Evaluation

For my final major project, I created a blog entitled ‘UntoldBeauty’. I came up with the idea with the intention to provide images of inspirational make up looks and product recommendations without the agenda or bias often associated with popular ‘Social Influencers’ in the beauty industry.

The site is targeted at women belonging to the millennial demographic, aged 18-30 years. In the 16 weeks I had to complete the assignment, I was able to build a live functioning website that featured a blog feed consisting of posts containing images of trend-based make up looks. These make up looks are intended to provide inspiration and guidance to my intended demographic.  Although I was able to successfully complete the task in hand, the development and finalisation of the project was not without its struggles or challenges. I was able to document these challenges and continually evaluate my progress in the project through writing a reflective blog.

For a long while the final aims of my project were in flux until a late stage when I arrived at a final idea for the project outcome. My project proposal changed a number of times over the duration of the 16 weeks. This development was beneficial in the sense that I was able to arrive at an idea I was happy with producing. However, the downside to the continued process of developing my idea was that the progress of the project as a whole was a lot slower than originally planned, which ultimately lead to the project outcome being lacking somewhat in depth and content. In hindsight, it would have benefitted me if I had spent more time at the very beginning of the project refining my ideas more thoroughly in order to arrive at a final concept sooner.

Another factor that also hindered the progress of the project was a lack of motivation and ambition. As mentioned in my reflective journal, I frequently felt myself lacking in motivation to complete any work towards to the completion of the project. I generally felt low in confidence and ambition and as a result this lead to me doing very little each week towards the word load ahead of me. This had a major impact on the progress of the project and resulted in the final few weeks before the assignment deadline being very stressful due to a feeling of urgency to get a lot of work done in a short space of time. Overall, I feel that if I had sought help sooner with this issue or even just pushed myself a little harder to achieve my goals I would progressed more successfully over the duration of the project.

Budget was another element of the project that didn’t run according to my original plans. In my initial proposal I had budgeted a certain amount for the cost of a domain to host the site I would design on Adobe Muse. However, as stated in my reflective journal, I found adobe muse to be a lot more difficult and time consuming than expected. After experimenting on the web designing site Wix, I came to the decision to use Wix rather than Muse despite the significant price difference. However, I do feel that I made this decision for the right reasons and it wasn’t without careful consideration. The extra price was not to the detriment of the project and overall I had few complications using Wix and found it to be a fairly stress-free process. Overall, I don’t think this was the wrong decision to make as I feel that if I had continued to use Adobe Muse I would have made slower progress and not achieved as good an outcome.

When I consider whether my project outcome met its original aims, I would overall argue that the site I have created caters to my target audience. Through my initial research I was able to ascertain that the millennial audience is heavily reliant upon social media as a determining factor over which beauty products to buy. Due to an uncertainty of authenticity regarding recommendations made on beauty blogs I was able to establish that there is a gap in the market for a blog that provides an impartial and unbiased approach to make up looks and product recommendations, hence the name ‘UntoldBeauty’ which appropriately sets the tone for a blog that champions credibilitily of reccomendations. I also addressed the open mindedness of millennial women towards niche cosmetic brands by featuring products from variety of companies, including those that are lesser known in the industry such as IT Cosmetics, Stila and TheBalm Cosmetics.

on that note, I was however slightly hindered by the imitations of the widget app I used to feature products on my blog posts.  The widget produced by ShopStyleCollective.Com allows you to create simple widgets that display your chosen products. These images can then be clicked through to the retailer and generate commission dependent on the amount of sales your widget generates. I chose to use this widget because I liked the fact that it was simple to use and could possibly result in revenue. However, not all cosmetic products are available through this application and I ideally would have liked to feature more niche products, rather than some of the more well-known branded products I featured belonging to the likes of Benefit, NARS and Urban Decay. I think the incorporation of more lesser known brand names would have further enforced the ‘untold’ nature of the site, consistently championing effective but often over-looked niche products. If I hadn’t been pushed for time, I would have liked to research and utilize another method of featuring specific products with less limitations in terms of variety.

I feel that the site is easy to navigate, and adheres to the target audience’s common interaction with social media, as featured blog posts are linked from Instagram updates, which based on my initial proposal research I found to be one of the most popular and consistently used forms of gaining make up inspiration on social media. 

I feel however I could have utilisied this knowledge of my target audience a little more thoroughly. I could further have extended the exposure of the site to my target audience by linking it to more social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

I feel that the overall aesthetic of the site is clean, slick and in context with some of the common conventions of a blog. However, I was keen to create an aesthetic and layout that wasn’t overly stereotypical. I wanted to create a site that had more intrigue than your average blog feed. I think I achieved this through the placement of featured images leading the audience on to the appropriate blog post. I believe this works effectively by capturing the attention and interest of the viewer without giving all the details of the post away up front. Feedback I have received on the aesthetic and layout of the site has suggested a good balance between the conventions of a typical blog feed and a more stylized portfolio website.

The images featured are of high quality and in keeping with the central theme of the blog – subtle, simple but still incorporating current trends. The final looks are polished and professional looking. Overall there are only a few elements I would have liked to address in hindsight for example some of the images lack a little attention to detail in some areas.

However, considering that this is an inspirational blog I feel that the images featured shouldn’t be unrealistically flawless or perfect as this could set unachievable standards and even possibly discourage the target audience from returning to the site if they felt this was the case.

Featured Look

Featured Look

I do feel that there are elements of my final outcome that are lacking. One of these elements is a lack of content compared to my original aims. Originally I intended to feature 25 looks on the site but in reality I was only able to feature a total of six. The lack of content created was mostly down to personal struggles with motivation and confidence. I also found the maximum hours allocated to students in the university studios quite limiting. In hindsight, for future scenarios I need to make sure I stay more on top of aims and perhaps make sure to set more realistic objectives in the future.

The duration of the project has also resulted in a number of unexpected outcomes. The most significant is the realization that I can make hard decisions as a creative professional that are in the best interests of a creative project. For example, I decided to exclude a couple of the looks that I shot for the website. I made this decision because I felt that the quality of the images was not up to standard and that the makeup artistry also was not accurate enough. I could have decided to include these images anyway in order to boost content and make my website appear to have more depth, however I felt that this would not be a professional decision and would in turn hinder the final outcome.

Unfeatured Look

Unfeatured Look

Unfeatured Look

In final reflection upon the work I have produced, I am very proud of the professional quality and standard of the work I gave produced. In fact, I am eager to further develop and work on my blog by continuing to add features and posts after graduating university. I feel that this would benefit me greatly as it will continue to encourage me to create high standards of creative work in order to build an even stronger portfolio which will only make me more employable in terms of future opportunities.

♯Initiative & Independent Learning
♯Devise Innovative and Appropriate Solutions to a problem or brief
♯Understanding of trends & styling conventions
♯Good working practices