Coupla is a film based photography and graphic design page on Instagram. The pages content is centred around images and graphic design pieces that I have designed and taken myself. The page also includes a collaborative element that has been strictly applied to the photography section of the page, where I have teamed up with a close friend and fellow photographer to share their imagery on the page in hopes of giving it more depth and diversity.
The reasoning behind creating this digital artefact (DA) is due to the large passion I hold for both film photography and graphic design. When making any project, the time and attention you give to it, will largely depend on interest, where there is more interest the quality is higher. It is for this reason with many other ideas and options for my DA, I decided to create something that I was passionate about, in the hope of making something of higher quality and more meaning. Alongside this interest, the creation of Coupla as been influenced by a few artist that I have drawn inspiration from when designing and curating content for the page. The links to these artist have been attached below.
Photography
Graphic design
How it works ?
This artefact works through the posting of pictures or designs to the Instagram page on a regular basis, that have been:
- Produced by me or my partner
- Is film photography not digital
- Are to the theme of the page
I put these process in place to ensure the content of the page is easy to understand for followers and potential viewers, making the pages theme simple to grasp and engage with. By understanding how my DA works, I have been able to use consistent methodologies around uploading the pages content, enabling a clearer value and theme to be seen by the users.
Iterations/Progressions
From Couplablokes to Coupla
The first iteration to this digital artefact took place at the very beginning, as Coupla is actually a recreation from my previous artefact Couplablokes. This iteration was made due to myself wanting to redesign the pages theme and utility to now align with its current purpose of including graphic design pieces and more selective imagery, moving away from colour to predominately posting black and white.
The iteration that were made to the artefacts imagery based content come from the analytics from the page prior, that showcased that the black and white photos that were uploaded received more interaction and engagement then ones with colour. The another iteration based around the page now including graphic design works come from trying to evolve the artefacts value creatively and broader its reach towards a community that is not only interested in photography. From this progression of the page I learnt the importance of the need to always refine and evolve your artefact to make it align with its value and utility
Improving engagement
Throughout the artefacts initial stages, I was a little disappointed with the pages engagement. To fix this I started to change what I did with the content I upload to the page, with uploads no also including captions and tagging people that were relevant to specific uploads of content to the page. I made these iterations to the content to make it more relevant by providing context so that followers could be more drawn to the page. Also by tagging people, I was hopeful it would be shared and the help the artefact reach new audiences that my network may not have had.
After adopting these iterations to the page, I found that all content that provide captions (context) or had been tagged, show an increase in engagement from followers.
From making these adjustments to my artefact, it taught me that it was necessary to evaluate it analytical in order to find ways to improve it.
VanLife’s impact on Coupla
VanLife is an emergent future network that has influenced and shaped my digital artefact. This emergent future network, is an alternative lifestyle adopted by people looking to live a more basic and environmentally orientated life, that focuses more on a technological disconnect instead of other current forming networks that are forming based around the increase in technologies role within society.
The presence of this themes influence within Coupla can be seen through its imagery and design pieces, where due to somewhat adopting this lifestyle myself I often took pictures and created pieces that reflected this network. Overall, the emergent network of Vanlife is a theme that can be clearly seen within my digital artefact, due to my own self interest in trying to capture and create a lifestyle similar to this and showcase it through a visual medium.
Utility and value of Coupla
Coupla provides it value towards people who enjoy film photography and graphic design, I also believe it holds an intrinsic value to inspire individuals own creative works. Outside of holding a value for this specific community online, this project has also provided me with the opportunity to create a portfolio for my work and help my future career in design or possibly gain freelance photograpghy work.
The future trajectory of Coupla
The artefact will continue to keep with its current purpose of displaying graphic design work and film photography and will not be reiterated at this present stage. I am hopefully to keep growing the pages audience and interactions into the future by working on strategies and methodologies from reviewing the pages analytics and feedback to make necessary adjustments to avoid loosing relevance.
Aside from this development I will also be pursuing on with the page as a passion project of sorts, with both film photography and graphic designs being such large passions of mine I have enjoyed creating a creative platform where I can share these interests.
Overall I have found the development of this digital artefact at times to be difficult as you are always trying to find ways to make it better, but still found it be a very rewarding experience.
#DigitalArtefact #film #photography #design #creativity #BCM206
highfieldonline.photo.blog 