Formative Final Work

Business:

While the majority of my business SDS work was completed a couple of weeks ago, after having my business tutorial with Sarah, I had a couple of suggestions as to small tweaks I could make to my work.

The first thing I did was reform my customer profile, as the profile I had created had quite a feminine feel compared to my range plan that has more of an edgy and darker energy to it. I think because I completed my profile first before creating my collaborative range, I didn’t quite have the same vision in mind as I do now. I kept most of the same images from my last customer profile but removed the central figure that was illuminating the feminine aesthetic and replaced her with an image of a wintery view of London, which I’m hoping aided in connecting my range plan and customer better. I also replaced the background from being mostly watercolour splotches to the same ocean aesthetic image that dominates the background of my mood board. I think by doing this, I also link the customer profile in visually better with the rest of my pages.

I also adjusted my brand research page, but only slightly. I changed the background to Ed Ruscha’s “Start Over Please’ and also added two more of his artworks to reflect that link between my artist and brand. In conjunction with this, I added an extra page of text that concisely explains my artist x brand collaboration and how they complement each other. Admittedly, this page could be expanded on with more text, and I also wouldn’t even mind turning it into a press release statement of sorts, as I feel like that would be the natural progression of building this range.

Minor adjustments were also made to my visual range plan. I added two more CADs to the Fashion Range; a gilet and a leather jacket. Based on the feedback I received, I did this in order to show variance in my positioning within my range with the idea being to entice the customer to continue shopping up the price architecture. I coloured these new CADs using Photoshop as I did with the other ones and developed my plan again using Illustrator. I also changed the colour of my range pyramid from green to blue, as I found the colour too harsh and not coherent with the rest of the colours in my range plan.

To complete my presentation pages for business, I also made the front and back cover. I kept them quite simple, with the front cover using Ruscha’s “Start Over Please” artwork and the Ruscha portrait x Gucci symbol I made for my brand research page, which I thought would be a nice switch up from the signature I had used on the other pages. For the back cover, I used the same artwork but used Photoshop to remove the writing so it’s just the coloured portions of the work. Personally, I find the use of “Start Over Please” to be ironic to my position as a student within an assessment, as it almost hints at failure, but is juxtaposed by the amount of work placed into this presentation pack.

An issue I discovered when managing these small adjustments was the orientation of my pages. I realised some were portrait and others landscape, but after asking Sarah as to whether this would be an issue, I was reassured to know a mix would be okay. I think it works out okay anyway actually, as it makes my business presentation as a whole quite symmetrical.

For my six pages of rough work, I decided to include my merchandise mind map, a sketch up of my visual range model that I completed before attempting the task, my old customer profile, my old visual range plan, my old brand research page, and extra fabric research.

Media:

For my media work, I continued to develop the look book we had been working on in the last few weeks, using feedback from not only the sessions, but also my Adobe classes.

From the last version of the look book (see post “Adobe Session 3”), I edited two other photos that I had taken during my initial styling shoot, altering them by cropping, darkening, lightening and saturating. I also deleted the less relevant images as per feedback and created more space in order to make my images larger and better seen. I also redid the back page, adding a simple beige box that went along with the colour palette of the work with coloured lines over it just to give it some extra character. I simplified the back cover heavily, as when looking at fashion look books online, noticed the simplicity many back pages held and the lack of actual imagery on them.

Design:

To complete my design work, I needed to refine my designs and draw my line ups. Before I did this, I redid my fabric research, using reports from WGSN to inform myself on more realistic and trend-focused fabrics I could use for my garments. I still placed a focus on sustainability which I noticed to be quite the trend anyway and got rid of the silk and satin I originally planned to use, incorporating velvet instead (reminiscent of Tom Ford). I stuck to the same colour palette but decided to play with my colour percentages more, as well as design details. I also narrowed a few of my structures to make them more wearable and less illustrated.

When it came to redrawing my designs individually, I first made the decision to ditch design #7 all together (see The “Full Story (Collection)” post), as it was quite uninspired and similar to another design I had already done.

For Design 1, I narrowed it but kept it mostly the same other than that, with Design 2 remaining exactly the same. For Design 3, I narrowed it and changed the fabric from bamboo to recycled polyester/ textile waste. For Design 4 I narrowed the design and made it more of a blazer style with a sheer cape coming off the back and changed its material to velvet. For Design 5, I kept it relatively the same but again changed the material to velvet. Design 6 I changed substantially, making the skirt longer and narrower with a mermaid structure to it. I kept the suspenders element. but also added a curved leather belt to the waistline. I’m still quite unsure about this design and it’s probably my least favourite out of all of them.

I also added the muse faces I drew in session 9 to my drawings to characterise my designs a little more.

To complete my design work for part one, I drew up my line up of designs. While overall my designs are certainly not the best, I genuinely have put a lot of effort into developing them as much as possible and found that the more I drew them the better I got at it and the easier it became.

For my final page, I redrew my designs again onto 1 A3 sheet of paper and then transferred this to Photoshop to create a better line up layout on a page, as well as add my muse faces onto my figures.

Original hand drawings on A3 paper
Line up without muses

Overall, I am extremely proud of the work I have been able to produce so far for this unit and feel like I’ve learnt and grown a lot in such a short span of time. I look forward to seeing where Part 2 will take me and my work.

All final work is uploaded to this Padlet – https://artslondon.padlet.org/akuthethoor1120191/jyufmollqlhnyeej

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