CONCEAL / REVEAL

After also thinking long and hard about the name for my trend and being told by Alex to be more 'pretentious'. I took to the online dictionary (again). I really liked my idea of 'hide and seek' but knew the phrase was too naive and not 'quirky' enough for a trend. I have looked at various websites WGSN and Vogue, to see what they name some of their trends, which are often a play on words, so this is definatley something I tried to and wanted to achieve.

Conceal/vReveal sums up my concept. Its a contradiction, yet compliments itself. I want the customer to know that there must be a juxtaposition within the trend, yet it is two things that are not usually put together. This also plays on my underlying concept around the idea of 'camoflage'. I am really happy with this name. My only regret is that I had come up with this earlier in the project.

Camouflage

When I went to the Imperial War Museum today, they had a small section on camouflage, this caught my eye as I had previously spoke to Alex about including camouflage within my project. We came to the decision that this was not the best way forward for my project however. I have still been thinking about how to include an 'idea of camouflage' in my project. As we decided not to use the phrase 'industrial' in the project either, I have been thinking of more creative ways to describe my trend.

I thought of something along the lines of using my more 'urban' images as 'blending into our surroundings' and bringing in the sportswear theme to make us 'stand out in the crowd'. These two phrases juxtapose one another, and could be interesting. Although I don't think it will go down well in the tutorial as I have been quite inconsistent with my thought process. A name for the trend could be something like 'Hide & Seek' but maybe more poetic…….

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.

Print Room Day 1

After developing a number of digital designs I thought it best to experiment with the Print Room. Last year I did not have the best time in the Print Room, and do not particularly enjoy it, so this was a risk for me. However I felt that I needed to take this step in my project to make sure that I have explored all possible avenues for my project to go down. My main aim in the print room was to experiment with composition, colour and texture. I chose fabrics that I thought would work well as a garment rather than fabrics that would work well with the dyes (big mistake) but some interesting end results.

These first two images are of some thick jersey fabric I used pigment dyes on, I used a combination of screen printing and painting onto mesh and printing directly with it. The effect that the mesh has given reflects the 'urban' brief that I was originally given, its quick and rough and it not perfect which is what I like most about it, although I do not like the over all end result I am happy that I have done this as it has encouraged me to improve my digital skills and include more of the mesh within my digital designs.

The next two images are firstly of purple vinyl, which I could not set the pigment dyes on as it would wash straight off. However I really like the effect the pigment dye has on the vinyl, the motifs are slightly opaque, like a layer on photoshop. In the next image I have added some pearl pigment to the dark grey I had been using. I really liked the way the pigment looked in the pot as it reflected back to one of my primary images of petrol in a puddle, it gave this reflective, metallic, silky effect. However when applied to this synthetic fabric it did not have the desired effect.

 

Something that I have realised since being in the print room is that I need to spend a lot more time on getting my colours perfect. Although I may think that the colours suite my colour palette at first, when applied to fabric these colours are a lot different. Here I have experiment with clashing colours. Over all I do not like anything that I produced within the print room. However I am going to experiment with foils as I think that this could be used as a finishing effect on my digitally printed samples.