Through the process of creating my Digital Artefact, (@rugratbrain) I’ve developed my style, skills and outlined a clear message and utility for my users. My DA began as just a place for me to creatively express myself through film and poetry backdropped to alternative/indie music.
I began with content that didn’t have a specific focus however, due to my relatively recent interest and involvement in feminism, my mentality has changed and therefore what I write has changed, and now my poetry ends up focusing on feminist issues naturally. It only made sense to focus my DA on this topic and it connects me with a specific audience through a shared ideology. Before I decided to make this change, I made a mood board and audience starter pack to visualise what I was going to create.
Iterations
Content
I began creating feminist content while maintaining the aesthetic I’d already established from the initial non-specific posts. The first feminist post was about the concept of the “walk of shame” and how internalised misogyny leads women to feel shame for expressing/exploring their own sexuality. By drawing upon my own experience through art I presented the concept and elaborated on it further in the caption. Following this I’ve made posts related to sexual harassment, privilege and the male gaze, sharing issues like these with an audience has encouraged me to create and educate myself more on these issues.
Development of Content Quality
Each iteration of my DA beyond the concept has been related to my skills using Adobe software, developing my editing skills and general aesthetic has made my content much better visually.
At the start the fonts I was using weren’t reflecting what I envisioned my art to be and thus I discovered Adobe Fonts and that gave me access to a greater range of fonts to test out and has brought my art closer to what I envision in my brain.
As far as the image itself goes, I initially colour corrected the image or video manually to have an old vintage aesthetic that was grainy and warm toned. But I found this hard to master, time consuming and would never turn out exactly how I wanted, so after doing research on how to make videos look like retro VHS tapes and super 8 film I was introduced to editing assets on YouTube that when overlaid on top of the video gave it that specific look I was going for from the start. Now that I’ve pretty much mastered the “look”, going forward I wish to make the videos longer, include more clips reflective of the writing and insert voice over to enrich the overall experience of the posts.
On top of the aesthetic makeover I recently changed my icon picture to better suit the content I’m making and encourage engagement by presenting a good representation of my DA and artwork.
Audience engagement
I’ve received not a lot but some feedback encouraging me to continue to create my current content, the comments I’ve gotten occurred only after I began making feminist-based posts, which has motivated me to continue with this content.
Through my research I’ve found that it doesn’t matter how often you post on Instagram but you have to be consistent in order for engagement (Williams, 2020). By having my posts planned in advance and maintaining a regular uploading schedule of once a week, my engagement has become more regular than a few weeks ago when I wasn’t posting as much. I hope to be able to post more than this as I go, but in the meantime, I’ve been uploading stories of other feminist content and also posting to my story and Twitter every time I have a new post. Posting stories has been a great and easy way to boost engagement without worrying about the content being polished (Williams, 2020).
After recently attending the Vibe check held by the UOW Digital Media society, I got lots of help on how to reach a larger audience as mine isn’t getting as much engagement as I’d like. From the advice I received I’ve commented and followed similar accounts and just from doing this I’ve gained more followers and interaction from the community I’m catering to. I also used various hashtags on my posts and added a few relevant hashtags in my bio to gain more engagement due to these iterations my last post reached +279.1% more accounts then the start of the September.
Going Forward
I’m excited to test my iterations more and develop my content further, I would love some more engagement and feedback on what I’m doing at the moment. I made a new starter pack after these recent iterations to give myself a clear view of my process going forward and focus on who the content is for. I’m excited to create more of this content for my users and for my own creative expression.
If this starter pack looks like you, follow me on Instagram @rugratbrain to see all the good artsy feminist content!
Reference List
Williams, H., 2020. How Often Should You Post on Social Media?. [Online]
Available at: https://www.meltwater.com/en/blog/how-often-should-you-post-on-social-media?redirected-path=%2Fuk%2Fblog%2Fhow-often-should-you-post-on-social-media
[Accessed 17 September 2020].
Hallie Rutter 
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