For today, we had been working on some type and color studies for the look and feel of our catalog. We decided on a name, which is Chroma. We started working on some logo designs and ways of handling the typography. We may do something hand-made or combine it with digital. We will do some experiments with that this week. From here, we will work on the grid system, the look and feel of the catalog, a few sample spreads, and some cover studies. We will also begin writing the content for the catalog, such as the bio, history, and collection info. We have divided up the work for next class, Deb will work on 1 grid system, some cover studies, the photo spread, and begin typing the biography of the collector. Molly will do 2 grid systems, some cover studies, the info spread, and start typing up some of the info about the collection. We will also both keep developing the logo and the typography.

The main intent of our collection is to make people realize that nail color and decoration is more than just vanity, it is about showing your personality and mood. So, we are going to create nail polish colors for people who come see the collection. They will be able to create whatever color they want and give it a name as well. For this we will create a packaging with our museum logo. Also, we will also create a color spectrum (probably in large poster format) that will explain what colors are available and what mood they may represent. In the catalog we also will have a fold-out section that explains the history of nail polish (which dates as far back as 3000 years BC).
Our challenge right now is finding the right name for our collection. We want something different that relate to color and personality/identity.

We have been able to get more photographs of people who wear nail polish and found out the different reasons why they wear it. We have also categorized at the different brands and polish names.

Our next step is to look at the history of nail art and explore the origins of why people began to adorn their nails. We also want to explore the chemical side of the polish; how it is made and what chemicals compose it. When it comes to cosmetics, there is very little government regulation so it would be interesting to look at what companies can get away with and how it affects our health.

Since our project is mostly about the images, we were thinking of making some of the photography large-scale (maybe compositing them or making digital collages) and having people walk around as if they are in a gallery. In the end, we would like the viewer to realize that nail adornment is not just about vanity, but it is a way that people can express their mood or individuality. Because of this, we can have people create their own color and color name and paint their nails for them.

The project so far is going well. We have taken photos of nail polish bottles at Walgreens and in the photo studio. We have also taken photos of people's nails and asked them why they paint their nails. This gave the whole project another level of interest because people have different and interesting reasons for painting their nails.

Right now the challenge is going to be finding a lot of different people to photograph. We want to get people who either wear nail polish all the time, to the people who never wear it. We also think it would be interesting to not only show beautifully manicured hands, but to also show the chipped nails. Since most of our audience is supposed to be college students, most of them won't have "the perfectly manicured hand" because they are living on a college budget.

Other than the photographs, we will also present the history of nail art and research the chemicals and preparation of the polish.

So far it seems like we are on the right track with our collection. We keep coming up with new and more interesting ways to categorize the nail polish. We already have a wide variety of nail polishes, and just need to expand to other methods of nail decoration. The only issue we are really running into right now is just coming up with a day to go look at different stores and salons.

Right now our project is transitioning from nail polish collection to nail art (which would include acrylics and nail jewelry). Now we have to look for different kinds of nail art. We are also going to look for different people to photograph, including people who wear nail polish regularly and even people who don't wear it at all. We will use this to show how a person's personality can directly correlate to how they decorate (or don't decorate) their nails. We're also going to look at different kinds of nail decorations, from really outrageous styles like patterns and adornments, to basic, more elegant salon styles. We're also going to look at price ranges, from less-expensive drugstore kinds, to beauty supply store brands.

Next we are going to photograph what we have in the different categories we've come up with. We are also going to start looking for people whose nails we can photograph. Later this week we are going to expand our collection to more than just polishes.

For next class, Deb is going to photograph the polishes we have, and work with the different categories, as well as paint some swatches.

We came up with the nail polish categories today in class, and we are going to photograph them in those different categories.

And Molly is going to define the collection intent as well as the list of ideas that relate to the collection. She is also going to look at Walgreens and catalog the different brands, colors, names etc of nail art that are there.

Group Discussion

Today we presented our project to another group. They thought that although our project is really "girly", it has the potential to visually look very interesting. The group thought that our idea was successful but we need to focus more on the categorization before moving forward. Instead of just making the project about nail polish, it would be more about "nail art/nail adornment" because there are so many different kinds of things people can do other than just paint their nails. We have a lot of specific categories so we need to create broader ones and the focus on specific things. We also need to look at the "human interaction" more than just the nail polish bottles and colors because that would make the whole project more interesting. We are going to look at salons and drugstores to see what we can do and who else we can photograph so we can capture all different kinds of nails.

We looked at a lot of magazines and ads for visual inspiration. The next step would be to look at who the collector is and the audience. Also, we want to photography different polish bottles and possibly nails to start experimenting with the visual aspect of the project.

Today we were able to narrow down our objects to post-its and nail polish. They both have some human interaction to them which is why they seem to be the most interesting.

With the post-it, we can look at the different designs/shapes/colors/ etc that they come in as well as the different categories of notes that people write on them. Depending on the person's handwriting or message we can then analyze the kind of personality of the note-taker.

With the nail-polish, there are many categories from color to packaging to kinds of nail polish (quick dry/UV change). There is also some form of human interaction because depending on the color or polish type we can look at the person's mood or other aspects of their personality. Also, we think that photographing the nail polish will be interesting for the catalog because we can take pictures of different people's hands and of the product itself. We were even thinking of making a color spectrum of the different colors we collect.

After making a small mind-map for our objects, we are probably going to move forward with the nail polish because it gives us the most categories to work with and it easily accessible to collect. The only thing that may be a challenge for us is the amount of people that would be willing to participate (meaning that they would polish their nails and be willing to be photographed). Finding the nail polish should not be a problem though because we both have a lot of them.

The next step to our project is looking at the colors that we own and find as many categories as we can. Then we will look at different ways of taking photographs; taking pictures of hands, the nail polish bottle, etc.