My aim and for Final Major Project was to create digital prints using the subjects of flora and fruit to produce digital prints to be made into four dresses that would be sold as one off dresses, for boutiques.
I called my brief ‘Fruit and Flora’. I wanted to combine two subjects that are used in flat print design in fashion and other areas too. I did this to try and create quirky outcome of prints and for the fact I always concentrate on one subject for my designs, so to also broaden my context of designs.
I started with primary drawings of fruit and flora and experimented with my drawings as much as I could so I could have a rich base to start from. I then went on to working digitally in Photoshop to start experimenting with my drawings and playing around to see the outcomes I could get. To then push forward to possible designs for my dresses. Alongside doing this I gathered research on trend shapes for Spring/Summer 2012 to get an idea of what type of pattern to choose for my dress. By choosing a shape of dress that reflects the Instant trends I think it would bring more appeal to my designs that aren’t being influenced by design print trends in general even though I will get visual input from trends but it’s not a conscious purpose decision.
I came out with strong digital prints that just focused on floral designs in the end. I changed the brief due to the fact I couldn’t get fruit and floral to work together. I did attempt and not easily give up trying the combination to work but at the end had to draw a line underneath it because I was wasting valuable time. I did also change the creating 4 prints for each design. My original idea was to have a different design for each panel. I found this too much as each print was fighting each other and there was no great purpose or obvious reason why I was clashing prints. It simply didn’t work. So I decided to go for 2 prints per dress. A main print for front and back panel and a print, more so a co-ordinate print that linked with the main print for the side and sleeves in some cases. Focusing just on a subject I was familiar did make me confident in knowing I could produce some positive things but in the future I am going to look into other subjects rather than floral and experiment more to be able to get a strong result.
The fact my designs were being produced digitally and produced within the metre I had to make sure my designs were correctly in repeat. I took ages finalising and showing my development of designs to make sure I chose the right decisions for each design and dress. I should in reflection drawn a line quicker when it came to decision making instead of asking more questions. When I finalised all my designs and thought they were in correct repeat turned out they weren’t. This was mainly due to an effect I placed over my designs that I didn’t symmetrically meat at the edges, this took my time trying to get the best repeat I could and also because of technical issue with my computer saving some files with layers in correct repeat as a non-readable document, even though I backed up those designs it still converted those file to a non-readable file. So all in all this major ally delayed getting them to the printers, but at the end of the day I was no way willing to send designs to the printers that were half-heartedly done, especially because of the amount of effort I put into it my designs and the fact I wasn’t willing to spend £300+ to get them back not as I wanted or knowing I could of done a lot better. Time management has never been my strong point and I was on target with sending my designs off and for once thought I will see my designs on material and then made into my dresses. This wasn’t to be which meant I wouldn’t get my designs back on material for the deadline, so therefore couldn’t be made up into my final outcome of four dresses. This obviously frustrated me from the fact I have put an immense effort working constantly to get them done for the deadline. The only way I could come back from this was to was to create visualisations of my designs composed onto the dresses. I think I created good visuals because I wanted to get them looking life like as much as possible to make up for not getting the dresses created, which I think I did by reflecting the type of material of silk etc.
That also means it will bring my mark down when it comes to professionalism. This brings me on to contacting companies . Last time I contacted mainstream high-street chains which is where I saw my market but got no responses. I learnt from that and this time contacted boutiques and flat print surface design studios because I was looking at creating one offs for boutiques and producing flat pattern it made sense to go in that direction. After contacting a lot of people, I got in total 6 responses from companies/ designers that agreed to look at my portfolio. They were ‘Print House Studio, SUK Design, Splash Ltd Studio, Hazelnut Studio, Freelance Designer Eliana Bigio and Design Collective Studio. I did offer to all companies/ designers to either have a face to face viewing or an online PDF sent over by email. I did this t broaden the chances of them seeing my work if I gave them an option. All responses said to see by PDF/ All thought at the time I was pleased I made progress and the fact I was going to get some industry feedback which is obviously a positive but seeing some-one face to face would of gave me more of an experience and understood more with what they would of said and also strengthened my presentation skills. I generally would have gained more than a few words on paper. I was extremely pleased I gained 6 responses but It was slow getting feedback. I emailed the companies few times asking if they have had chance to look but only SUK design and Hazel nut studio got back to me with feedback within the deadline time. I didn’t get feedback from SUK design in time for her feedback to influence my work, but she said that I needed to not be as rigid and experiment with different media so my work wasn’t as computerised., this is something I’m going to take on board and when I next designs some prints use what she said to push my work. In reflection I should of pushed the people who agreed to look at my portfolio more but saying that when I wasn’t getting any feedback I kept on contacting people to try and get somewhere.
Overall the only issue I had in this project was time. I worked hard and was one target but the fact I had problems with repeat and other factors of having to re-Do other work for other aspects of the course which took time up too created a domino events of things to happen which lead to having no dresses as my final outcome, which also lead by PDP side not going well as my backup was to go into boutiques with a one of my dresses to get feedback as they would see the outcome.
In the future I would like to firstly aim to work in a studio creating flat print to get a better ideas of how a print studio works wither that’s a surface design studio or a fashion studio. With a fashion studio I will have to persue in looking into doing a patter making course as it’s a necessity in fashion studios based on my research of jobs and placements. Freelance i design is something I would like to do later on in life when I have found my feet within the Industry- when I have more confidence within what I do. A masters is also a possibility because ever since joining this course right from the beginning I told myself that whatever I focused on (in this case fashion) to then follow up doing a Master at some point to really refine and greater my knowledge on the subject I feel passionate about to be able to make a success of my career.
