RMCAD alumnus Kyle Warfield took a photo of himself each day in 2012 and turned his album into a remarkable GIF. The project, titled Last Year of Selfiesincludes images of Warfield in various states and positions, which meld seamlessly into a solid stream. The project has attracted attention from sources that include The Daily Mail, Design Taxi and others. You can view the GIF here.
Warfield created the project to, as he explained, “document and explore the broad spectrum of faces I could conjure. I sought an alternative to the faceless stagnation I observed in online profile pictures—motivated in part by the banality of popular selfie memes, the omnipresence of the duckface, the ubiquity of Facebook users consistently applying the same gestures in every photo of themselves, etc.”
The faces Warfield made for the project were not mapped out in advance. However, he did carefully align the position of his eyes in each photo to ensure that each photo lined up with the last. “I intentionally began the year with my most neutral expression, the one that requires the least amount of effort to make, relaxing all facial muscles. I planned to quickly move to my common expressions of happiness, anger, sadness, etc. Then I started having fun,” he said.
The photos used in the project were published day-by-day as profile photos on Warfield’s Facebook page. He explains that he wanted to ensure that “friends could observe a very gradual shift in my expression, see what shirt I would be wearing that day and what my hair looks like when I get out of bed. These decisions were made to produce a more genuine selfie. That I uploaded each photo daily, I think, is a noteworthy aspect of the project and process, because it meant that I went a whole day exposing my ugliest faces to close and not-so-close friends—most of whom were not aware that the project had been taking place.” In contrast, Warfield used an all white image as his Facebook avatar during 2013, a year in which “selfie” was designated as Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year.
Warfield graduated from RMCAD with a BFA in Communication Design. He currently works for Denver-based design firm MATTER.
