Projection and Garment Research

As I have been very stuck with my designing this Unit, I decided to do some projection onto stand work. This process has really helped me in the past and I felt that it would benefit me this time too.

Rather than aim for actual garments I decided to just create as much drape as I could, so that I could see what draping might do to my prints.

Even though the stand work I did wouldn't be practical for a high street garment, I believe I can still take inspiration from them in order to draw up some more realistic ideas.

I used my projection photographs to play around with illustrations and placement on the body and

I realized I need to look at length, as well as researching what garments I actually want to design. 

Although I roughly dragged and dropped these images, I think they have helped me to decide what kind of shapes I want. I plan on looking further into this and also using these images to help develop my print designs. As I want to make a high street collection I need to make the garments more wearable.



Print Designs and Bradford Textile Association

I took the drawings I created last week into Photoshop and tried to generate some motifs to design with. These were really easy to put together and blended how I intended successfully. I am happy with how the black and white line drawings look in contrast to the colourful mark making, and I think they give a similar feel to the Clover Canyon garments I looked at previously.

I found it difficult to keep in mind my fashion context when designing prints, and I felt that some of my designs weren't suited to be used on clothing. I am also concerned with my colour palette as I think the bright pinks and blues are becoming too over powering. Many of the designs I made are repeat prints, I feel I need to explore more print placement designs instead to hopefully help me develop further.

I attempted some fashion collage illustrations with my prints in order to try and inspire myself to create print placement designs, and also to try and get an idea of what shape I am going for. I have been conducting market research during Julie's fashion workshops, and in particular I am drawn to garments that have drape. I like the idea of my prints being distorted even after the print itself has been created.

For the Bradford Textile Association live brief I decided to take one of the prints from my self initiated project and adapt it to a live brief. I wanted to submit something more traditional and elegant for this brief, which is why I reduced the colours to black and white. I found it interesting to see how changing the colours of a print can alter its whole vibe.

I decided to put the black one forward for Bradford because I like the proportion of black to white. I haven't often done this with my work and I feel like it really works well with this print.

Unit X | Starting to Design

This week we started to take our ideas and turn them into actual designs. Me and Pipp are used to just sampling fabrics and materials, so this is another step further for us. I have previously experimented with placing prints onto very plain and basic garments however I haven't yet designed my own in such detail.

I really enjoyed designing different outfits. I started by drawing templates in order to put in different prints in different places and experiment with placement and tones. During our tutorial with Louise, she told us about range plans and showed us Prada 14 as an example. The collection followed a certain set of trends or elements and injected them into various different garments. For example, they repeatedly used large faces on their designs, imitations of bra shapes on the chest and sports trims. 

I tried to keep this in mind when creating my own designs. I wanted to keep our concept of martial arts in mind at the same time, so I decided to repeat these elements; cross over v-neck, cinching at the waist, culottes, various fabrics wrapped around the body and sheer fabrics. I chose each of these based on martial arts uniforms such as karate jackets and kickboxing shorts.

Unit X | Stand Work and Design Development

To start off the design process, we decided to look at the structure of martial arts garments that already exist. Nicole purchased a karate uniform online so that we could do some stand work, and pin it in different formations. One of the things we specifically tried to do was see if we could make the bulky/spacious garment look more feminine.
This helped us to picture what kind of garments we might have in our collection.

In our tutorial with Louise she suggested that we test print placement with a projector. After we had our screens sent off we took our chosen motifs to the projector to experiment. Unfortunately because of the projector the edges were blurred, however we could still get a jist of what the print looked like. We might have to try the process again with smaller images on the acetate to see if we can get a well-focused image with better positioning.

Locating | Louise Whitaker Advice

 The Locating unit is the perfect opportunity to branch out to people in the outside world. Previously I didn't feel confident enough to do this as I didn't have any applicable work worth showing. However, now that I have two completed Units of print design I feel I can be more assertive.

I came across Louise Whitaker's website and read that she graduated recently from MMU. Her work is really lovely and she has a long list of work experience and placements, and also works as part of a company now. I personally see myself going in a similar direction and working with a company, which is why I thought it might be useful to ask for some advice.
I thought I'd email Louise and see if she could offer any tips on life after Uni or anything I could be doing now to benefit myself in the future, as well as sending her links to my Pinterest incase she could give me any personal guidance.

 I was hoping to recieve a reply with maybe a few pointers or tips, but Louise's reply was more than I could have asked for. She gave such helpful and detailed advice that is not only useful for me but for anyone studying textiles in any specialism. I recommend anyone take the time out to read her tips in this email.

I was very lucky to recieve such a thorough response and for Louise to take such time out of her day. We have corresponded a few more times after this email and I feel confident that I would email her in future to ask for more advice if I ever become stuck in a project. She is so lovely and more than welcome to help me which I am very grateful for.

One of the points Louise made was to contact companies about placements and internships. I really want to put my foot in the door by doing work experience, however the fact I didn't have a creative CV was keeping me back. I decided not to avoid it any longer and to finally get it out of the way.
 Now I have a CV I can start sending it off to companies, finally!

