Unit X: Promote!

With less than a week until Unit X draws to a close, one of our final tasks was to promote our exhibition. We started looking into this on Thursday last week when Flavia, Hannah, Ryan and Millie created a Facebook group and a poster to advertise the event. I’m quite proud to say that one of my photographs of the installation made it as the background for the poster! As for distribution, we went around the various buildings on campus to put them up so that students who may not be aware of what actually goes on in the art department might take an interest and come along. Meanwhile, Hannah, Alex and Millie also distributed some of the poster around the Norther Quarter so we are really starting to get word out. 

 In addition to this, I have tweeted about the event which I thought would be helpful as I follow a few artist groups in Manchester. This seems to be working as I have already received a retweet from trusty old Manchester School of Art!

I suppose, for us social media has been most crucial in terms of promotion as it’s a great tool to raise awareness and get through to people at short notice and with a lack of resources. Whilst platforms like Facebook are great for reaching your own contacts, Twitter is probably better for events such as this as it allows anonymous groups like ours to feign a greater online presence as we can take advantage of its little black book!

However, alongside all this we were also interested in creating original promotional material as a final collaborative process. This has taken the form of a Zine that combines all our research and processes that we have undertaken to get to the final outcome. I thought this was a nice idea as it was a chance for us to showcase the ideas that may not necessarily have made that final cut.

In regards to the overall look of the Zine, we came to the group decision that it should be printed black and white, for reasons both aesthetic and economic! The idea was that by keeping to a muted colour scheme, the Zine would work in harmony with the sombre mood of the film and we can very conveniently cut down on printing costs! However, to avoid this looking too drab we will be printed on coloured paper that will be inserted randomly so that no two Zines are the same.

 Hannah took the lead on this one while I tried to pitch in as best I could with any ideas of composition and layout of the Zine. This has been a fun process and thanks to Hannah’s expertise I now have knowledge of the InDesign programme and can use it to showcase portfolio work in the future.