FOIL

After endlessly looking for something to name my trend book I have found a name for my Trend Book FINALLY...

FOIL

foil ¹ (foil)

tr.v.foiled, foil·ing, foils

2. To obscure or confuse (a trail or scent) so as to evade pursuers.

I originally typed in 'contrast' into the online thesaurus and 'Foil' was on the list. I like the idea of just having one solid word. It has no particular meaning to me however when I then searched for the dictionary definition I thought that it linked quite well to my underlying 'camoflage' concept. I also think that my layout and front cover will now fall into place around this as now in my head I feel that I know how I want everything to look. However this could all change...

Concept Page

I have started to develop my Trend Book,(although I still do not have a name for the book or the trend!). I have interpreted the 'Distilled' trend in my own way and incorporated it into the styling of the book. Aesthetically I am pleased with the direction the book is going but I feel that I can push myself further and make it more exciting.

I'm still undecided on whether to make the trend book portrait or landscape, these are a few things I want to discuss with Alex in my tutorial tomorrow. I have written a list of topics I want to cover in the tutorial to fully use the small amount of time that we get to my advantage (hopefully). 

WGSN

WGSN has been a huge inspiration throughout this project. I have been referring to this website whilst trying to figure a layout for my trend book as I really like the aesthetic of site. Whilst looking through the website I spotted one of their predicted upcoming trends 'Distilled' it's about using abstract camouflage which gave me an idea of 'urban camouflage'. So I have started to use my own imagery to create this style. I plan to incorporate this within either my own trends or within the layout of my trend book.

Composition

Composition is a key element to my trend book. The layout is something that has to spark inspiration so it is important that the composition is perfect. When I looked at Promostyl, I felt that the pages were very cluttered. My style is more simplistic. I want to choose specific imagery to hint at my trends. Here are a few examples of my first compositions for my trend books. These would be used as pages to show my 'Industrial' part of the trend, these would be followed by Colour charts, fabric samples and my own illustrations to demonstrate how the trend could be interpreted.

Thinking Colour..

After the tutorial we have been told to start thinking about what colours we would like to include within our projects. As I am creating a trend book I am finding it hard working out in which order I work like this. Knowing what colours I am going to include in the trend book will help me when choosing my final images.

I would definitely like to include is Radiant Orchid, which Pantone have named as their colour of the year. So I feel it will be a very upcoming colour within fashion. It will also lend itself well to my concept of 'opposites' i'm thinking Industrial VS Feminine

Concept/ Context

These are my final boards which represent my brief, showing my concept, the context and the results of my process. I will not present all of these boards in my area on the day of submission as I do not want to over load it. So some of these boards will be simply presented along side my sketchbooks. I am really pleased with the outcome of these boards as I feel they are cohesive and put my concept across well. For my main illustration board I chose my three favourite prints from my collection and really tried to work on the styling of my illustrations.

Trends: Web Sights

I have been thinking a lot about who my customer is. My customer is a 20 something socialite, who enjoys being comfortable and effortless.

I have been researching into upcoming trends, and something that caught my eye was 'Web Sights'. Which linked into my project as I have been looking into using similar techniques within my work.

3.1 Phillip Lim

Derkek Lam

3.1 Phillip Lim's Resort 2014 is quite similar to the colour palette and style I have been working towards with my own collection throughout this project. Although there is no print here there is a sportswear vibe which I am really liking at the moment. I feel that sportswear is peaking at the moment within my age range and my customer has an eclectic style. Within my range I would like to have varying layers, sheer fabrics and contrasting textures, however keeping in theme with sportswear.

Back to Uni

So it has been the first week back to uni and it is all systems go. We have been given five different briefs to choose from - Mobile Habitats, Visions of Sound, Future Past, Tomorrow Culture and Urban Influences. I have read through all of the briefs and have narrowed it down to two. Mobile Habitats and Urban Influences. I feel that out of them all the Urban Influences brief would be best suited to me as it would link well with the imagery and research I have gathered over the summer, also the CP2 choice that I chose before summer intergrates well into this subject also as I chose 'Space, Design and Architecture'.

I feel that the Urban Influences brief is definitely more suited to my style of work and I will now begin to go out into Manchester and collect primary research. I will use this research to begin my initial drawings.

Roma!

For my 21st birthday I was surprised with a trip to Rome wish I thought would be a great opportunity to get some last minute sources of inspiration for the upcoming term. The architecture in the city is stunning and I turned into quite the tourist snapping photographs left, right and centre as it was all so beautiful!

These images are going to be some of the lead inspirations throughout my next project. The ornate structures within the architecture will take focus as I add a contemporary twist.

175 Defaces of Chemistry

When I have been looking into stitching into photography and distorting our imagery I have became more enchanted by the idea of 'defacing' the face. Over the next few days I am going to experiment with this further, using the imagery that the group have shared with one another, collaging this, distorting it and then bringing in this concept of 'defacing'. However I am yet to share this idea with the group, we have a tutorial later this afternoon and then we are going to meet to discuss our ideas further straight after, I will use this time to ask them their thoughts on the idea.

de·face

 [dih-feys] 

verb (used with object), de·faced, de·fac·ing.

