Evaluation of Unit X

Upon reflection of Unit X I believe that Alice, Grace and I have worked extremely well together. When I first found out that it would be another collaborative task, I was apprehensive, however as the three of us have very similar taste and a range of different strengths, we immediately clicked together. Working in a team has improved my communication skills and allowed me to step back from my work and edit it. The use of social media within the unit also allowed us to communicate on a regular basis with one another, using our Instagram page ‘@multipledivision’ and our Facebook group to post inspirational imagery, research or our own work to gain each others opinions. These have been valuable resources throughout Unit X and if I was ever to work collaboratively again I would revisit this way of working.

Throughout the unit I feel I have worked a lot differently to that of past projects. I have increased my experimentation skills, and my ability to produce a large quantity of quality driven work. This was important to the group as a whole as we aimed our trend book towards a higher end bracket, although we did not want to restrict the work to a particular art practice, we did experiment with adding imagery to the human form. Something that has been an important factor within this project is the vast range of creative media the group and I have used, this was slightly out of my personal comfort zone as I can tend to be lazy in my use of media. This has opened my eyes to the different possibilities outside of digital work, and that experimenting more can benefit my digital work in the long run.

Our final outcome from this project was an ‘inspirational outlet for creatives’, we took on board research from different trend books and were most taken by the concept of Bloom. We wanted the book to stimulate ideas and trends but not dictate them or restrict ideas. During the final weeks of the project I regret not putting together a layout early enough, thankfully as we had a great team who were always in uni, we managed to tackle our problems and over come them just as quickly as they appeared. Specifically when using InDesign we came across the most problems, this came from our lack of experience with the programme, in future projects and within my own time I would like to get to grips with InDesign as I feel it is a valuable tool when used correctly. Communication with reprographics was an oversight in reflection. We got caught up in the excitement of creating a tangible book that we did not convey the direction of each page, if I ever use this outlet to produce my work again I will allocate time for test prints and not rush the process.

The live brief opportunities have been prized prospects for me as I have been given the opportunity to work with the Volklore team. Sam relayed to me in our meeting that he chose me for my advanced Photoshop skills, and my ability to represent his brand to a high standard and understand his market level. I am excited to get started, as I will be constantly learning new skills, which is another reason to concentrate on InDesign more. The Rianna Phillips brief has also been a learning curve. It has taught me to balance my workload and manage my time appropriately. This has caused me to adjust my practice and has changed it for the better; working with Grace was fun, exciting and rather easy. We are great friends and this allowed us to tell each other straight to the point if we did not agree with one another, and to support and motivate one another. Grace is a much more relaxed character than myself, which had a calming effect on me, allowing more time to reflect on the work we produced. I am very pleased with the presentation we gave, everyone worked very hard and we would be very happy to work with Rianna if we were to be chosen.

Over all I have thoroughly enjoyed Unit X and will be sad not to be working with my group again. The unit has confirmed that in my third year I want to further investigate Art Direction, Styling and Trend Forecasting. I feel I have a natural ability to construct Lookbooks and display trend books to a high standard, the live briefs that I have taken part in throughout the unit have confirmed this for me. Also being in contact with Style Sight for a summer placement gave me confidence in my work which motivated me throughout.

Rianna Phillips Pitch to Curate AW14 Lookbook

Grace and I were not as prepared for the pitch to Rianna as we would have liked to be. This is the first time within this live brief that we have felt this way, as we always turn up to tutorials with substantial amounts of work. However we had let the stress and troubles of the trend book assembly get the better of us. This just goes to show that in future projects we need to balance our priorities better. Although with this being said, the pitch went very well. Rianna also included imagery from our pitch in a recent Instagram upload, which lifted Grace’s spirits and myself after the presentation. We are both confident that Rianna and the rest of the group received our concept clearly. However we do feel that we lacked E-commerce information, this is something we have looked further into after the presentation as although we do not have another chance to speak with Rianna, we still felt this was a necessary process we needed to carry out in order for our work to evolve in future projects. We both feel that we have worked well together throughout this brief and have experimented with some new, fun and original ideas. Reflecting on the work we could have pushed more e-commerse work however this was an over sight and we concentrated more on the content of the lookbook. If we were to be chosen I would be very happy, however we are both just glad that we took part as it has been a he learning curve for the both of us. Imagery of our presentation is included through our private Tumblr page, and handouts.

