Putting my Designs into Context

It was so kind of David Beckham to model some of my designs.

I don't know this man's name, but I've decided to call him Rupert. He looks like a Rupert.

Thank you David and Rupert, I very much appreciate your help.

I'd also like to say a big thanks to Zac Efron and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Great job chaps!

The Final Collection

Digital Development

Over the Christmas holidays, I really got into this project. I haven't mentioned this before in any other posts, but I have really been struggling with my time management since the middle of the last project. I work part-time outside of my studies, I always have since I was 15 so this isn't a problem, but this time I just took on too much. I ended working 25 hours (sometimes 30) a week and ended up spending more time at my place of employment than I did at my place of study. I realise now that this was the problem, so had planned to catch up what I was behind on over the holiday season.

As it happened, I ended up getting lots of shifts over this time as well - I only actually had 5 day when I wasn't working and two of those were Christmas Day and New Years Day! So I didn't get as much done as I had hoped, but I did manage to bring this fashion project to a near finish, so I'm proud of that. I managed to experiment quite a bit with layers and what-not on Photoshop and ended up with about 65 designs and colour ways.

Here are 16 of them:

Tile Inspiration

Instagram is a big part of my life at the moment, I use it not only for my interests and hobbies outside of my studies, but it's also been a massive help in my research this term.

Tiles

I'm sure you'll all be very happy to know that I made it out of my rut alive and well. I had to do some serious Instagramming, Pinteresting and sleeping (probably too much of sleeping) but I came across something that helped me spark up a new idea!

I am a massive fan of Print Fresh, a textile design company based in Philadelphia, and I'm not afraid to admit that I am probably slightly obsessed with their work at the minute (you can see there Instagram account here) and they posted something that really helped me along. They work with current trends in mind as you would expect and had posted some small paintings of pretty tiles with the hashtag 'ss17'

I then began working in a tile format, but still very much inspired by Indian design ideas.

I then put these first few paintings into Photoshop and spent an hour or so coming up with some quick ideas. 

Below, you can see a few of my ideas, just experimenting and seeing what works. The outer two designs I have to say I do not like, they're far too busy and just don't really flow - however, I think it's nice to see how putting a design into a half-drop repeat instead of just repeating it normally can give it a very different feel. This is going to sound silly, but it makes it look less, well... repetitive?

This was my happy accident (below)

I took the little square and mirrored it to create the full flower-like tile. After the putting this into a repeat, I saved it and then - I'm not even sure what I did, I must have knocked my mouse or something - because the design on the layer beneath that I had hidden appeared. 

IT MADE IT PRETTY

The white was a little over powering now that I can look between then two, thank goodness for that little slip of the cursor because it improved this quick little design massively!

Initial drawings

Two of my first drawings for the new brief. 

I had planned to focus on Indian architecture, but now I'm not so sure. 

I've always struggled with perspective, ever since high school. I remember in college in one of our still life drawing classes, we were sat in front of one white wooden in box, in which just had to make a simple line drawing of - this did not go well. My tutor then went on to add more and more boxes into the centre of the room for the next three hours, until we were left with a mountain in front of us and also drawn - badly, in my case - on the page in front of us. I just couldn't get the angles of everything right, clearly something I'm still struggling with. 

Sort of in a rut now; unsure of how to move on.

*slump*

The fashion brief

The third project in my second year is a fashion brief; this is something that makes me feel quite uncomfortable as I haven't worked in this area since I was in high school (and believe me, my textiles GCSE pieces are not something you'd want to see)! One thing that I am very exited about is working towards a trend and really being able to feel as though I am designing for a purpose - this is a massive motivator. We only have four weeks for this project, so it's going to be fast paced - this I am scared about. I guess it's a good lesson for what it's really like working in industry though, so definitely a learning curve.

We have to work towards the trend forecasts for spring/summer 2017. I collected images and came up with this moodboard. I've decided that I'm going to work in menswear just to give myself a real challenge (as if fashion wasn't already going to be hard enough for me) and I am super excited that the colour palette is quite earthy but with bright oranges and navies thrown in there too.

Another of the big trends that I noticed was a great deal of travel related colours, imagery and pattern amongst some of the reports. I really enjoyed working with the SADACC theme in the last one, so I would like to carry on my research into South Asia. My dad went to India in 2014 and I just remember him coming back with great photographs of architectural ruins and gorgeous temples. I think this is something I would like to use in my work this time around.