Week 7 - Fashion Loves: Art

In today's lecture we looked at Fashion Loves: Art, we looked at how art has affected fashion from the 19th Century to just before present day. During A-levels I had looked at quite a lot of the movements mentioned for example Art Deco and saw how they affected graphic design and textiles so I already have quite good knowledge on this yet I still saw many designers work that I hadn't previously.
In our seminar we did a writing analyse task, we mainly looked at one article which was about digital publishing invasion. We were given different questions to answer about the article.


Main points being made

• Print vs. online technology

• Magazine industry incline / digital invasion

• Print industry decline

• How publishing has evolved?

• Reasons why they should target on older markets

• Key Theme

• Data

• Decline of print

• Digital invasion 

Who is it aimed at?

• People who enjoy books

• Well-educated

• Mature/old

What was it originally published for?

• The Times – broadsheet

• A dissertation

What do you think about it?

• Complex

• Well-informed

• Supported with facts

• Biased

• Opinions stated straight away and acknowledge their aims

What research methods?

• Secondary – stats: databases – Mintel/keynote

• Other published sources – books/journals/magazines/broadsheets

• Primary – first hand – interviews/face2face/email

• References – clockwork orange – book/film

Design and layout

• Little paragraphs easy to digest – grid structure

• Quite sophisticated

• Simple = minimalist

• Text heavy

• Flow quite confusing 

Tone of voice

• Formal

• Persuasive

• Intellectual

• Sophisticated

• Biased

• Convincing

• Arrogant

• Reference is male

• Straight to the point

At the end of the seminar we found out it was a dissertation from a past female student and got a 1st for it. Quite a lot of us were shocked as almost all of us thought it was going to be someone much older.

Week 7 - London Trip

Today we went to London to research our brands for our projects and also look exhibitions. After a not so smooth 4 hour journey to London my group started by going to the V&A museum, currently they have an exhibition on about Club to Catwalk, London Fashion in the 1980's which was £5 for students to go into. We weren't allowed to take photos in the exhibition, I wish we could have as there was lots of very interesting outfits! I particularly liked the Blitz Denim event that was in 1986, 22 designers customised denim jackets from Levi in each of their own unique styles. The exhibition also featured sections including; english eccentrics, evening wear, knitwear, new romantics, high camp, body map, body conscious, rare, goth, glam fetish, customised and hard times. Definitely an exhibition to see if you like all things wacky and eccentric!

Then in our group we went to Covent Garden, grabbed some lunch and then went to the independent Mulberry store to see how it was laid out, visual merchandise and to see what competitors were around.  Right next to the Mulberry store there was a Radley store and just down the street there was Lulu Guinness. Mulberry already had its christmas visual merchandise up featuring cute white nut crackers with some of the best sellers in between. In store it was pretty small, a very simplistic layout but it did also have a feature wall with some bags handing off of it. 

We then went to Selfridges to see what one of Mulberry's concession stores was like in comparison. Again the store was very simplistic, their best sellers were featured at the front of the store, they even had a swing tag or sign by them saying 'Great Gift' for Christmas. 

Week 7 - Lover's Guide to Brands

Today we watched a video called the Lover's Guide to Brands, it talked about briefing, focus on the idea and surviving execution. I noted down quotes that I thought were particularly helpful or that I thought just stood out.

In the section about briefing they said 'briefing is more important than the brief', I thought this was quite interesting, they basically were saying that sitting down with the people working on the brief and discussing it is more worth while than just having the brief put down nothing more said about it, which I would think is pretty true!
'People in agencies think by doing, not think by thinking' - I really liked this one, it's basically saying that you need to be doing something to end up of thinking of something useful towards project or just an idea, instead of just sitting down thinking whilst doing nothing. Sometimes the best ideas are thought up in the most random of times and places!

The next section was called 'Focus on the idea'. I really like this statement that one of the people said 'It's not just about the ingredients, you need to emotionally satisfy the customer about the brand or product.', probably my favourite quote from the video was 'Don't analyse it to death when it's just been born.', I think too often people get an idea, but before even giving it a chance they analyse it so much that the idea is completely ruined when there could have been potential.

Week 6 - Market Research

Today we were introduced to market research and trends.

Primary research is original data, this can be collected by experiments, field study, surveys, prototypes and interviews. It's more complex than secondary but you get one to one information and focus's on prospect companies.

Secondary research is existing data, this can be collected from literature or case studies. It's easier to conduct than primary research, there's a broad understanding and it can help for preparation for primary research.

