Evaluation of Unit X.

At the beginning of the unit, we formed larger groups to learn how to identify forthcoming trends. During this initial period, talks from Trend Boutique's Sally Denton, presentations from university staff Alex and Laura and our own research helped us to become hyper-aware of the world around us, identifying key issues that could affect design in the future.

Exploring social, economic and political factors showed us that it is important to look at other issues, giving a project more body and meaning and ensuring that you are resolving a larger problem through design. However, developing this understanding was difficult, it was like training your mind to think in a completely different way.

Our presentation looked at several issues, however when the groups were condensed down, me and Beth felt that the most important and interesting issue that we wanted to explore was the shift of people shoppping online as opposed to in store. We decided that higher-end designers might want to combat this and reverse the effect that technology appears to be having on the store.

We thought that it would be both interesting and challenging and it has proven to be both. Initially, the mock-ups below were a way of visualising our concept. The idea of developing fabrics that could not be photographed became a key idea that our entire trend revolved around.

After establishing the ideas that we wanted to explore further, it was important to us that we kept our selected audience in mind. We both wanted to aim for a high-end client. I felt like this audience could be reached through presentation: Using presentation that is considered, high quality and a finish that reflects this (eg size and format of the book).

Beginning to transform our ideas from an abstract concept to a tangible, visual reality was extremely difficult. We developed many, many ideas to try and personify our concept but it became quite frustrating having nothing but words and we needed to try and shift into visual territory.
We began to explore the concept of over-packaging products, concealing them in an attractive but temporary covering. Other designers already used this method (see Zara, left)to build a sense of anticipation to pull away the layers to reveal the product inside.

Our ideas had to be visually collated and then arranged beautifully and developed into a trend book. This was a particularly daunting prospect, considering we were yet to produce any visual work of our own.

 

 

Myself and Beth decided to take the concept of over packaging to an extreme and developed a series of photographs to visually represent our ideas. The box series of photographs appeared to work beautifully, presenting a selection of materials including frosted plastics against a stark white background, creating a sleek and clean aesthetic.

Working in a pair seems to work really well for both me and Beth. We feed from each other's ideas, encourage one and other when we seem to hit a wall. Also, we share an eye for presentation and attention to detail. This ensured that we could both present ideas and imagery creatively and beautifully and keeping to a style that we both enjoy working in.

Our partnership helped to create lots of interesting ideas that grew and evolved into a range of visuals, representing ideas such as overpackaging, encasing (in ice) and changing state, meaning that something could never be captured in its true form.

 

Both of us also found the importance of planning and arranging our images paramount, in order to present them well enough to speak for themselves. Organisation ensured that we knew exactly how we wanted to lay our images out.

Varying our layout and using some photographs as whole page spreads will hopefully look visually exciting and will help to showcase some of the best images. I'm still very intrigued as to what the book will look like as a finished product as Reprographics (where the book is being produced) are apparently leaving producing our book to the very last minute.

 Progressing through the book has been particularly difficult. Due to time limits, we had to produce a large amount of pages for our book in a week, with only our own judgement to go by. However, this was one of the benefits of having a partner to work with. It meant that we could alter and change any aspects we were unsure of and pull each other back from insanity when we found the work tough.

I feel like the finished layout of the book appeals to our intended, high end designer clientele and this can be seen in the ways in which we have chosed to package our book.
We have decided that we would like to continue our concept through our presentation of our book. We have created several boxes that fit inside one and other (in a similar way to our photographs), exploring our over-packaged and encased concept further.

Overall, I feel that I have worked really well as a team with Beth. We have created and developed a large body of work with finesse in quite a short amount of time. We have powered through obstacles such as time limitations to allow for printing and production, juggled a live brief alongside the main body of our work and have managed to excecute both well. 
 

Pitching ideas to curate lookbook for Rianna Phillips

Throughout the unit, as well as developing our own body of personal work, we have undertaken a live brief, in the hope to win the opportunity to curate accessories designer Rianna Phillips' lookbook for her forthcoming collection.

It has been quite difficult to balance the time between the two projects, however throughout the year, we have had a number of tasks to juggle at any one time and it does appear to be getting slightly easier over time.

The pitch came round quickly and meant that we developed a large body of work in quite a short space of time. Beth and I felt that it would be best to organise our work into boards and present this in a slideshow. These could then be printed and handed in for our assessment and marked accordingly.

Our boards have covered everything from our initial influences and inspirations, through to a consumer profile, competitor research, boards of our test shoot images and mock ups of our images being used for an ecommerce campaign and other specially designed square images(to avoid cropping) to be used on Instagram, an important marketing tool used by Rianna.

I feel like producing such work could give us the edge against our fellow students. It considers important factors and visually represents how our work could potentially look, if we are chosen to go any further. Overall, the pitch appeared to go well. Me and Beth spoke confidently about our ideas and answered any questions that the client had.

