The Confusion of Making Something Instagrammable

Right now in my Stamps “Methods of Inquiry” class, we are working on a project about making Stamps more “Instagrammable”. “What does this mean?”, you make ask, and to that I give you the answer, “I have no dang flabbit idea.”

At first I believed this meant cleaning up how Stamp’s markets themselves online. As a genZ child I understand how organizations, businesses, and schools brand themselves based off of how they display themselves online. I know what reaches out to the ideal audience because I am a part of that group and know what I as well as others seek for. Many people look up schools to see if they have an aesthetically pleasing account and show them what they are looking for and are interested in. When looking at Stamp’s page, you see randomly scattered low quality images of events happening at Stamps and also “Stamps Takeover” posts where they have an artist or student take over the instagram for an amount of time to share their own work.

When I got this project, my first ideas were to not stray from what they were already posting but instead to post them in a more visually pleasing way, especially because we are in an art school. I thought of the profile picture, bio, and not just the pictures themselves but how they looked as a collection on the school’s feed. After drawing out ideas of creating a more aesthetic art school page, I asked my professor how they were and he told me what I did NOT want to hear, I had interpreted the project wrong.

Great.

He explained how he meant that he wanted me to create a unique event or a unique sculpture for Stamps that people would want to post about. So, instead of making Stamp’s Instagram better I needed to make other people want to post about it on their own accounts. After hearing this(and still being confused), I started coming up with ideas of community themed projects to create a long continuous trend for making Stamps Instagrammable hoping this war right. I was then assigned a team in part two of this project and we came up with a comfortable study space with a cafe for people to study in and do teamwork while sipping on some nice cold(or warm I don’t judge) java.

On Wednesday, my team and I gave a presentation on our idea and my professor was confused on the overall process of our idea(which made me nervous I would have to rethink the project all over again) but came to really like it when we showed him all the space had to offer including a sticker wall, cafe, couch seats, moveable tables, and a rug(success). The rug was a real winner for him. I thought the space needed a rug instead of concrete floors like most rooms so that students could study in a more home like room. Whether or not one thinks about how the floor’s material affects our mood, it does indeed change our thoughts on if we want to stay some place or leave. The color also changes our perspective of a room but I have not gotten to the point of what color I want it to be. I believe warm tones would bring a weird aesthetic to the room and I think I will end up with a dark navy but who knows. Tomorrow we have a poster due and will receive feedback on it before a final review of our entire project. Wish me good luck my friends and thanks for listening!

P.S.

Although I now understand what the project is and how to complete it after my confusion of the assignment, I still can’t get my mind off of how the real Stamps Instagram looks. Therefore, if any of you Stamps employees are reading this, hire me. I would love to help recreate the page with current posts enhanced.

Sincerely your curious, odd, and wonderful student,

druzzi