'Fashion used to come from one source at a time, be it the street, the runways or the entertainment business. The interesting thing about today is that influences come from high and low, everything from couture to target.' - Michael Kors

I really like this quote which was mentioned in the lecture, it is so true and shows how much the fashion industry has changed!

Long term trends include;
Political
Economy
Sociocultural
Technology
Environment
Legal
Demographics

Dominant Megatrends 

• globalisation
• digital
• environmental
• health & wellbeing

Social

• ageless society
• body perfection
• networked society
• personalisation
• globalisation/homogenisation

Technology

• mobile payment
• e-commerce
• price comparison
• QR codes
• wearable technology
• augmented reality
• 3D printing
• personalisation
• live participation
• social media
• apps
• interactive retail
• click & collect

Environment

• environment/globalisation
• closer to markets
• faster/reduced lead times
• more flexible - customisation

Short term trends include;
Brand
Consumer - street, celebrity
Competition - catwalk, in store/visual merchandising, advertising
Media - print, film/tv, music, photography, art
Product - colour, materials, prints, patterns, design

Week 6 - Analysis Of Writing Styles

In our lecture today we just went over how to reference, the London trip itinerary and how to document what we collect in London.

In the seminar we analysed an article called 'Fast Love' from The Sunday Times, we weren't told where it came from until we had finished the task.

What are the main points being made in the article?
Fast beauty for busy women

What key themes, issues or questions are addressed?
What do most women want and need?, Beauty & Time

Who is it aimed at?
Working/busy women

What was it originally published for?
Magazine or Metro Paper

What do you think about it?
A very promotional piece of writing, could be controversial, I think it's weird!

What research methods do you think they have used?
Primary research from the company advertised through interview. There were no consumer views.

Week 6 - Brand Handwriting

Today's lecture I found really interesting, probably because I'm very visual and the power point was very visual!
A brands handwriting can include; colour, pattern, monogram, signature, letter form/font, media/material and product.
We started at looking at brands that use colour as their main feature;

Elsa schiaparelli - Pink - Inventive, Controversial & Playful.
Tiffany & Co. - Blue - Cool, Luxury & Romance.
Liberty - Purple - Privileged, Rich & Rare.
Hermès - Orange - Well Travelled, Equestrian Prestige & Exotic.

We also looked at brands that use print as their main feature;

Paul Smith - Stripes - Eccentric, Witty & Playful.

Missoni - Chevron - Electric, Decorative & Bold.

Emilio Pucci - Paisley - Groovy, Flirtatious & Zestful.

Burberry - Check - British, Heritage & Young Aristocracy.

To end the lecture we looked at brands which use monograms as their main feature including; Coach, Gucci, Dior & Louis Vitton.

In our seminar we created compositions using powerpoint, we had to generate 6 layouts using few elements starting off with an image from clipart and then include blocks of colour and text. Here are the 6 layouts I composed.

Week 6 - Understanding Brand Values

In the lecture we looked at Brand Essence and Values. Brands need to live in the minds of the consumer, the consumer has functional and emotional needs. Brands are all weighed by their value and cost, the functional values are the practical benefits the consumer will be offered by the product or service.
We then looked at a brand essence model, here you can question or create a brand.
We looked at Adidas as a case study, looking at an example of their brand essence model of their different collections including Adidas Performance, Adidas Orginals and Adidas style.

We also looked at Brand DNA, this refers to a brand's distinctiveness, novelty, and attributes as compared to those of the competition. 

In our seminar we looked at our day in the life diaries we had been asked to do over the weekend, I went to visit home that weekend so mine was slightly different to my normal day to day life.

10:30am - Wake up - Next
10:35am - Have breakfast - Nestle
10:45am - Check phone - Samsung
10:50am - Check laptop - Apple
11:15am - Get changed - H&M, Newlook, Primark, La Senza
11:25am - Brush teeth - Colgate
11:30am - Check phone - Samsung
11:35am - Makeup - No7, Benefit, Bourjois, Collection 2000, Rimmel
12:00pm - Go to town - Volvo
12:30pm - Cafe - unknown brands
1:30pm - Shopping - H&M, Topshop, Newlook, Vodaphone, EE, Countrywide
4:00pm - Check Phone - Samsung
4:05pm - Go to grandparents - Volvo
7:00pm  - Go home - Volvo
7:30pm  - Dinner - homemade dinner
8:00pm - TV & laptop - Adverts, Apple
11:00pm - Brush teeth & change - Colgate Simple, Topshop
11:10pm - Go to bed - Next

There were still many brands that I interacted with throughout the day, some came up several times including; Samsung, Volvo, Newlook, Colgate and Next. In groups we looked at each others days and what brands also came up most in theirs. Between our group Colgate, Samsung and Apple came up the most. Until doing this day in the life, I wasn't really aware of how many brands I was actually interacting with in a day to day basis, it's quite scary!