The importance of social media (particularly Instagram) in self promotion for designers and makers is on the increase. Rianna Phillips has acquired both customers and stockists through Instagram, providing free business promotion that has a wide reach to many.


This was especially exciting for me and Beth when Rianna included snipets of our work on her Instagram account. It made us feel positively about the ideas that we had produced and meant that the client felt confidently enough about our ideas to post them to her customers, stockists and fellow designers.

It is now a waiting game, to see who Rianna will decide she would like to work with in creating her lookbook. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Beth on an exciting brief that could potentially lead to some valuable experience.

Detail and execution.

After the tutorial today, we were given a chance to scrutinise the details, layout and other factors of our book with the help of tutors with fresh eyes. They were yet to see our progress so this was of great help.

We looked at important aspects such as font point size and took on board some suggestions of increasing the size of our key, pivotal words, decreasing our page number font size and making some small adjustments to some pages in terms of layout. Mainly, our layouts worked really well and were received positively which can only be a good thing as our time on this project is reaching its close.

Our deadline for completion of the book has been drawn in and cut short to allow time for printing which means the pressure is beginning to mount. In this time we must also consider making and designing a cover for our book and research into creative methods of storing our trend book, drawing on our concepts and ideas.

Live brief work for Rianna Phillips

While progressing with our trend book, Beth and I have been juggling our work with creating a body of work for Rianna Phillips. Other members of the FutureIntelligence project are also taking part in this, in the hope of winning the chance to curate Rianna's latest lookbook for her new collection. This has naturally progressed into some sort of secretive competition between the groups.

The competitive nature of the project has ensured that everyone's work has remained top secret. Similarly, it is paramount that Rianna's prints and product designs remain secret, so our visual work and ideas will be presented in a port folio and will not feature on the blog.

It seems that our work has progressed well and our ideas have been warmly received. We have spent time and effort on this project and feel that we are working to the best of our potential alongside our other work.

This coming friday we will be presenting our work in a formal pitch to Rianna and the other members of the project. This will be a good opportunity to prepare a professional presentation and get used to 'selling' our ideas to a client.

Arranging, sorting: fitting the jigsaw together.

After editing our photos to enhance sharpness, colour and general appearance, arranging the photos and sorting methodically seemed like the best cause of action for solving the presentation issues that we were presented with. Using the table space around  helped us to develop a vague sense of how the photos may be laid out over the double page spreads of a book.

This was a very time consuming process, however I believe that it was the best way to deal with organising the photographs.  After being spread out, chopped and changed, the photos were the grouped together (rather prettily with shiny bulldog clips) in order to maintain some sort of order to the chaos that was likely with so many different photographs.

You can already see certain links and relationships between the images appearing when they are all placed next to one and other. Colours from other photographs begin to sing when put with others, suggestions of how the photographs might possibly link fashion or the body are provided by the images of hands and icy photographs link across the box images and the form also works beautifully with the crumpled iridescent film.

The next stage will be to start placing the book pages together electronically. After only a few lessons on InDesign, I don't feel ready to start using this to put the book together. It would be more in the interest of time to put the pages together on Photoshop, as my skills are proficient enough to arrange the photographs quickly.

I'm quite excited to see what the book will turn out like, however time is against us. Myself and Beth intend to put the book together as soon as possible, in order to leave enough time for printing. This is providing that our layouts are correct as we will not have any staff contact until our next tutorial time. It seems like the time to start trusting our own judgement and draw upon skills that we know we have. We both have a keen eye for layout and I feel that this will definitely be to our advantage.

"Something else"

After the tutorial, we wanted to gather a range of materials that relate to the selection of photographs that we already have. We decided on bondable film (see previous unit blog posts) as the iridescent properties reflected our theme, altered in state when creased and colours refract, change and differ according to the light.

We decided to combine this with other materials such as frosted polypropylene, the boxes that we had already created and the body. This completely alters the way in which that we interact with the photographs and ensures that you can create connections and links that would not have been obvious at a first glance.

Although seemingly unrelated, when placed with other photographs and in the right composition, the images will hopefully tell a story. The coupling and teaming of images will be essential and must be something that we spend time and effort with.

We have already chosen to have our book 37cm X 27cm, which is slightly smaller than the standard A3 size. I feel like this will lend itself well to the idea that our book is aimed at a higher end audience, rather than a cheaper, lower end.

Tutorial with Alex; change of direction

Beth and myself attended a tutorial with Alex and brought a range of photographs from both the boxes photo-shoot and the more recent ice formation photo-shoot. 

I was pleased with the selection of photos that we decided to take with us and wanted to figure out some sort of configuration or format that would show the imagery off to it's best potential.