1.

to mark the surface or appearance of; disfigure: to deface a wall by writing on it.

2.

to efface, obliterate, or injure the surface of, as to make illegible or invalid: to deface a bond.

Satin Stitch

I have drew a small drawing of a little girl in fine liner, I have then used some embroidery thread to stitch into the image. This was inspired by an artist named Hagar van hu, whom I found on Pinterest. Their way of working has really appealed to me throughout this project as I feel it links to a lot of the criteria that our group is trying to reach. Portraiture, distortion and covering the face. This is just a basic idea at the moment but I would like to discuss this further with the group in our next tutorial, bringing in the ideas of 3D and texture.

To take this idea further, it could be done on a much larger scale, on a number of different materials and textures, and also in many colour ways. This is all down to experimentation which I plan on carrying out in the upcoming days left of the project. However, our group is yet to settle on an idea for a final piece, so I will act quickly on this experimentation in order to settle on a final piece soon.

Making Progress

I really feel like I am starting to make some progress finally within this unit! It has taken a while but slowly but surely it is coming along. I have dug out my sewing machine and made a start on my pastiche of  Nikos Gyftakis' work. It is coming along a lot better than I expected. The only struggle I am having so far is the heaviness of my lines and the contrast between light and dark. The face is quite hard to copy as the skin is stretched into every direction possible, so to keep one fluid line is also quite difficult. This is an image of the progress that I have made so far, I will post an image later when I have completely finished the piece.

I think that the fingers have worked the best throughout this process, however I do need to define these more, as I have only used three of the 5 colours I plan to use. It's not perfect, but it is a start! I really like the texture that this technique creates, however for me, it is not polished enough. I have also been looking into distorting the face, using my scanner at home I scanned a few images of my face to see what the outcome would be like. The final images are slightly strange and I do not think I will be taking this any further.

More Meetings!

My group decided it was important for us to meet today, so we made a last minute decision and all met in the Holden Gallery. Items on our agenda were; what was said in our tutorial? Where to go from here? and what has everyone done so far?

A lot of the group is concerned about the speed we are currently working at. Personally I would like to pick up the pace a little, as there are only three weeks left to do everything, and I am starting to panic. Here is a copy of the feedback sheet we were given.

Most of these points were already on a lot of the groups mind before we had seen this sheet, as only one of our groups members managed to attend the tutorial, as myself and Lizzie both had out CP lectures which conflicted with this. I really like the idea of adding more texture to our work, as I have said in previous posts that this was an idea that I wanted to push forward with. I may experiment with tis tonight, adding words, objects and stitching to distort the objects face, firstly I'll ask my flat mates to let me take a photograph of them!

The final comment on the sheet is 'BE MORE AMBITIOUS!' which I feel is very necessary, we are thinking too literal and not experimenting enough. Personally I feel that the final outcome should not be just one final photograph, it could possibly be a number of things, expressing all of our ideas collaboratively.

Allison Diaz

Today I managed to get to the library and print off a lot of imagery that I have been meaning to get for a while now. Allowing me finally get some work down into my sketch book. I have started by looking into our initial idea about the 175 project, taking photographs of peoples faces. So I found a artist named Allison Diaz. I have been stalking her blog today and found out a lot about the images I found of her work.

The meaning behind what she has done is really intriguing and interesting and really challenges you to think deeper into the photographs. This leads me into our Unit X project, we could ask the person in the image what they think their most recognisable feature is, what they like/ hate about themselves most, or even what is the first thing they see when looking at someone? I tried Allison's technique with just two images that I had collected. I think the outcome works well, however I am interested to see how three images could look like with different races, ages and genders in the mix.

Stitch & Photography

So my group have decided to go down more a photography route.. so i have been looking at ways in which I can still incorporate my style into the images and maybe enhance/ distort the images. I found this great images from Hagar Van Hu on Pinterest. The artist has used stitch to distort the image and enhance it. I love the first images of the faces, as our group plans on hiding the face/ exaggerating something that the person in the image does not like about themselves. I just thought this idea was quite different to what we have been currently looking at and slightly more on my level.

Zero-Waste Pattern Cutting - Fiona Mills

Today we had quite an interesting lecture about sustainable fashion. Basically the concept of zero waste fashion is to use the full yield of the fabric provided and to not let anything hit the cutting room floor.

There is at least 15-20% fabric waste within fashion construction, this wasted fabric goes into landfills, does not breakdown and therefore becomes toxic to the environment. I did not know this and it came as quite a shock. The yield of a fabric in a lay plan is obviously very important to companies in the lower market, who want to get more garments made from their fabric as possible. Fiona showed us many different researchers who had looked into zero waste fashion in a lot of depth.

Most of the designers that Fiona showed to us today were mainly researchers and did not actually sell any of their designs. Some of their designs I would personally not buy, however I love the concept and think it is extremely interesting. These designers entered a competition called YIELD. A particular design which I loved was by Timo Rissanen, who produced a jacket which just seems genius.

