The grid audience research

1. The Grid Audience
Research

2. Social Media
In 2021, more than half the world (57.6%) use social media, whilst 61.8% of the world’s population are internet users. A large
amount of this percentage is the 18-24 age category. This age group being such a prominent group that uses social media
means that they are often responsible for the changing trends throughout social media apps, specifically image/ video based
apps such as Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and TikTok.
Social media is most popular with the 18-24 age category. According to an Attest study, 59% of this age group spend 3+ hours a
day on social media, with TikTok and YouTube being the most popular social media platforms. The Attest study says that 60% of
this age category visit TikTok daily, 61% being YouTube. Instagram and Snapchat are also social media platforms that are more
popular with younger ages than older. 56% use Instagram and 52% use Snapchat. Overall, this age category lean more towards
using image-led social media platforms.

3. Pinterest
Pinterest is an image sharing social media platform. On this platform, you are able to view images, videos and gifs and create
boards of multiple images. Their algorithm also allows every user's home page to be unique, with different images and videos
shown according to what other content the user has viewed previously. Often known as a 'visual search engine', Pinterest is the
14th largest social network in the world with 459 million active monthly users. 77% of their users are female, 14% are male and
the remaining are unspecified. Between 2019 and 2020, their Gen Z audience rose to 40%. Ages 18-29, is Pinterest's second
largest demographic. Pinterest says that 85% of their users use the mobile app as opposed to the website, this will include a
large amount of the younger generation as it is easily accessible on mobile.

4. Instagram
Instagram is an image and video sharing social media app. It is mainly made as a mobile app but can also be used on the web to
view, share and edit images, videos and stories. Instagram's main demographic is users under age 35. 22% of their
demographic is ages 18-24, making it the second most popular age category using the app. 90% of instagram accounts follow at
least one business account

5. Digital Art
The first use of the term digital art was in the early 1980s when computer engineers created a paint program known as ‘AARON’,
which was designed to make large drawings. Since then, digital art, once called media or computer art, is art made using software.
Things such as animations, illustrations, paintings made on electronic devices can be classed as digital art.
Digital art is contemporary art and has had a huge impact in the publishing and advertising world and is used in media with
advertisements and visual effects in film.

6. Freelancing
Freelancing is way a of working for small/ growing business enterprises and or for one person to work an produce their work and sell themselves
with a funder or a well-known company supporting through money contributions. Statistics have shown that over two million people in the UK work as
freelancers which sums up to an 3% increase of freelancers in 2021 than in 2019. Freelancing has become more a common way of being employed
as 16% of freelancers in the UK are mothers which indicates the accessibility of being a freelancer as freelancing is a quick way of receiving money if
you are struggling financially but also freelancing is a great way to showcase your products you have made and have the opportunity for a company
that is well-known to acknowledge the talent and have the possibility of being funded by the company. Freelancers have such a massive contribution
to the UK economy as freelancers have contributed and produced £162 billion and probably over that to the UK economy. Freelancing has
contributed quite a large amount to the economy but the downfall is that cash flow can be irregular. But only 3.1% of freelancers are the ages of 18-
24, 8.5% are 25-34 which shows that majority of freelancers are quite older in the ages of 35-64. Statistics show that freelancing works the best when
it comes to being a photographer or a graphic designer as they are highly needed in the both industry so being a freelancer for either of them the
likelihood of being successful is quite high. Although majority of freelancer will get paid about £13 + an hour, there is a problem where since being a
freelancer as you most likely won’t have staff and everything you produce will be done by yourself which means freelancers can be overworked but
not work at all, the reasoning is that there is no fixed hours as someone who is in the full time employed. Freelancing

7. ArtStation
ArtStation is a platform that allows digital 2D and 3D artists to post their profile and portfolio. People aspiring to work in the
games, film, media and entertainment industry most commonly use this platform. Art directors for games, as well as others in
industry often use this platform to look for artists they want to work with. ArtStation also allows users to create their own website
or blog on the site and also sell their art.
This website is beneficial to young and up and coming aspiring artists to showcase their work to the world. This platform is also
recognised by professionals in industry so there is a higher chance of their work being discovered, leading to them finding work in
industry or gaining freelance jobs. Artists can also profit from sharing this work on the website as there is a marketplace page where
they can sell their products and receive up to 95% of revenue.

