Week 2: Mika Ninagawa
Thursday, March 5, 2009
When I think about Digital Communication through graphics, I think of things such as photoshop - digitally enhancing images, CGI and Illustrator - digital drawing. Let's not talk about digital drawing for this post. Photoshop can be used for many things such as colouring to create computer graphics as well as digitally enhancing and retouching photographs and creating special effects. A lot of people are mistaken that as long as they have photoshop, they can make a photograph look good. While this is true to some extent, through experience, I have learnt that it also depends on the raw materials - what the photograph looked like before it was edited, it's quality, focus, etc. A good raw photo will produce fantastic end results in photoshop and a bad one will produce ok results.
Which brings me to the topic I want to discuss. As a fashion designer, everything is meant to bring inspiration for us, digital media inclusive. One photographer which I wanted to blog about
is one of Japan's most popular photographers: Mika Ninagawa.
What is inspiring about her work is her bold use of colour. While we can create collections with just plain black and white, colour is an extremely important part of our lives, and colour in Ninagawa's works stand out. Another inspiring thing about her work as a result of the strong colours is that is creates an almost fantasical environment. So many possiblities in design collections can become possible with such inspiring themes, such as the flowers in the first image can be used as a fabric print with the same colours, or jewellwery can be created. The softness of the flowers makes you want to use soft silks of strong and bold colours.
Many of Ninagawa's works also appear in magazines and advertisements (ie. movie posters, billboards, etc) and her use of strong and bold colour really attracts the attention of her audience. For example, if someone was to create a concept board selling the a collection inspired by Ninagawa's goldfish series (pictured above), the use of these colours do not only stand out but they would also look fantastic when printed. This is something a designer really has to take into account when working with digital media - the purpose of it, is it for printing, web or both? Hopefully Ninagawa's works have inspired you to not only think about digital media processes, but also have inspired designers to work hard and come up with new ideas. Mika Ninagawa is not only part of my inspiration, but her works also motivate me to continuously improve myself and one day, be able to reach and surpass the level she is at.
Photographs courtesy to: star-fruit cafe, maxhodges, 2waku and of course - Mika Ninagawa Official website!!
