Title: Embrace
Whether we should embrace ourselves as we are or the self-images we want to achieve.
Content:
I have always been an overweighted individual since I was an infant. My mother was a professional dancer also a dance teacher. In her opinion, the body with fat is ugly. Therefore, I am always the ugly one. During my time of growing up, I never stop thinking about changing my self image and my appearance.
I realize that it is a common issues across the society, especially applies to girls. Girls based their self esteem on their appearance too much. Although it is more rational to embrace and celebrate ourselves as we are. Because the confidence from inside should empower individual rather than the appearance from outside as the appearance will not always stay the same. However, it is hard to get rid of opinion to achieve the ideal self.
I am determine to explore and investigate this sensitive subject since I am the harshest critic of me, I hate my appearance as well as the incongruence of my self-esteem. Therefore, even though this is an aspect and worry that the majority of people shared, I want to investigate myself as the participant to go through the sensitive beauty debate to find out an answer towards the self-image.
With respect to this project, I am willing to embrace myself, both my ideal self and the realistic self. As similar as that, I also want to see the impact from others on my self image. I wish using me almost as a experiment sample to generalize my finding toward the public.
Media and Process:
Graphic design would be a good way to explore myself in this scenario, because nowadays, people are very much influenced by graphic medias e.g. magazine, instagram and advertisement etc. And those graphic media emphasize the image of how people should look like in a way that is hard to achieve. The typography combined with photograph make powerful and instant communication with the viewers. I can use those media as the secondary reference to study the debate in a better standard.
I take this project as a transition for myself from a Fine Arts based thinking to a graphic design scenario. My previous project were very much autobiographical. As “Embrace” is a transition, although it is based on myself, it is more of a conversation of me leading the voice to communicate with the public.
In a practical perspective, I am willing to use magazines to study the “iconic looking” created by the society. Also some photography polaroids and the support of photoshop techniques would be a goof tool for me to explore. Apart from the digital techniques, some drawing and painting technique are crucial for me to create the self image, as they are free to explore on paper etc.
Final outcome:
As a result, I aim to produce the outcome can make the people who share the same opinion feel that they are being noticed and feeling more comfortable with themselves. One of the most crucial aspect is that I can step out of my self-centered zone and make a connection with the public.
In order to manage my time wisely, I will do a mind map as list of things I should do and organize each thing into a timetable with different time slots.
Meixuan Cheng 