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ILLUSTRATION
The
Wonderful World
Of
DRAG
The Wonderful World of Drag: An illustrative exploration of Drag Queens.
In my final year of uni, we were given the opportunity to create our own brief. I decided to center my own brief around Drag Queens. The bold energetic nature of the Drag Queens I had encountered was absolutely magnetic and as an illustrator, exploring Drag gave me a great opportunity to be experimental with vibrant colours and dynamic gestures. The design problem i encountered was finding an outcome, something that was compatible with drag. I decided that a makeup brand would be the best solution, as there's such a broad range of makeup styles in the drag community. However, I needed to create something different that served a purpose specifically for Drag Queens (my target audience). I decided to make a makeup line of products that could be affordable to those that are just beginning to get into drag.
Brief: 'To design an affordable makeup brand for beginner drag queens'
"What does Drag mean to you?"
It was a broad, but personal question, which left lots of room for each persons individual take on what Drag meant to them. Each Queen had a very different response to fit their different styles of Drag.
"Drag for me is self expression to its upmost, indulging in your true self creatively and letting everything out, it can be as simple as picking a character for the evening and diving into it or pulling part of yourself you have never had the chance to experience out in the open, in its whole it's a rare opportunity to embrace your queerness and forget about the rest of the world for an evening or a moment and live a fantasy, or embrace a part of yourself the world has never given you an opportunity to embrace".
-Avarice Andre (House of Andre)
"Drag is my way of expressing myself and giving some people some joy and entertaining people".
-Lola Thorne
IDEATION:
Exploring text and style.
Brainstorming a name; a lot of language in the drag world is quite negative but means the opposite. For example, lot of language popularised from the show 'Ru Paul's Drag Race' (RuPaul's Drag Race is an American reality competition television series, the first in the Drag Race franchise) such as 'slay' or 'sickening' have positive meanings, but have violent or gross connotations. I decided to follow suit so to speak and create an aggressive/bold brand name. Rival sounded good, like a challenge to other makeup brands. I began to experiment with text and type.
Source: https://www.bing.com/search?q=ru+pauls+drag+race&PC=QI03&FORM=QISBDL
Illustration:
I had a lot of fun illustrating drag queens.
Experimentation:
I did some mock up sketches of compositions and creative ways i could display the product.
Lolita Illustration
CREATING THE FINAL PRODUCT.
LOLITA
The final packaging design for Rival, was inspired by a friend of mine, Jake's, alter ego 'Lolita'. Her aesthetic was composed of different shades of pink. I illustrated Lolita using pro creates Riso brushes. It gave a nice grainy feel to the final drawing. I preferred utilising grain, as it gave a rougher Retro appearance to the brand, as opposed to a polished look.
I began creating a net using photoshop, inspired by an existing makeup palette i owned. I then glued the net to the palette using a hot glue gun. Because i had used an existing palette, it gave me a good idea of the weight and functionality of the final product. I then asked Lolita to name each shade on the back of the palette. The names reflected Jake's Drag well.
The brand itself. A make-up line for beginner drag queens, was going to be aimed at 16-23 year olds. Throughout my primary research, most of the participants fitted into the 18-23 year old age bracket, I expanded the bracket to a younger age as Rival was going to be for beginners and 16 was a happy medium.
Palette Designs.
I wanted to create something bold and engaging brand identity, colours that stood out most to me were yellow and pink, they are very pop art style colours which would stand out on a shelf in a Superdrug or Boots. Having a colour theme to tie together the brand, meant i could experiment with different variations to create a bunch of items that could be sold together, each of them unique, but with a common theme.
3D Mock-Ups. I made a few rough mock ups and printed them.
FINAL OUTCOMES
Deliverables.
Makeup set for beginner Drag Queens.
Poster to advertise the brand
Final Videos
I used Adobe After Effects to animate text and imagery to create an eye catching short ad empathetic to the theme of my brand.
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