about the innuendo behind the concept, which suggests to me that it isn't strong enough. The most useful comment was that the tone was unclear, because I was using the tradional style of Betty Boop but making it more adult, and for it to work clearly I would have to "break the stereotype", which is something I'll look into further, as the Betty Boop idea is the one I would want to take forward.

However, it dawned on me that this idea doesn't lend itself too well to the photographic and photoshop element of the brief, which is a main part of the assessment. After seeing other peoples work and ideas I came to the conclusion that the Betty Boop concept was too over-thought and complicated anyway, and as I can no feasibly take 3 photo's of a little girl fighting bears, I am pretty much forced to run with the ruler idea. Fortunately I have picked up some ideas from other peoples work about layering and using lighting to make the composition more interesting, which addresses my primary problem with this idea, which was that it could possibly have been quite dull and boring.