Front Cover

Currently I am unsure as to have it landscape or portrait, however after experimenting on photoshop I feel that landscape will work better for me as this is how I am used to presenting my work and it allows for a better canvas for the information I plan to display.

 Once I had came up with the idea of 'Foil' I started to play around with fonts, texture and layering. I took a photograph of some tin foil, slightly out of focus with my own Nikkor Lens. I then brought it into photoshop playing with the levels and contrast then inverting the colours to get the blue. The blue really stands out however I don't think its sophisticated enough for a trend book cover and would be more suitable as maybe a fashion magazine cover.

Also I looked at using different fonts, I want something that will stand out on the front cover and make an impact as although other trend books that I have looked at are very simple on the front I want mine to have visual impact from the start. I may play around with using tracing paper in the front cover, allowing that hidden texture underneath with a frosted top.

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). 

Live Trace with Adobe Illustrator

On thursday I went to one of Alex's Digital Workshops as I feel it is important to learn as many skills as possible throughout my time on this course (and I said I would do so in my brief). Especially with my project at the moment being very intensively digital based. I feel quite confident on Photoshop however Illustrator is my weakness so this is my main reason for attending.

Here is a screen shot of part of the process. The effect it has on photographs rather than hand drawn imagery really intrigues me, I think it looks quite similar to the effect I was trying to create through my Intentions unit.

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.

Fabric Samples

My final designs have been taken to digital print. I chose Crepe De Chine as it was light, kept the colour vibrancy but also remained looking expensive and sheer. The outcome of my designs on this fabric is amazing, I love the finish of the design and has made me feel a lot better about this project as a whole. Putting my designs onto fabric has really put my work into context and I could see the prints as an actual fashion fabric, rather than just a 2D design on photoshop. Although I have experimented in the print room with fabrics I feel that using digital print was definitely the best decision for myself and my designs. This has also allowed me to view my work as a collection rather than a group of designs.

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.

Final Prints

These are my final designs from this project. I am quite happy with the end result especially when I compare them to my first designs. The colour palette I have used works really well together and I feel has been used evenly throughout the designs. Also looking through my initial drawings and ideas, I feel that these designs are a reflection of my initial ideas and primary research. Using this amount of colour has definitely been a learning curve for me, as I was quite scared to used colour, so this has been quite a risk for me.

Adding Designs into Illustrations

After teaching myself how to use layer masking, I have been referring to my technical notes a lot and using this technique with my new illustrations. There are a few things that can be tweaked, other than that I am very happy with this design. I see my designs working more as placement prints or using certain areas of one particular design as apposed to a full ' all over ' print. I have also tried to work on my style like Alex asked in previous tutorials, and I feel that looking back at my original illustration that this is a vast improvement.

Layer Masking

After attending a digital workshop on monday I decided to experiment with my digital skills, as I love using photoshop but feel it is good practise to constantly upgrade your skills. So I started to experiment with Layer Masking. This is due to the fact that I have been trying to add my prints to my illustrations, although I have been successful with this, the final outcome could be a lot cleaner and neater.

The guideline uploaded to moodle suggests using a white garment, however I chose a grey background as it fits in with my colour palette. I also edited the print that I copied into the mask as I followed Alex's advise and toned down the colour palette. This was achieved by adjusting the brightness and contrast panel in photoshop.

I am happy with the result of this and will definitely use this technique in future and to give my work a much more professional finish. Also the 'sheer' effect that Alex suggested has been achieved here too, I will follow this through with the rest of my designs throughout this project.

Backgrounds

After the tutorial this week I realised I needed more textured backgrounds to use along side my motifs. So on my way home from uni, there is a house in the middle of my street that has a lot of scaffolding and building work going on. On the floor outside was a bright green mesh, which I picked up and brought home as I thought it would be useful towards my work. I began to layer acrylic paint over the mesh onto plain paper. and peel away the mesh. Once peeled away I used the opposite side to print any spare paint onto the paper from the inverted side. I really like the textured look that the acrylic paint left, however I felt like the plain white background was something I had been trying to avoid, so I painted a base colour down then layered the mesh over the base colour. The effect of this has been quite successful and I plan to use these in my designs as backgrounds for my motifs to make the designs more interesting.