8. Audience Profile

9. Visual Identity: Nature Concept

10. Visual Identity: Futuristic Concept

11. Visual Identity: Illusion Concept

12. Visual Identity: Fantasy Concept

13. Neon Glow Logo Idea
To create this logo idea, I started by using the font ‘NEON GLOW’ and made two copies of that layer to add filters later.
Then, I went to blending options and added a gradient overlay, and inner and outer glow. On one of the copied layers, I
converted to smart object and added a motion blur filter. On the second copied layer, I added a gaussian blur filter and used
a layer mask and brush tool to erase parts of the filter, highlighting areas of the text. On a new layer, I used the brush tool
and coloured over the text. I changed the blending mode to soft light which added more glow to the text and saturation.
Finally, I copied this layer, changed the blending mode to screen and turned the opacity down to add extra glow to the text.

14. Gradient Logo Idea
For this logo concept, I started by using the font ‘TW Cen MT Condensed’, and inserted a gradient image next to it ready for
when I create the effect. Next, I added a stroke effect in orange to outline the text. After that, I copied the text and changed
the text colour to orange, placing the layer behind the main text and using the move tool to slightly adjust it downwards. I
continued this process of copying and re-colouring the text until I had created this gradient effect that matches the colours of
the gradient image. To finish it off, I added an inner glow effect to the main text layer to help it stand out more.

15. Futuristic Chrome Logo Idea
I started off using the fonts ‘Wild Wolf’ and ‘Maximum Impact’ and converted the ‘grid’ text to a shape and made a copy of
those layers labelled ‘outline’ and ‘centre’ and added a stroke layer. On the centre layer, I added a blue and purple gradient
overlay, a mid-blue inner glow and outer glow, and white stroke effect. On the outline layer, I added another gradient overlay
of blue and white. On a new layer, using the polygonal lasso tool, I traced around areas of the outline and added a gradient
fill to give it a metallic effect. For ‘the’ text layer, I added a gradient overlay of pink shades. Then, I added bevel and emboss
and inner glow to add highlight and make the text stand out and then finished off with a pink outer glow. For finishing
touches, I added a stock image lens flare to parts of the text that I wanted to highlight.

16. What Is ‘The Grid’ To Us?
The Grid is an online digital art uploading website where the main ages of 18-24 but other can also upload their work on this website as it will help
young be able to upload and build a platform for themselves as freelancers and or be able to showcase their talents with digital art. As The Grid consists
of 4 pages in total that will showcase different aesthetics/themes such as Illusion, Cottagecore (Nature), Fantasy and Future. The different pages on the
website will be presenting digital in those themes and 10-15 seconds of videos will be there showing various ways of the specific theme/aesthetic can
be interrupted. Additionally with those certain themes we have chosen to be on the website, the themes and pages are not the only types of art that can
be uploaded, but if your art fits into any of those that is where you would upload your art but there will be addition page where it is blank where you can
just upload your digital art onto there if it does not meet or match with pages and aesthetics that have been presented on our website. The Grid main
page will be designed to fit the Illusion theme out of the other themes we have chosen from the brief, the illusion page will consist of various bright
colours blended in and or out together and blurred where it gives off the ‘trippy’ effect to the photos that we digitally design. Fonts on this page that will
used will the types of font where there are blended/collided together where it is slightly not readable as this go into the illusion aspect of this theme. The
second page on the grid website will be a Nature/Cottagecore based page where the page will consist of very neutral based colours such as brown,
dark greens and light greens, used those colour usually are part of nature so the page will look very simplistic. Photos will be edited in photoshop in
various ways to appear and match the theme of nature, the Nature page will consists of variations of natured based digital art across the page but
presented and placed in specific areas across the page to make the overall look of the page interesting. Font being used in this page will be calligraphy
inspired fonts as if it will suit and match the aesthetic of the specific page with also using the colour scheme to match with the overall presentation of the
page. The fantasy page will quite similar to the nature/Cottagecore page as in with use of fonts will be calligraphy inspired fonts and the colour scheme
matching the colour scheme to the nature page but with the addition of bright colours for the page. The second page on the grid website will be a
Nature/Cottagecore based page where the page will consist of very neutral based colours such brown dark greens and light greens, used
those colour usually are part of nature so the page will look very simplistic. Photos will be edited in photoshop in various ways to appear
and match the theme of nature, The Nature page will consists of variations of natured based digital art across the page but presented and
placed in specific across the page to make the overall look of the page interesting.

