All in all, the survey shared on my social media turned out pretty positive, with a couple of answers being a bit difficult to read (archaic/derogatory/sexist views). I wasn’t expecting so many results (I got 28 responses) and certainly didn’t expect such in-depth explanations from some, but it really helped that a friend from 2nd year of Greenwich uni shared it to her wall, so I also got some more ‘mature’ responses.
Because I got so many responses, the necessity of interviewing people in real life, or having one person to focus on is perhaps not so necessary, as I could easily pull together a select few bits of the text, filling it out with observations and thoughts, quotes and views from other relevant artists/ people in the media?
In hindsight, I should’ve put another option at the bottom of the survey to ask if people would mind me using their words within my work, as I think I might have to use moral integrity to narrow down responses that might be too personal to share. This might be something to think about if I ever do something similar again. But all responses are anonymous, so sharing won’t be like I’m plastering their name and deepest secrets around the world.
I think at this point, it’s just about going through and figuring out which are suitable to use, and maybe create some overviews to explore the responses further. Also figuring out how many I might need to modify slightly, and which ones I can use as full answers (I have the ability to see just individual answers). Also, the slightly opposing views between some of the answers can be explored, creating juxtapositions between answers, imagery and typography to correlate to answers, whether negative or positive. This could possibly lead to re-appropriating images? Instead of a clean, geometric layout, I could really use mixed media to create a zine that explores stereotypes of femininity with both found and original imagery. This could be messy, using text and imagery in a cohesive way, but also making sure it looks like a thought through layout.
I’m not sure how much I love this idea, it could certainly be a lot of fun to get back to some mixed media work, but in another way, I do really like the cleaner and more minimalistic layouts explored in my ‘editorial design’ research, and there’s not really a way I am able to do both in the time I have. I think I’ll stick to original layout designs.
Onna Borbely 