Here is the concept for my FMP project, in which I explore Stockholm Syndrome and how this psychological occurrence is relevant to society's relationship towards drugs. Even though my title is not particularly personal to me, I am very excited and intrigued by this title due to the social, psychological and cultural themes connoted. This title allows me to research many sub-themes, as well as medical journals and conterversal topics, which I feel will produce a very well-informed and interesting outcome. I would like to poduce a series of small zines, each exlporing a different sub-theme, aimed at a customer of Sedition Magazine. I have chosen this magazine due to it's collage-y, fan-zine style of imagery and typography, which I feel suits my title and style well.
To start off my project I created a brainstorm to help me explore different routes within connotations of Stockholm Syndrome and this, alongside research, helped me develop chapters to look during my FMP. I find brainstorms helpful due to the quick and organic way of thinking, often taking routes which aren't initially obvious, which helps me develop ideas.
Before starting my sketchbook, I created a customer profile by researching the customer I mentioned in my proposal. My customer profile for my FMP is for a customer of Sedition Magazine, which is a self-described anarchist New York-based magazine that creates a contemporary contextualised narrative within their imagery. The images are often a little bit 'tongue-in-cheek', satirical and niche, combining themes of both the present and the past and draws inspiration from politics, culture and sexuality.
To successfully create my final outcome, I need to make sure I meet the customers' needs by constantly referring back to my customer profile whilst developing my ideas. To meet this customer's needs my project needs to be current, edgy, controversial and contextualised, and engage techniques such as film photography, collage, and typography. This excites me as I already love using collage and typography within my work, as well as further developing my style within this technique, but also because I've never really experimented with film photography and I'm interested in not only growing my knowledge but also seeing how unexpected film results could add to my outcomes. I love the idea of my outcomes being niche and controversial with a hint of satire, due to my project title being quite heavy and my personal style of work being more light-hearted and colourful. I want my outcome to represent Stockholm syndrome through research and contextualisation but to not be obvious on what it's about.
To conduct further customer research, I messaged several followers of Sedition's Instagram account to help me get a better understanding of my customer's needs. From the answers I received, I was able to see that my customer profile was correct, only with a few anomalies.
