Monet in Mind: Guest Student blog by Nydia

Posted: 30th June 2021

Hello, I am Nydia from Taiwan…
I am currently studying Curating and Art History at the University of York. I have been working as an intern at Ferens for the past six months to complete sophomore course. Before I started writing the internship review, I opened the schedule to record my working hours. It turned out that I had already fulfilled my seemingly endless goal of 120 hours. In working with the Ferens team, I learned a lot of information that I had missed in the past and had a lot of first experiences. The first time I wrote a blog and knowledge-based social media content, the first time I used Keynote to make a video and the first time I made a questionnaire survey. Now, these firsts are no longer firsts, but they won’t be my last. Before we say goodbye to Team Ferens, let’s take a look back at the experience of time.

Ferens Art Gallery
Founded in 1927, Ferens Art Gallery is one of the Hull Museum’s nine sites. It plays an essential role in promoting Hull’s culture. In addition to being a member of the urban culture, Ferens Art Gallery is also committed to nurturing young talent and accessible exhibitions. I was honoured to participate in the exhibition around Claude Monet’s painting, Antibes (1888), and other wonderful collections in this internship. We can’t see each other because of the epidemic, but it’s all workable.

My internship experience

During my placement in Ferens Art Gallery, I developed the skills of making works speak, actively listening and making plans. All of which were aimed at solving my shortcomings. Due to my lack of verbal skills, I can only translate ideas and proposals into results that can be clearly understood by the people I work with. I made an excellent plan to virtually ensure that I could finish my college courses and internship on time.

I produced several visual products that introduced the collection throughout this period, such as static color-coded pictures and dynamic movie presentations. I believe that this simple visual hierarchy can increase your viewing’s interest and make you better understand the text narrative content. Next, I will use our research results to give you an idea of what I have been doing in the past six months.

According to my research and questionnaire survey results, most social media users prefer visual content. Take Instagram, for example. Effective use of high-quality images, emoticons and story function can steadily increase the number of followers. Please note! It must be of high quality, preferably with regular and controlled uploads. One more important thing to tell you is that interactivity is something you should work on. Questions, polls, quiz and chats built in the story are all ways to interact with the follower. The loyalty of the follower can be achieved through deep interaction.

A lesson I would like to share: How I made an introduction video for the collection
Dynamic visual communication is the most enjoyable part of the work. I actually, like most people, have no experience in making the video. Hotel Royal, Dieppe’s video is made through Keynote or PowerPoint, which many people are familiar with. Making a movie through the reporting software requires you to mentally visualize the animation sequence, one by one.
For example, I want the image to appear and then the text to appear after the image is positioned.

The order is image → text →size →text.
The first thing is to determine the image’s appearance and movement: to highlight the collection, I start with the enlarged image scale. And then move it to the specified position with the movement action. These are the first and second actions in Build Order on the right.
And then it’s easy to just animate the text that I’ve set up. The only thing worth noting is that I split the text in two to type the text 46.5x55cm while showing the size next to the image.
This way of making does not require great skill, but gives excellent results.

If you haven’t seen the video, you can watch below.