Locating | Engineering Prints

This is the first Unit in which I have experimented with Stand Work, as it was suggested I should experiment with it in my tutorial last week. I pinned Fabric and Paper prints onto a mannequin in order to get a sense of where the prints could be placed on a garment. I feel this process was incredibly successful and I will definitely be repeating in the future.
The only mistake I made was not photographing infront of a white background. The placement can still be seen however it would have been much more clear infront of a clean white backdrop. I will remember this for next time however for now I will just be editing out the background in photoshop.

I sketched over the top of my photographs so that I could really see how the prints would work on certain garments. The sketches were easily dropped onto my illustrations and turned into a design idea. While I was pinning the prints, I was trying to keep an anatomical connection with my concept by placing certain parts of the print over a particular part of the body to imitate it, whether it be inside or out. For example, the first black and white design below is placed so that it imitates a ribcage. Similarly the circular designs on the t-shirt are placed specifically to represent a woman's chest.
Even if the placement doesn't represent a specific body part, the actual print design itself looks like muscle, bone or cells.

I used these images to create some final design ideas for each garment, which was made really easy by the stand work process. I have realised the actual 3D visualisation of the print is extremely useful and can creat designs that I wouldn't have come up with by just working on photoshop. The only thing I would chang if I could afford it is I would use fabric rather than paper prints, as the paper didn't give any drape and often had to be ripped in order to pin it where I wanted to.



Live Brief | Threadess

One of the criteria for the Locating Unit is to create a project based on a Live Brief. As well as creating online portfolios and uploading work, I decided to create an entry for the Threadless competition 'Bad Luck'.

Taking the projector photographs from the self-initiated brief as inspiration, I came up with the idea of working with the word 'Glitch'. Some of my original drawings already had this appearance, which is where the notion came from. My connection to bad luck came from the internal breaking and smashing of phone/laptop/tablet screens. From personal experience, I once dropped my phone which resulted in the bottom of the screen going black along with a glitch half way up the screen. All while my mum had only just left to go on holiday, and with the contract in her name I had no way of getting it fixed or a new phone until she returned. Definitely bad luck!

From my ideas I started on Pinterest and made a new board gathering some ideas, from there I added glitch effects to the photographs I already had. These came out really well and have the damaged and impaired look I was going for.

Using these edited images, I began to create T-shirt designs in Photoshop. Normally my designs are more fashion based and aren’t intended to be particularly literal. However, Threadless competition designs do tend to speak for themselves with no disguised or concealed meaning. Because of this I tried to make the designs literally look like a broken screen, which wasn’t as easy as I originally thought it would be.

Eventually when I got the hang of it I came up with a design I really liked and chose that one to submit. Generally on Threadless people create a 1200 x 1200 pixel document showing the print itself along with an image of it placed on a tshirt. Also, you have to title your design. People come up with quirky and clever names for their tshirts so I decided to go with 'Drop beats, not phones'. Here is the finished design:



Summer Inspirations | Part 2

The brief for this summer was to document things such as what you did and where you went, however my summer was rather normal and uninspiring. If I wasn’t at work I was out with my friends, I wish I could have done more activities revolved around Textiles but I just never had the time. I would have loved to go on an inspiring trip abroad however I went to Sunny Beach Bulgaria, and to be brutally honest culture and design was the last thing on my mind. Because of this I chose to focus on my weak points, such as knowledge of various artists and designers. I also wanted to look into pattern and colour because this is a huge part of print design which is the area I intend to specialise in. I feel I have used this summer to successfully broaden my knowledge and pathways and focus in on where I may want to go with my work.

Mary Katrantzou

I found Mary Katrantzou on Pinterest by happy accident and I’m really glad I did. She is a Greek fashion designer and her prints couldn’t be more suited to my interests and the direction I want to go in. They automatically caught my eye and not just the one, after researching her further there isn’t a design of hers I don’t love and wouldn’t wear myself – her SS11 collection is my favourite to date. She even collaborated with Topshop which is really wearable for the general public. Her use of colour fascinates me and I am infatuated with the way she creates prints using different components. She makes use of landscapes and buildings in some of her designs which I have never really been fond of myself but I have begun to see in a changed way. I am much more open and interested in looking at architecture and landscapes now I have seen how it can be changed. I will definitely be using Mary Katrantzou as inspiration many times in the future as I have fallen in love with her work.

I took inspiration from Mary Katrantzou and her SS11 collection by trying the mirror images trend. Over the summer I fell in love with ‘futuristic fashion’ prints, mirrored patterns and repeated images. I have seen this trend all through summer this year, and have purchased clothing myself that follows it. I didn’t have access to Photoshop at home and couldn’t do as much digital work as I would have liked to, however I found an app called ‘Mirrorgram’ which I played on a lot! I managed to come up with some pretty interesting designs using it. My favourites came from edited screenshots of my ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ for ALS. Although I feel I didn’t document my summer properly I’ve realised I have included some aspects of it, even just through trends I have followed and copied.