Ernesto Artillo

One of the girls in the group posted an image from an artist she had found and I thought it was extremely inspirational. So I looked a bit further into the artist and found a few images that I thought related well to our project and could help us develop our concept further.I find these collages really interesting as they are very abstract, this is something I would like to look into myself.

Presenting our Posters

So today we had to attach our posters to the walls in the Hilton House for all of the other groups to see. This was a really good idea as it allowed us all to see what other interesting ideas people had come up with, and some peoples concepts were extremely interesting. We had around two minutes to come up with a three minute presentation about our concepts and posters, and everyone from our group had to speak. Although some of our group did not turn up I believe that our group did quite well, we had a lot to talk about as we had really went into a lot of depth with our concept and had a lot of ideas to share with everyone. We also had a great feedback with the tutors who loved our ideas. The idea behind these presentations was to review other peoples work, to learn from our own and to create inspiration from one another. Also as this was our first creative task it gave the group some opportunity to see everyones different styles.

Poster Presentations

Our next task is to create an A1 poster each to present to the rest of the PERFORM/ REVOLT groups. Our posters must show our individual points of view on our concepts. I am looking forward to seeing everyones posters as we are all creative people and this is our chance to express ourselves and really showcase what we can do and what we intend to do. Although this is a collaborative project, we all have our individual styles and we need to take this on board. I feel that once we have all shown one another our posters we can get a better understanding of each others intentions, and also see what the other groups are thinking about doing. This is a learning process for everyone. Personally I have tried to use the influences of chemistry, highlighting this with the use of molecular structures layered over different areas of someones face. I have used four different faces, just faces I have found from the internet so far as I have not had chance to start taking photographs myself. I took the colour inspiration from and image that I found on a blog, this was just to brighten up the image, however I like the idea of the photography being in black and white and highlighting this with splashes of colour.

Here is the final outcome of my own poster, created using Adobe Photoshop.

Evaluation of Origins Unit

Throughout this project, drawing was the key aspect. Although during the first two weeks or so of the project I was feeling really uninspired and unmotivated, I did not feel as though this was the right world for me and that I was slightly out of my depth. This lead to my work becoming quite slowly produced and if I had gotten into uni more on my days off I feel that maybe this could have changed, or possibly I just had not done enough research. I will not let this be a factor within this next project. However from following out a number of drawings from different galleries and day to day objects I was able to come up with the concept of 'Multiples'. This concept immediately inspired me and I began to draw a lot, experimentation was key within this project as we had to eventually design a print that would then go towards a collection.

My inspirations firstly came from the mood boards that we were asked to create. We had to carry out this activity twice as we had misunderstood the brief the first time around. Personally I was glad that we had to do this again as I was not inspired at all my the first mood board we had created relating to 'Opposites Mixed Up'. The drawings which I produced throughout this week were quite expressive, which is exactly the type of drawing that I wanted to produce. Looking back I wish I had created a lot more drawings that were more relevant to the course and the brief over all. The reason that I feel this is that some of my drawings were not relevant and were not used, I could not develop them further, which I should be able to do with each and every one of my drawings.

From the above images it is clear to see how my illustrations have developed from the 'Fashion Illustration for Dummies' tutorial to my final piece. Personally I am rather proud about how these have developed, as I was going to just settle for the first drawing but this was not an option, I knew that my first drawing was not good enough so I sat for hours trying to draw something I was happy with. Finally I produced the second image which I felt just clicked. The digital aspect of TD4F has really inspired and motivated me within this project as I find Photoshop and Illustrator extremely user friendly and some what easy to use and feel that this was definitely one of my strong points throughout the project. Although I already had experience using Photoshop, this was my first time using Illustrator, I was also able to learn lots of new things in Photoshop which allowed me to produce work faster and I am really glad that I had attended the CAD workshops as they are so useful. This definitely allowed me to develop and explore my skills within this area.

These skills have allowed me to produce this final design board, which is one of 6 final boards that I eventually created for the end of the project. I feel that my fashion flats could be more technical as at the moment they look more free hand, I will work on this when I next revisit this world, I feel that more time using illustrator could also give me an advantage within this area. The scale of the garments could also do with being slightly reduced. The one this that I am certain worked out well in this board is the garment on the illustrations. They are graphic, bold and contemporary which is fundamentally what I was aiming to do. I feel that my independent study time would be better used in the studio space rather than in my flat. Although I have enjoyed working at my own pace and with my own surroundings, it is essential that I use the space that has been provided in order to allow me to become inspired and to ask for guidance when and if I need to do so.

Overall I feel that this TD4F project has been successful which also reflects in the grade that I was given, I have enjoyed it but feel that there are still things that I need to improve upon in the future. Points that I would like to improve upon are my allocation of time and space, spend more time surrounded by other practitioners in the studio space. Visit more galleries and exhibitions to absorb inspiration and widen my knowledge of media. Finally to act upon my ideas immediately and to produce work not only faster but that is also more relevant in order to not get stuck and to power through.