Summer Project!

Well, after almost 3 months of needed relaxation, the second year summer project has arrived

with the theme of 'Little Black Dress' (AD203).

For this project, we have been asked so far to create a sketchbook of research

including; haute couture, pret-a-porter, pioneer of the little black dress,

key trends influencing the LBD, thumbnail sketches and

a theme for the project.

Goodbye freedom..

AD101 - Blog SWOT Analysis

 Strengths -

• What strengths did I have? - My strengths were spending a lot of time researching designers work and putting my own information into my blog.
• What do people see as my strengths? - After my tutorial with Donna, my strengths seemed to be in the blog, gathering all the information and spending a lot of time creating it.
• Which of my achievements am I most proud of? - I am most proud of completing the blog, updating it on a weekly basis and figuring out how to use it on my own as I'm not very confident with technology.
• Which section of the work did I complete well? - I completed the overall blog well, spending most of my time on it rather than the written and file side and completing the file quickly after not having much in it to begin.

Weaknesses-  

• What tasks did I avoid? - I mostly avoided the written file side of the project as I felt most comfortable spending a lot of the time on the blog as I feel I am better at the creative part than the written part.
• What do others see as my weaknesses? - My weakness seemed to be again, not spending enough time on the blog file and putting all of my concentration into the blog.
• What held me back? - What held me back was my lack of knowledge on how to create a blog and my lack of confidence with my abilities.
• What are my negative work habits? - My negative work habits were again focusing my time on the blog rather than the file and having to rush to get the file completed.

Alexander McQueen Autumn/Winter 2011

After having stumbling across pictures from

the great Alexander McQueen's Autumn/Winter 2011

show, I couldn't help but take a sneak glance at another

one of his amazing catwalk shows.

Sarah Burton has yet again done an amazing job

at understanding McQueen's philosophy, creating exqusite garments

with her soft, powerful touch with her own feminine twist and keeping to his

dramatic, eery shows.

Not bad for her third collection!

Check out the video from the Autumn/Winter show below!

Video from Youtube.com

AD109, Branding Project.

Over the past few weeks, I have been introduced to my

new project for this semester - 'Branding'.

For this, I am asked to work in a team to come up with a new

brand identity for a particular range of products, together creating a

mission statement, market level, theme, price points, competitors

and brand identity. Individually I am asked to create a written

report evaluating my experience within this module, 2 A3 moodboards,

3 shop report boards, a client profile and 20-30 brand designs/ideas along with

a sketcbook of ideas.

First, i began by collecting tear sheets from magazines

of where designers place their branding on their products and discussed

this as a team and created a range of initial logo ideas. We also went around shops to conduct a shop report

on the three different market levels, concentrating on looking

specifically at Burberry, Vivienne Westwood and Topshop for our competitors.

On the first day of the project, Colin Reid, who has previously worked

with Donna Karan, Nautica and helped design the Calvin Klein logo, came to talk

to us about branding. I found the talk very interesting as he had alot to say and

talk about regarding his time working in the fashion industry in America for 20 years and

gave us very useful information which I will take on when carrying out the project.

On the second day we were put back with our groups, ready to discuss

the brand we will create. Overall, we decided on have a 3 tier luxury british brand for women 18+, using

3 different logo's for each market level. ('By appointment' in an envelope for the higher end, Her Royal Highness with a queen stamp for the mid range and H.R.H with a British bulldog logo

for the lower end).

Overall, i am excited to start the project and put all our ideas together

to come up with a good brand.

Final Logo's

AD107 - CAAD, SWOT Analysis

 Strengths -

• What strengths did I have that others don't? - My strengths were having previously done CAAD sessions before so knew parts of what I was doing.
• What do people see as my strengths? - My strengths were learning the subject quickly, enabling me to get the best out of the subject and creating what I wanted to with the final boards.
• Which of my achievements am I most proud of? - I am proud of the way in which the boards have came out, getting a good grasp of the subject quickly and finishing the work in plenty of time.
• Which section of the work did I complete well? - I completed the final boards well and the decoration down the side of the page with the mini cogs created from the ellipse and square tool which was very time consuming.

Weaknesses - 

• What tasks did I avoid? - I mostly avoided the written part of the project as I am most comfortable with the creative part, and found it hard to find enough digital fashion illustrators from the 80's and 90's.
•  What do others see as my weaknesses? - My weakness was not paying enough attention to the anchor points when going around the flats, creating errors in the work.
•  What held me back? - What held me back was my lack of confidence with the subject and not being very good with technology.
• What are my negative work habits? - My negative work habits were again not paying enough attention to the written side of the work and concentrating the most on the creative side.

CAAD, week 9.