Something that I feel I could change is the colours, I am going to put these images into photoshop and try to colour match the painting to my colour boards. I will also try to change the opacity so the painting do not over power the designs.

Group Tutorial

This weeks tutorial was probably the best one so far. It had the most attendees and personally I felt it was a lot more constructive than any of the other tutorials that I have had this term. Alex said that he really liked the colour palette I had been using and said that I need to be more decisive with my work as I had told him I was still unsure with the colours I had chosen. However after leaving the tutorial I am fully decided on this colour story.

Other areas of my work that we touched upon where the actual prints that I had put together. Alex said that I need to experiment more with scale, and think more about how the design could be communicated into a garment. Which I agree with, so I am going to start putting my prints into garment flats and illustrations using Photoshop, this will be to experiment with scale, composition and to work on the styling of my work, which is another thing that Alex touched upon.

I showed the group an illustration I had put together just before the tutorial, which was a very basic drawing to help visualise my work. The group all thought that I should make my illustrations more abstract and detailed, adding things like hair or collage to the illustrations to make them more aesthetically pleasing.

Developing Designs

After creating my mood boards I began to scan in my current drawings onto my computer. When creating prints I prefer to work digitally so went straight into Photoshop with my drawings. I had also created some backgrounds as I did not want to have just a flat plain background, something I want to highlight within this project is texture within the design.

Firstly I began with making my drawings into brush tools on Photoshop. I also took some of my designs into Illustrator to make them more graphic as some of the pencil lines were quite sketchy which was not the aesthetic that I wanted with those particular designs.

Currently I am just in the experimentation phase of the project. Both of these designs were to see how the colours I had chosen were going to work together and the proportions of these colours. My favourite between the two is the one on the right. It is not perfect, and I have tried to stay away from repeated prints however what I do like about the print is that even though it is a sketch of scaffolding links, it looks like barbed wire where it has been put together and looks rather abstract.

After looking over these two designs and analysing them I have came to the conclusion that I would like to steer towards less repetitive prints with a low opacity within the brush tools. I would also like to explore placement prints.

Mood Boards

I have been trying to create some inspiration for myself using the images that I have collected over the past week. I have put these images into a few mood/ colour boards to help me decide what colours I want to use throughout this project and what style of design and customer I am aiming towards.

Between the two mood/ colour boards I think the first one is my favourite and demonstrates the style of designs I want to create. The colours within the second board are a bit all over the place on reflection. I really like the combination of the orange and green however I feel that the rose and pink do not fit in. I still want to include some more muted tones of grey, adding gradients into the backgrounds possibly.

My next step throughout the project will be to scan all of my drawings into Photoshop and Illustrator and start to play around with different brushes and colour palettes to try figure out a much more defined path to follow. This is the part of the process I love, so hopefully I will have a larger quantity of work very soon. However with this in mind, I will still carry on drawing to improve my drawing skills and to keep up with the momentum of inspiration.

Final Pieces

These are some of the digital pieces I created using photoshop. I am quite pleased with the outcomes as I feel that I have managed to combine quite a fashion/ textiles look with the images. Some more than others. I kept the images black and white as I wanted to add embellishments using Lizzie's colour scheme which included pinks, yellow, blues and greens. I would not usually work with these colours but as I was only using them as an accent to my work I found it more playful, and the whole idea of this project is to step out of your comfort zone! I plan to print these on acetate as I feel the light shining through the acetate will allow the images to stand out more. Also when it comes to exhibiting the work, the audience will have a greater sense of distortion when they can see their reflections on/ through the shiny, transparent material.