For my two first weeks this semester I’m going to work with Graphic design and Illustration. We were asked to prepare a mood board, research and come up with ideas for out Zine we’re going to make during this workshop.
_________________________________________________________________________
I had a lot of ideas for this, since there is a few themes that I really like to think about, but I chose to go with a dystopian cyberpunk theme. I also had a few other aesthetics I wanted to go along with, like Synthwave, retro 80’s, Vaporwave. These aesthetics have always been interesting, but it’s not really relevant with anything today, except for cyberpunk/Dystopian cyberpunk. We’re heading into the age of advanced technology, we’re depending on globalism and we’re met with issues where we have to find alternative sources and substitutes for different things we use and consume. Companies are getting more and more powerful because of eager consumers and capitalism. That’s what I want to portray, using science fiction.
_________________________________________________________________________
My mood board consists of elements I see and inspire me when I think of Cyberpunk/Dystopian Cyberpunk. There is a lot of pop culture that inspired me, for example; the Blade runner movies and the game Cyberpunk 2077. They all usually have several common themes: A dysfunctional society, globalism, advanced technology, overpopulation, bilingual because of globalism, our eco system being ruined, uprising of some sort, companies have a lot of power because of capitalism.
But what makes it relevant is that we’re living during the time the story unfolds. This was the idea of the future in the 1900’s. We never know what the future might hold but with the current growth of technology, globalism and our economical situation, it seems like a future like this is not too far away. We’re already relying on technology on a daily basis and we let ourselves rely on it more and more each year. We choose to support bigger companies that produce cheap products using cheap labor, making them grow into a power that almost causes a monopoly in certain sections. Killing off the smaller businesses.
The future have always been portrayed using brighter colours, odd materials and new technology, no matter if it’s portrayed as a Utopian or a Dystopian society. I want to lift that up because it really portrays the futuristic theme I’m looking for.
For the mood board I used different techniques of photo editing to get the effects I wanted this to be in. I used Photoshop as my tool and used images from google that I later on edited to fit my idea. I made the neon effect all by myself, except for the sign in Japanese.
_________________________________________________________________________
I’m very happy with the result, it took a lot of trial and error to get it right. I tried with several ideas but forgot to save any progress pictures as I was working on it to document my ideas, which is something I will do from now on to show my thoughts and ideas during the process.