17. Illusion
There are a variety of definitions of what illusion is:
- An instance of a wrong of misinterpreted perception of a sensory experience.
- A deceptive appearance or impression.
- A false idea or belief.
- The depiction of an object on a flat two-dimensional surface, but from an angle that makes it appear three-dimensional.
Illusion in art:
Illusionism is a form of optical illusion in the art world. Although it is seen as modern art, illusion in art has dated back to mural paintings seen in
Greek homes in 1493 and rapidly developed during the Renaissance period.
The use of space and depth is considered when creating illusions in art. An example of this is the ‘Allegory of Jesuits’ Missionary Work’ painted that
is painted on a flat ceiling, but gives the ceiling a dome shaped appearance. Illusion art transports viewers and draws them closer into a piece that
appears bigger than them.

18. Nature
- The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as
opposed to humans or human creations.
- The basic or inherent features, character, or qualities of something.
- Nature can be a simple add on to a painting to convey a sense of depth, or perspective. Nature is one of the most powerful inspiration sources
for art of all kinds.
Nature can be approached in a variation of ways within art and digital art, nature can be displayed as a simple picture that presents the natural world for
what it is, or it can be shown in more intricate ways to add depth to a piece or have a hidden meaning. Nature has been presented in art for as long as
art has been shown. Artists have always often used nature within their work, but with graphic design and the rise of digital art, nature is being presented
in more creative and unique ways. An example of this is ‘Juan Covelli’ who has a contrast of nature and animals with man-made buildings and objects
in his work, ‘Vacation at the End of the World’. This has a hidden message about the new world and the decline of the natural world. An example of
nature being portrayed more traditionally in digital art is Brian Edward Miller’s work in which he creates scenic illustrations of forests, mountains and
more.
By Juan Covelli By Brian Edward Miller

19. Fantasy
- The faculty or activity of imagining impossible or improbable things.
- An idea with no basis in reality.
- A genre of imaginative fiction involving magic and adventure, especially in a setting other than the real world.
Fantasy art originates in religious art, mythology and folklore. Artwork of angels, demons, gods, centaurs and other creatures found in
Christian mythological art and Greek and Roman art. Early fantasy art was then used for illustrations for books and book covers and is
still used for this in modern day, along with sci-fi art. With technological advances and modern computer graphics, movies such as The
Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Pirates of the Caribbean and more have sparked more interest in the fantasy genre. As digital art
is so accessible to make, there are many amateur fantasy artists or freelancers that create art often inspired from characters or
creatures in these movies, This art style is also shown through fantasy games. Freelancers work are often showcased on websites
such as ‘DeviantArt’ and ‘ArtStation’.

20. The Future
- A period of time following the moment of speaking or writing; time regarded as still to come.
- The likely prospects for or fate of something or someone in time to come.
The future is presented in digital art in a variation of ways. There are different genres such as ‘cyberpunk’ and ‘retro-futurism’ that show
artists interpretations of what the future will look like in different ways. Cyberpunk digital art usually features brightly coloured or neon lit
cityscapes, they buildings usually look run down or crowded but lit with neon signs and street lights, it overall has a sci-fi futuristic style.
Retro futurism started out in the 1950s- 80s. In digital art, it shows depictions of what people in earlier eras predicted the future would
look like. Whilst cyberpunk has a more modern, city style, retro-futurism has a more vintage look.