Week 5 - Final Presentation

This week wasn't as normal, on the monday we had a lecture on learning outcomes and then on the tuesday Angi looked out our current moodboard ideas and gave feedback to help us improve them for our final presentations on the friday.

The image below is my final moodboard for the brand Maharishi that I presented on the Friday. Before this brief I hadn't heard of the brand before so I had to do quite a bit of background research on the brand, the main words that stood out to me were urban, pacifist and military. I used a mix of images; Banksy artwork, images of Maharishi's brand, camouflage material, military images and other pieces of urban art. One of my favourite images is the grenade peace sign as I found it very striking and really represented the brand to me.
As well as talking about my own moodboard and the rest of my group talking about theirs we also had to talk about commonalities between them. The brands were Maharishi, Monsoon, Roberto Cavalli, Dianna Von Furstenberg and Matthew Williamson, we noticed that they all used prints and patterns from different cultures for example Monsoon using prints inspired from India.

Week 4 - Segmentation & Targeting

Today we looked at segmentation and targeting, market segmentation looks at the competitor landscape and consumer segmentation looks at consumer landscape.

In our seminar we were given a made up case study about a coffee shop called 'Hot Coffee, Cool Clothes'. We had to read through the case study and discuss how the company could improve and possible change their markets as they weren't being very successful. We made comments about how they had the coffee shop and clothes all in the same room and how that could make the clothes smell and also it would be difficult to relax if people are walking around you looking at the clothes, so we thought that it would be better if they had split the rooms into two. The company did a silly idea of doing very little market research as they only really spoke to friends who are likely to be biased which created most the problems the company had.

Week 4 - Converse & Visual Codes

Today we looked at a Converse, their latest campaign was quite interesting to look at, it's called 'Sneakers get loud', people made viral videos - example video is below - where people would make a viral video for a chance to win prizes. They also created a place where up and coming bands can go to record and perform music at Converse Rubber Tracks Studio in Brooklyn. Converse would then use that music in their adverts and the bands would gain free promotion and even prizes.
We also looked into a little bit of Converse's history, the shoe began as a basketball sneaker and didn't really become a trendy item until the 1950's when it was the 'birth of the teenager' where teenagers started to be individual instead of wearing what their parents did. Converse became even more successful in the 1970's punk era, they were very much worn as they would last a long time, they weren't too expensive and many people liked the worn look and the fact you could make them your own by drawing on them with permanent markers.
Eventually Nike bought converse, Rob Walker said 'Discovering that Nike had bought Converse was like hearing Elvis Costello had started writing jingles for Microsoft' and with Converse originally wanting to come across as individual there was a bit of controversy.

In our seminar  we discussed visual codes, we started off by being given a bunch of photos in our groups and having to group them up, our groups were; models, fashion icons, brands, interiors & architecture and non-fashion influences.

We then had to pick on of the photos that stood out to us the most, the image of Lily Cole stood out to me most, I think I was mainly drawn to the bold contrast between her ginger hair and the green dress she is wearing. I'm also a big lover of makeup and I loved the look she's wearing in the photography, I'm also a lover of fashion photography and she also looked quite fierce in the image which also made it stand out.

We then had to bring in an image of ourselves wearing an outfit we would normally wear and we had to describe our own style. 

I would describe my own style as relaxed and quite minimal, I don't tend to wear many accessories and if I do they tend to be neutral and not too much of a statement. Currently I really like wearing faux leather which is quite a big trend this A/W.

Then in pairs we had to describe each others style from the images we'd brought in without showing what we thought about our own style. We were also given questions to fill in to get to know each other for example 'What do you love?', 'What music do you like?' and more.

Week 4 - Visual Contrast

In today's lecture we looked at visual contrast, it's contrast as a useful visual approach and can perform various vital functions. 

• attract, delight and seduce - visual power
• inform, underpin and explain - visual communication
• revive, refresh and sustain - visual interest

Some examples of visual contrast include; 

• male V female
• fantasy V reality
• past V present
• abstract V accessible
• lux V grunge
• urban V rural

This image I found on pinterest shows lux V rural

In our seminar, using Photoshop we created played around with some different settings and tools to create different contrasts and style of images. The image below is the work that I did during this seminar.