Alex told us that the photos were nice, but were perhaps a little too finished. After a more in-depth discussion, we came to realise that we needed to take more photographs to sit alongside the pre-exisiting images. I need to constantly remind myself that this needs to be a source of inspiration for design. Alex suggested pairing the photos with a suggestion of the body, materials or other unrelated but suggestive images that provide the audience with a catalyst to spark their own ideas.

A suggestion of "something else" will help to trigger an explosion of ideas and will allow the audience to look at colour, form, composition and any other pieces of information and use this as a potential starting point for their own projects. This appears to be the next stage in pushing our trend book further.

It was also suggested that we visit reprographics in order to enquire about how we might want to put our book together.

Jule Waibel

As well as looking at encasing and trapping products in different substances, using unusual methods, we wanted to look at products that change in appearance when exposed to the flash of the camera. After looking at the colour changing creations of Alexander Wang and Lauren Bowker, I came across the work of Jule Waibel. 

 

Waibel has created a collection of garments from a newly developed paper-like fabric that is both tearproof and water resistent.

 

The origami style construction of the garments means that with every movement, the garment shape changes and alters, meaning that each photograph will never be a true representation of how the garment may actually look. This links remarkably well with our own ideas of a fabric that could be affected by another factor, making it nearly impossible to capture the product as it looks, at that exact moment.

 

I also think that the colour and quality of the fabric is beautiful. The semi-transparent layering and folding creates amazing depth and tones of soft, fleshy pink.

Trapping fabric in dye and freezing

After considering a number of different methods of encasing fabrics or products, we decided to attempt freezing.

Encasing and in a way, protecting, is one of our main concepts. We feel that finding experimental methods of doing so will help to relate to the theme and ideas of our trend. We want to protect and encase products from prying eyes and therefore blocking the lens of the camera, preventing photography and therefore documentation on online stores.

The turquoise blue colour has concentrated beautifully in a few patches, creating a focal point and giving the images depth.

When partially frozen, I removed the mass and shook it vigorously. I believe that this resulted in the multitude of flecks and air bubbles that can be seen in the photographs. This was a sort of 'happy accident' but I think it improves the images vastly. The bubbles, cracks and imperfections with the ice work beautifully with the dye, which appears to have clung together and developed into a concentrated area of colour.

Again, I think it might be difficult to determine which photographs are the strongest and it will take time to decide on a configuration/ layout. 

The transparent, glass-like quality allows for just the right amount of information to be presented to the audience. This crystal clear appearance is clouded by the concentration of colour, cracks in the ice and the built up areas of air bubbles.
I feel that this is an extremely creative and unusual way to protect the fabrics or products from the prying eyes of photographers and lends itself well to the high end market that it is intended to inspire. I think that it will also be a good idea to take smaller sections of some of the weaker photographs and use them with the larger photographs.

I feel that the turquoise/seafoam green colour could be something that is carried through as an accent against the white-on-white aesthetic that I expect will be consistent throughout the book.

A box within a box within a box within a box...

To start visualising our ideas, we decided to make our own boxes. We created boxes in a variety of differing sizes that fit within one and other. For a clean aesthetic, we wanted to use semi-transparent materials or white card, but we opted for sheets of frosted polypropelene that work very well. Even though the material looks clean and effective, it was extremely difficult to photograph against the white backdrop that we wanted to use and my camera found it very difficult to focus, making the entire task take much longer than expected.

The masses of boxes represent the idea of over-packaging a product or containing something in several layers of protective matter. The smallest, iridescent box is placed carefully to symbolise the product, the pearl of the oyster, so to speak.

 

I feel that the white on white look of these photographs works beautifully. I also think that the iridescent quality of the smallest cube(the prescious and protected product)provides the images with a focal point. This effectively conveys our message of using packaging as a method of protection, being protected by layers of packaging.

As I feel that many of the photographs that were produced from this shoot were successful, I feel that it is going to be rather difficult to select and edit a small number that work best. I feel that test layouts using paper to imitate the pages of our trend book will help us to determine layout with more ease.



Packaging/Over-Packaging (by Zara)

After showing our ideas to Laura and Alex during a tutorial, we wanted to look for tangible examples of our ideas and ways to make the abstract visual. We considered packaging as a way of protecting and preventing the subject from being documented and photographed. We also thought about boxes within boxes, similar to the russian doll effect, a version of pass-the-parcel: Over-packaging.

After researching this further, we discovered that high-street store Zara use a similar method but to a lesser extent. The frosted plastic which protects the initial box adds a sense of higher end quality. Then, inside the first box is another box which contains your ordered product alongside other packaging such as tissue paper.

This method of storing and delivering a product really personifies our ideas of protecting and concealing fabrics/products. We need to consider ways of containing objects and over-packaging them for our own trend and hopefully this will reflect our other ideas inadvertently.
We intend to perhaps use different shapes and different materials in order to represent our ideas and to tie the entire aesthetic of our trend book together.