Fatbardha Salihu
P h o t o g r a p h y
27th October 2020
Art Director & Designer Shazia Chaudhry
Background information
Chaudry studied Graphic Design at university in Bournemouth and when she finished university, she moved back to London which is where she is from.
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Career overview
Freelance Designer
Worked with Disney, their interactive studio
French fashion magazine called Up Street
Grands Design Magazine
Icon Magazine, where she made transition into Art Director
The New Review at the Independent Newspaper- weekly magazine
Freelance Art Director
Examples of the front cover pages of Icon magazine where she worked.
Art/Creative Direction:
Someone with an overall creative vision/idea who then finds the resources and team that can then make that vision come to life.
Chaudhry says that an important part of working on a magazine is how all the different elements work together for example. Photography, illustrations and the visuals are just one part of it, the type and the writing all have to work together to build the magazine brand and to tell the story.
Chaudhry spoke to us a bit more about The New Review weekly magazine and how as it was a magazine which came out every week it meant they would have to work at a fast pace as they had little time to work on everything included in the magazine. She spoke about the first one from the left and mentioned it was illustration about Alexander McQueen’s work and mixed one his images and illustration together to create this front-page design.
When deciding on how the budget will be split the team all get together, editors, writers, designers, art directors, photography director and decide what story will be on the cover-page. Depending on the story they then choose how to go about it. For example, if the main story is about a person, they would most likely do a photoshoot with them to show their face. For more conceptual pieces is when illustrations would be part of the front-page, something that can’t be shown in photography.
Budget varies on many different things such as client. As photography is more of a production and has more people involved more money is spent on that. Whereas illustrations are usually done by one person so are paid less but still a high price considering it takes them a lot of time to get their work done.
Experience is very useful when working on a weekly magazine as it is very fast paced. As for the creative side and always having creative ideas Chaudhry mentions it’s something that always needs to be worked on for example, she visits many exhibitions. Other factors that help are having knowledge of what is going on around world in terms of politics, music or anything that inspires you. Regarding the New Review weekly magazine, they would work on multiple issues getting ahead of each week. She also mentions how planning, having a strong team and scheduling are very important.
Freelance work as Art Director
She contacted people that she had worked for previously, got in touch which brands she wanted to work with speaking with them about what she could offer them and what they might need, looking for opportunities.
Began working with Jocks & Nerds magazine. A men’s lifestyle and mainly fashion magazine. The editor of this magazine was well known in fashion from their work experience. They did not go through fashion photography the traditional way which is getting models through casting. To accompany the images, they write a little profile about these people who are not famous. People they would work with would be musicians and other individuals who had an interesting story to tell.
Most recent work she has done is with Design Anthology which is a tri-annual magazine that comes out three times a year. Design Anthology are a team of freelancers who get together for the production of the magazine three times a year. They are an architectural style magazine with a minimalistic and clean style. This magazine has a huge emphasis on photography which they commission and shoot themselves, if they are not commissioned, they contact the magazine for example if a certain architecture is being shown in the magazine the PR of that architecture firm will give already taken photographs to the magazine for them to use.
Chaudhry then goes on to talk about one of the fashion shoots they did for Design Anthology UK in more detail and mentions how planning is very important. Looking at every detail and making sure everyone understands the idea. This shoot was a mixture of interior and fashion. Part of the planning for the photoshoot writing an overview of how she wants the photoshoot to be so everyone working on it is on board with what to expect. Other aspects include images of the location, mood boards, images showing lighting and styling examples with notes alongside them. Model positions, hair and make-up examples for models to see are also included in the plan. For magazines she includes layout plan to see where all of the images might go. Images used in mood boards are for guide only they’re not used anywhere else. Below is one the images that they took for this fashion shoot.
The pandemic has affected photoshoots as it limits the amount of people on set. When this talk was held, they still had shoots going on although with restrictions for example people arrive on set, they have to arrive at certain time slots unlike before where they all arrived at the same time. This is to decrease physical contact with people due to the pandemic. Other precautions they take are making sure the area is ventilated by
keeping windows open if the location is indoors. Contact with others is minimal, they will be wearing gloves and the model will have to change into the clothes by themselves with direction from the stylist.
Keeping an eye on the industry is key in order to find opportunities, for example blogs, magazines, campaigns. How you present your work or portfolio is also important when looking for jobs.
It can happen in a photoshoot that someone will think the images are not looking the best and the whole team will talk about it. Something might be suggested by the photographer that someone else might not agree with, the issue will be discussed between the director and photographer and then resolved. Smaller budget campaigns the photographer does own the images although for bigger shoots, brands or a magazine can buy the rights to the photography in which case they own the images.
I think that this talk we had from Chaudhry was very interesting as it gave me an insight to how an Art Director works in the industry both with magazines and freelance work.
To find out more about Shazia Chaudhry her links are below:
Website : https://www.shaziachaudhry.co.uk/
All images are screenshots from the Industry Talk presentation or otherwise have the links to the website where they are from.