21. Fantasy Inspiration
For the fantasy section of our platform, we will be creating images similar to these created by ‘rafy A’ and ‘Phaserunner’ on Youtube.
The art we create for this page will consist of mainly photo manipulation on Photoshop where we combine and alter multiple images to
create a final piece. Themes of these images will be similar to the nature concept, but as shown in our fantasy mood board, will have
lighter pink and purple tones as part of the colour scheme. Also, there will be mystical aspects to fit the fantasy theme such as fairies
and glowing nature and creatures. Fantasy in digital art is usually quite extravagant, a common pattern throughout is that there is a lot
of images in a forest scenery, with mystical creatures surrounding someone, or glowing plants and creatures lighting up the scenery.
We will make sure to follow this theme when creating content for this section. These images can be made digitally as we will be
combining a variation of photos to create a fantasy image. We will have to install the fonts that were linked on the mood board slide for
any text featured on the website or images. We also may have to download some brushes for the cloud and fog effect on some images
if we are unable to make these using the brush tool.

22. Future Inspiration
Our inspirations for how we would want our future page to look like are based on the digital art made from YouTube creators ‘tutvid’,
‘PhaseRunner’ and ‘Encreate’. As they have created digital art that goes very similar to the art we would want to produce for our digital
uploading website, as the art these creators have made are on the cyberpunk/holographic type of design which is the path us as team are
going down with our concept of the future. As these photos consist of the exact same or similar colour scheme that involve the colours bright
pink, variations of blues that go from bright blue down to dark blue, hints of purple and only one of digital art we have taken as inspiration has
the colours of orange and red that are blended out in a gradient together. The type of future theme we are going for is called the ‘Cyberpunk’
and ‘Retro-Futuristic’ aesthetic, that is where it includes spaceships, having quite a dramatic glow on the model or the objects behind them,
glitch effects used on the model or objects behind them, the high staurations of the colour pink and blue and possibly a hint of purple blended
in together. The Cyberpunk aesthetic by definition means the ‘combination of lowlife and high tech’ but the definition and look of cyberpunk
has changed quite frequently over the years and as this theme now has a convoluted definition and there is difficulty of differentiating what
kind of aspects fit into the cyberpunk aesthetic. Then moving onto Retro-Futurism by definition incorporates overlapping trends of ‘the future
seen from past and the past seen from the future.’ Retro-Futurism and Cyberpunk are the two types futurism that we will be going for our
interpretation of what the future theme will be, as these two types of futurism go hand in hand when making our own product this is what the
overall theme for our future page.

23. Illusion Inspiration
This section of our illusion page will be based of the psychedelic aesthetic as the the digital products we
will produce are going to be showcased on our website. A key example of one of our products that will be
inspired by is based of YouTube creator ‘Henry Ryder’, who has created on Photoshop a ‘Psychedelic
80's Op-Art Droplet’ tutorial that creates a products that fits into our interpretation of what the illusion
theme would be. We will be creating psychedelic digital art as we as a team think it suitable to the illusion
theme as psychedelic art is known to be based of psychedelic hallucinations if you have taken LSD drugs
and you start to ‘trip out’ which we thought the art is very on theme to what illusion is to us. Our digital
illusion products will consist of various bright colour such as pink, purple, blue, yellow, green and more,
these colours will used as some of the products will contain

