As I am now in the stages of designing my coffee table style book layout I was really worrying as I had a lot of ideas of how I was going to compose it but I wasn't sure if it was the right style for my book and I needed to know what would work the best. As this was the easter holidays I decided to attend the Vogue 100: Century of Style exhibition at the national portrait gallery in London. Although I know that Vogue is a magazine and I am creating a book I knew that this would still give me some great inspiration and insight into the layout of images focusing on make up as well as styling and hair.
It was quite annoying as I was not allowed to take pictures during the exhibition but I made many notes of issues, such as March 1966 and June 1916, and front cover images that had very similar aspects to mine from the style of make up and colouring to the poses or hairstyle. I was also beginning to worry that perhaps I had made the wrong decision about not taking any full length images for my final book but after attending this and viewing the sort of images they take to advertise make up or cosmetic product I felt very reassured that I had definitely made the right choice as close up and mid length with subtle and beautiful poses were by far the most used style of image and it was only when the fashion styling was the main focus that they used full length and that is not what my book is all about. I have also begun to consider perhaps producing a square shaped book rather than portrait. Many of the images for make up were of square shape and this really defined the face with a high fashion feel as well as well as showing the make up in really fine detail.
I learn some very interesting facts and the change and overall variety of all the images photographers had taken, such as David Bailey, Cecil Beaton and Tim Walker, over the years since it begun in 1916 was so diversity and wide ranged which something I believe I have achieved in my final images. I also found that there is no perfect image for everyone. In the creative industry it seems to be impossible to please everyone and this is something that can be really get me down on my own work at times. This exhibition was very enlightening as so many people liked on image but then hated another that someone loved, it can be seen as all a matter of a opinion.
I also found that the combination of full spread pages next to images with a whiten or black boarder were very commonly used and this gave such a high class and profession look to their magazines. I am so glad I attended this exhibition as I now feel very confident in my images and how I will test laying them out. I now intend to test this with my own images until I am 100% with the final look and I will check this serval times before sending off for printing. I also purchased a book that I will reference back to frequently when going through this process just for that extra bit of guidance.
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