This week, I continued developing the layout of the final

two boards after re-scanning the lace fabric to make it less look

dark and then reapplied it on the flats. This seemed to be very

successful as it makes the images look lighter and better quality

and there are now less lines visible between the patterns when going to

print them out.

For the background, i decided not to add colour and to keep

it white and simple so the flats will be the main focus of the overall boards.

For decoration, I created mini cog wheels using the square and elipse tool

which i found quite easy and successful to do, although it was very time consuming.

Eventually, i finally finished the 2 boards with plenty of time to spare

to do alterations!

After completing the 2 boards, I will now focus on completing the essay

and researching into more digital fashion illustrators.

Overall, I found the project very useful to create beautiful digital illustrations

for my portfolio and have improved alot with my skills

over the 9 weeks.

Flat Board 1

Flat Board 2

Steampunk Project Evaluation

When the class handed in the Steampunk project, Jackie who works for

Phaze clothing, who gave the brief to us, came in and viewed the portfolios and shirts,

and initially she was taken aback from the wide range of different styles that were created but was very impressed.

Before she left, i asked for feedback on the shirt, and her advice was that even though

she loved the originality of the fan effect collar and all the ideas and aspects

were in the shirt, she thought that the buckles were too heavy for the fabric,

which could have changed the look of the shirt from making them thinner and using a different fabric

to create them, which i initially thought could be a problem.

She also suggested that the corset could have been moved to the front of the

shirt to make it more of a Victorian style as the corsets wouldn't

have necessarily be seen, the frill could have been in lace to match the shoulder heads

and the frill currently looks too 'soft', which she thought could be

improved from making the frill angular to match the collar.

Overall, i was pleased with the outcome of the project and feel that i have learnt alot.

Strengths -

• What strengths did I have that others don't? - My strengths were my enthusiasm for the topic, starting a new project and wanting to get the best out of it.
• What do people see as my strengths? - After talking to Jackie, who works for Phaze clothing, she seemed to think my strengths were the originality of the collar I created and parts of my portfolio. Also my time keeping was one of my strengths, finishing the project days before hand in.
• Which of my achievements am I most proud of? - I am most proud of completing the garment on time and was pleased with the end result of it, after weeks working on it and changing aspects of it.
• Which section of the work did I complete well? - I feel I created the
  shirt pattern well with little help and completed the shirt well, as the toile wasn't of a very good standard, and managed to turn it around and create a good final piece.

Weaknesses -

• What tasks did I avoid? - I mostly avoided the essay part of the project, as I feel I am more confident in my portfolio and garment constructing skills.
• What do others see as my weaknesses? - My weakness was again applying colour to the final flat sheets and feeling as though I had a good idea of what I was doing when making the garment, and still managing to sew parts wrong.
• What holds me back? - What held me back was the confidence to ask for help when creating the toile, which I overcame when constructing the final shirt.
• What are my negative work habits? - My negative work habits were not asking for help as much when creating the garment.

CAAD, week 8.

The past few weeks I have been continuing to carry out self-initiated work,

tracing around all four flats and added fabric swatches on them to create the final

flats for the first board! After the initial surprise of finishing the

first set of flats, i then went on to trace around the remaining

3 sets of flats to create flat board 2.

I still need to think about background ideas for the final layout of the boards. I will

keep the same palette throughout the two boards so they look part of a set

and flow well together.

For the other half of the project, I began to research into the

digital fashion illustrators from 1980-2000, where i seem to be finding

it difficult to collect images from the 1980's and 90's.

Overall, im finding the work successful as im able to do the work

quite quickly and have a good idea on what im doing!

Flat board 2

Final Steampunk Shirt

After many weeks of pattern cutting and days in the sewing room

I have finally completed my Steampunk shirt!

It features a jobot frill, cog shaped buttons, a fan effect collar, lace shoulder heads,

buckles around the arms and a corseted back.

Overall, I am pleased with the end result as the shirt turned out very successful and fits my model.

Shirt Front

Shirt Back

Cog Buttons

Buckles

Corset

CAAD, week 6.

After the first few weeks, I now find it easy to work

as an individual, building my confidence with the CAAD techniques.

I have been carrying out self-initiated work, working on my final flats,

tracing around them and adding my fabric swatches that i will use

when coming to complete my final Steampunk shirt.

At the beginning, I had difficulty remembering how to do certain

aspects of illustrator, but soon overcame the problems with help

from the tutor Gemma, and began adding the swatches succcessfully.

Im still unsure on how to shrink the pattern down to the correct size

I will carry on doing the flats at home after downloading the free trial of

Adobe Illustrator to help understand the subject better and create more

traced flats to add swatches to for the next session.