24. Experiments: Illusion
As an experiment for the illusion page, I decided to follow a tutorial from ‘Daily Photoshop Tutorials’ to create a psychedelic
art design from liquid marbling on Photoshop. First, I placed an image of space/stars scenery for the background and added
a curves adjustment layer to lower the blue tones. Then I placed a stock image of a nebula photo, this will be used to create
the effect. I added a twirl and wave filter to distort the image and then started using the liquify forward warp tool to distort the
image more. Next I created a new layer and, using the brush tool, painted over parts of the image with a pink shade to add
a contrasting colour and changed the blend mode to ‘Hue’ and lowered the opacity to help the colour blend in better with the
image. After merging the two layers, I went back to the liquify tool and used the ‘twirl clockwise tool to rotate and warp parts
of the image. Then I copied the layer and resized each of them to fit the background. I merged the layers and then went
back to the liquify tools to further distort the image. Once I had fully finished distorting the image, I added a twirl filter and
made a copy of the layer before moving on to adjusting the colours. For the adjustment layers on the main image I added
the channel mixer and hue/saturation layers to brighten and make the colours stand out. On the layer copy, I added a
gaussian blur filter and a hue/saturation adjustment layer. I changed the blend mode to ‘Difference’ and lowered the fill and
opacity to add a softer texture to the image, I finished it off with a noise filter which added a slight grain to the layer copy.
Overall, I think the experiment went well as I was able to learn how to use the liquify tool in Photoshop. This will be helpful
when distorting and adjusting specific sections of an image, as well as the overall thing which I think might be useful when
creating images for the illusion themed page and trippy effects. I also used the channel mixer adjustment layer which I
never had experience using previously so I will now be able to use that when trying to bring out the saturation of red, green
and blue shades. To improve, I would say that I would be more strategic when using the liquify tool so that next time I could
warp the image a specific way to create an optical illusion.
Tutorial: Psychedelic Art Design via Liquid Marbling Effect by Daily Photoshop Tutorials
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loIjVxLb2Gg&list=PLZ7WyYZzGszbYQJzcNHX34fta48cDNbgy&index=20

25. Risk Assessment
Potential Issue How will it be avoided
The possibility of losing the work that we have made
Us a team have had discussion about where we save our work and how we
should always save our work onto One Drive, so the possibility of losing our
work is very slim as we would also send each other the work we have in just
case of a bad scenario of one of us losing our work happens, overall we are
taking precautions to this issue as we have both have lost work in the pass.
Wires left out in the opened
Wires being left out is also a health and safety issue, as
Water potentially spilling over onto our work space at college and out of
college
Avoid having bottles of water or of any liquid our working space and if
we do have to drink water while we would drink away from our area and
put the water back in our bags if we can

26. Production Schedule
Date Task
Wed 12th Jan
Start on making products for the illusion page and home page as the making of products will be split in half as there is less work
overall on one person and i hope that since there is two people working on this project, we like to think we will have this page done on
this day. And at the end of day we would write out in our singular reflection journals.
Thurs 13th Jan
This day we will be not in for college as there is an event going on at college, meaning that we won’t be at college which is a day lost
for our production which is frustrating but us as a team have discussed that we will continue to do work from and contact each other
through social media specifically teams if there is an issue or we need out partners opinion on art that we have made which overall we
won’t completely lose Thursday but definitely do not think too much work will be done as we will be working from home.
Fri 14th Jan
We would finish of any of the work we had from home at college as the work will be saved onto One Drive, as we’re finishing off the
work which the work that would be is work for our Future page for our website and i think we would be done by the first lesson. If we
are done for the Future Page we will be moving onto our nature page and as again the work will split between the both of us and and
by the end of the day I think we would have just almost finished the work. Next we would just reflect on our work in the last lesson.
Wed 19th Jan
We would finish off the nature we have done on Friday in the first lesson as i think we would only have few things to finish off as the
work won’t be too much. Then we will move onto making digital art for our Nature page and also forming the website to upload the
work
Thurs 20th Jan
Finish off working on the digital art on all themes and have it ready to be uploaded on the site.
Fri 21st Jan
Upload everything the wixsite and set everything such the different themes of art of the needed page as there will be a
page each for each theme