For the semester the topic I was given was cosmetics and within cosmetics I chose lipstick as my theme for the semester.
My first thoughts when I think lipstick is glamorous and chic. I feel that the peak of lipsticks success was especially during the 40s and 50s and the rise of what we know now as old Hollywood glamour. I don’t feel that there is a person who can say that long lashes and alluring lips ever look unattractive on a woman. That confidence and beauty is what I wanted to capture with my project.
For project number one, I decided to do a simple lipstick case. Originally I wanted to play with the texture of the lipstick, how it would smear across a page or feel on a woman’s lips. But every concept I designed seemed too complex and overdone and simply distracting. So I took a step back and decided I didn’t want the focus to be the texture; I wanted it to be the lipstick itself. When one looks at the case, you can see its clean edges, its modern, yet elegant design, and its beauty. I wanted to try and capture that allure of a woman’s lipstick, simply from the case itself.
I started with a pink background. I played around with different shades (darker or lighter) and different types of painting (neat or messy edges). I decided that to really highlight my feelings, a firework type design worked best in a bright pink. I channeled my inner Marilyn Monroe in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, except this time it was not about diamonds, but lipstick. I still liked the play on texture (as I’m sure you’ll see throughout my work this semester), so instead of a simple lipstick tube I decided to keep the clean edges but create a messy texture; as if lipstick was my medium. I did so by using a heavy bodied paint, applying in globs and allowing to settle as is.
In the end, my design was much simpler than I would have liked, but I thought that was what was best for the project. I wanted a postcard that was going to stand out and keep its message simple without overcomplicating it.
For the second project, we were allowed much more space to design a poster to sell our project. I’m not the best artist but no matter what I’m doing my first thought is always to research as much as possible. So I bought a whole stack of magazines and scanned the internet for the perfect ad ideas and photographs that I could use for my project. It just so happened that I stumbled upon this gorgeous photo of a model in glamour magazine and with some more research was able to find a high quality photo of her:
Next was what design I wanted to portray. My model was glamorous with a bit of a funky edge (see green nails) and I wanted to play on that idea. So I downloaded Photoshop and experimented with different ways to morph my photo. Through Google, I even found out how to add color to a black and white photo and decided that this was the best way to highlight her lips.
But I was still stumped on how to arrange my Ad. So many ads were beautiful models, with big gorgeous lips and then the product tacked on to the side of the photo. I wanted my ad to convey more, I wanted it to show that glamour was possible for everyone. So after discussing it some more in class, I staged a photo-shoot with my very glamorous friends. I had them all copy the pose that the model was making and just with the click of my camera not only did I see glamour but I also go their personalities. This wasn’t just a model hired to sell the product and not her. These were my friends, even though posing, managed to somehow bring their character and their own type of allure.
So after a very successful photo-shoot, I was still stumped by how I was going to lay it out on my poster. After playing around with a few different ideas, I decided horizontally was the best way and began painting my background. Originally I had wanted very sheer gunmetal, almost a stain, on my poster. But somehow in my paint mixing process and on my third sheet of canvas paper, I decided that my gunmetal blue mistake was a very good one and went with it. It helped the black and white photos pop even more and allowed me to keep a modern edge to my very classic design (which is what M.A.C cosmetics is all about). After having arranged all the photos, I decided to add some lace design work to my idea, since I felt it needed an extra punch. Looking back on it, lace is glamorous but definitely not on my poster. It just hadn’t turned out the way I wanted it to and to my despair the next morning, the lace pieces wouldn’t budge…so lace it was!! My final touch was adding my slogan Glamour for All which is what I want my M.A.C. collection to empower throughout the semester.