Screenshot of Rianna Phillips Instagram Post

Page Perfection

Serious attention to detail was required to start creating our layout. As I am extremely enthusiastic about Art Direction and rather painfully OCD about layouts, I took it upon myself to put together the majority of the trend book, thankfully once the minor details were decided upon, the girls helped out too. We decided upon using two different fonts, for page numbers we used a barcoded font which we felt reflected the technology aspect of the trend, using pages numbers with decimal points to add a uniqueness to the page, keeping font sizes consistent throughout. The second font was a more bitmapped effect, we wanted something readable, different but in keeping with the trend. Each page has a header which runs along the top of the page, allowing consistency throughout and reiterating a brand.

Post Tutorial Reflection

Showing our layout developments to Alex and Laura was interesting, I felt that they both saw the potential however knew it was lacking something, and I felt the same. Once we left the tutorial I expressed my concerns for the lack of excitement within the pages, we had not paid enough attention to detail, which is unusual for myself, especially when it came to font, and justifying fonts. We had been using the font 'Noteworthy', a type-writeresque style that seems to be a lot of other groups 'go-to' font. I felt it was too predictable, so I sourced two new fonts that I felt matched our theme much better, as a group we agreed on this and moved forward, allowing time for test prints to get our font size correct too. 

Once we had decided on a steady aesthetic, we worked as a team creating a template for our pages; we allocated 15 pages per person to make the workload fair. This was also more beneficial to our time management. I know that as a group we are happy with our final outcome, and personally I am too. I feel that I would not have created this work as an individual but by working in a group it has allowed me to become more creative and experimental, but has also developed my editing skills. From today I now know that layout is not something that comes in at the end, but is something that needs to be a constant throughout the project, in order to evolve with the work.

Rianna Phillips' Test Shoot

Today Grace and myself carried out a test photo shoot for Rianna's look book. We booked the photography studio and were given a quick induction, although I have my own camera and have mainly been the designated camerawoman for Unit X, I was quite daunted in the studio. This led to myself and Grace both taking turns in taking the photographs whilst the other would direct the model and help dress/ swap props for the shoot.

We both felt that the photographs that were produced on location rather than in the studio were much more successful. However we did agree on that there needed to be more than one 'look', after the test shoot we researched further into outfits that we would like the potential model to wear for the final look book. After the test shoot we were able to make more intelligent, precise decisions about styling, as we now knew what did not work. This was also the case for hair, make-up and accessories.

The Perspex and foil backdrop we had designed worked much better for product shots rather than a backdrop for the model, as there was just simply too much going on. Grace and I both discussed that we would benefit from having larger Perspex, film and foil sections in order for this to truly interpret our idea to its full potential. In future we will be more prepared and have a more concise concept.

The imagery that we produced on the day will be handed in for submission, however as Rianna's work is confidential, I cannot post the outcome via blog.

Magnifying Sheet

Grace found some really interesting imagery - 'The Alchemist by Nina van Bart' which we both really felt related to our trend book theme, especially after our Jar developments. We thought it would be interesting to try and recreate imagery like this. We sourced a magnifying sheet, and during the test shoot for Rianna’s look book, we asked our model to place the sheet in front of her face in order to distort her appearance. Grace and myself both felt this was successful and have included some of the imagery within the final trend book.

The Alchemist - Nina van Bart

After reflecting over the imagery we acquired during the shoot, myself and Grace felt that we could have been more experimental with our use of props and styling, however as it was just an after thought from the Rianna test shoot, we still managed to get some useful images.