Week 4 - Marketing Positioning

In our lecture we looked at Marks & Spencer as a case study to do with marketing positioning, in the last 3 years their women's wear sales were in decline so they wanted to reposition as they were failing to differentiate. They repositioned by trying to have exceptional quality and confident style, they want to appeal to cultured, cool and creative women but some say they are still unclear to what consumer demographic they are trying to target.
We then looked into positioning, segmentation and targeting in more detail including the different levels they can take place.

In our seminar in groups of 3 we filled in a table with columns including potential area of differentiation, tactics to achieve this, competitive advantage and value for consumers against the 7 P's for M&S.
Then we created a perceptual map with M&S against other competition, we created ours with quality and service as our factors.

Week 3 - Visual Codes

In this lecture we looked at the visual codes of luxury for 4 brands in different styles.

Heritage
Ancestry, legacy, tradition, lineage, progenitor, provenance
Example brand - Louis Vitton
- damous for luxury travel goods
- classic trunk
- not afraid to modernise

Wit
Playfulness, guile, adroitness, repartee, raillery, badinage
Example brand - Paul Smith
- instantly recognisable
- play with the logo
- modern twist on tailoring
- sense of fun continued in store
- eclectic mix

Purity
Simplicity, classical, artistic, graceful, elegant, immaculacy
Example brand - Calvin Klein
- minimalism
- instantly recognisable
- underwear
- use celebrities
- use a lot of contrast in photos

Sensuality 
Physically, seduction, passion, suggestiveness, indulgence, decadence
Example brand - Dolce & Gabbana
- instantly recognisable
- use celebrities
- lots of imagery in adverts
- recognisable palette of colour

Using visual codes brands create a visual identity.
Type - Headline/display font
Image - Photography/illustration
Colour - Colour palette/on trend/on brand
Icon - Motif/logo
Pattern - Texture/gradients

Continuing on with visual codes in our seminar we were given an image from a fashion related advert, we then had to pick out the key themes and what we could see within the image. 

The key themes we saw within our image were; seductive, animalistic, obsessive, sexual, fixated, dominatrix, feline, gold digger.

In the image we could see; a young woman, daylight, an office, a mans shoe, she had perfect hair and makeup, she was just wearing seductive, black, classy underwear, she had claw like nails.

Week 3 - Exploring Colour Theory

In today's lecture we looked at colour theory, the hue is the original colour, the value is the lightness or darkness of the hue, the chroma is the strength/dominance of the hue from saturation, a tint is the hue with white added and a shade is the hue with black added. We also looked at primary, secondary, tertiary, harmonious, contrasting and complimentary colours, you can see all these in the diagrams below.

In our seminar we created colour palettes using Photoshop, I used an urban artwork image which I found during research for my moodboard about Maharishi. Using the colour picker tool, I picked out the main colours that stood out to me in the image and placed them alongside each other in different orders.

Week 3 - The Visual Critic/Creative Writing Techniques

Our lecture was quite interesting today, started off my watching a clip from Ice Age which related to obsession, I thought it was a pretty good example! To obsess means to be continually preoccupied.
The lecture also involved a bit of psychology about visual awareness which was something I hadn't really looked at before.
Then they went on about how to become a visual critic and I noted down the points they mentioned which include;

• use your voice
• have an opinion
• have a view or make a judgement
• comment on the quality or worth
• this can be based on ideas, experience, intuition, knowledge, enthusiasms.
• share your ideas
• discuss & debate
• choose a topic - participate
• look - switched on
• receptive - receive something
• receptor
• record - always carry a camera/notebook
• read - know your subject
• Routine - make it habitual

Later on in our seminar we did some creative writing techniques, I was a little nervous about this at first as in the past I haven't been the best at writing, however once the task was over I felt much more confident and I think that is also due to having my own blog for the past year which has given me the chance to improve my writing. 

Our first task was to write about 'Who I am?' and we had 2 minutes to write. As you can see I had a rather odd ending!

Then we had to write about 'The Death of the High Street.' and 'The Death of Print.', for these two pieces we had 3 minutes to write.

 
Then we were asked to look at an article from a magazine we brought in, I chose the article called 'Trolls are so last season' in Company. From the article we had to pick out the tone of voice, style of writing and core demographic that the article was aimed at.

Then in a group of 3, between us we had to pick one magazine and write another 3 minute piece about either 'The Death of the High Street.' or 'The Death of Print.' and write it in the style of the chosen magazine. I chose to write about 'The Death of the High Street.'