Locating Unit -Pinterest Links

Pinterest links:

Live Brief : Florals
https://uk.pinterest.com/Beckyleanne0473/florals/

Live Brief: Capturing Christmas
https://uk.pinterest.com/Beckyleanne0473/christmas/

Locating - Self Initiated
https://uk.pinterest.com/Beckyleanne0473/locating/
https://uk.pinterest.com/Beckyleanne0473/locating-product-research/

Locating Unit

Demonstrate independent thinking and time management through the authorship of a self-initiated brief.

I found it interesting but also difficult to come up with a self-initiated brief for this unit, I think this was mainly due to the pressure of finding an idea that is good enough to develop a whole unit around. I think my fear at the start when I became stuck on the textiles outcome was focused on that I had made a bad decision for my chosen inspiration, I thought that I had started down a path that didn’t have much to offer. However due to the fact that I became stuck pretty early on, it meant that I had time to push forward, develop and come up with some really interesting final collections. Time management for this unit was probably the most difficult, mainly for the fact that we had to do a live brief along-side our self-initiated brief. Not only that but I chose to take part in both live briefs put up by Tigerprint through-out the duration of the Locating unit, and whilst it was difficult, I do not regret my decision, and I will continue taking part in Tigerprint briefs along-side my studies. I think it helps to see what industries are asking for and it helps to build your understanding on contextualising your work into a format that is required for the world outside of university.

Demonstrate the ability to explore, critically analyse and develop practice.

I think my sketchbook is the best demonstration of me exploring and developing my practice, it shows the confusion and resolution in my thoughts, having odd pages of research or designs that didn’t really link to the work before. I also think a lot of my thought process was exposed during my tutorials, I knew that being honest with myself and my tutor about positive and negative areas has helped me resolve issues quicker and build on my strengths, so even though this was more of a verbal demonstration I think it is the thing that has worked best for me on this unit.

Illustrate that they can build and use networks and contacts as a career development resource.

I have really enjoyed taking part in the live briefs for this project I think I has given me an understanding of the requirements for work out in the ‘real world’. It has also opened my eyes to the amount of competition out there in the textiles world, which has only motivated me to work harder and push further to achieve my goals. I have started to try build networks with the outside world, a couple of months ago I contacted a shop from back home ‘Handmade in Yorkshire’ it is a local craft store that will help you sell your work through the store, and I thought this would be a good place to start. I got a positive response and the owner of the shop said she would be happy to look at my work and sell it through her store.

Demonstrate evidence of testing and presenting individual practice within a professional textiles context.

I think my biggest risk and demonstration of individual practice for this unit was the overall concept of photography. Everything I did for this was self-taught. It was very much out of my comfort zone, however I think it was successful, helping push me towards new areas. Taking photographs on film and developing them myself was something I have never done before, and I think it was a huge success, some of my preferred designs have come from the film frames. Also the fact that I physically double exposed the film, a technique that no-one thought would work, (including the photography technician) has made me extremely proud that I didn’t give up and tried it again. Even though most of my initial research was a photography context I think it has transformed into a textiles print context well and I think doing this unit has definitely pushed my digital print skills forward.

Manage own professional development reflectively

I think that looking back on my blog I have demonstrated my ability to reflect and develop, discussing what was successful and where I want to progress and also when I have had a slow week where I haven’t progressed forward. Overall I think that being able to criticise your own work and develop based on that is very important and something I try to do now for every unit.

Conclusion

Overall I think this unit has definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone, which proved difficult at times, but I feel it has helped me develop my skills and understanding. The intentions of this unit was to show us how to start producing work suitable for the ‘real world’ and I think it has been successful in doing so. My biggest achievement from this unit was producing four mini-collections from one source of visual research, this has taught me the invaluable lesson that no matter what your starting point may be, you can always tailor it to be suitable and create something interesting and unique, and in fact it is normally the most unusual starting points that develop into unique work.

Locating Unit

After my final tutorial my tutor decided that I needed some designs similar to the feel of my commissioned designs to fit in with some of my fashion prints. I agreed that the large scale non repeats would work well with the colour and repetition of the fashion fabrics. So after this tutorial I went and created some suitable designs. These were the outcomes. I wanted these designs to be suitable for placement prints so I just created a single motif, surrounded by a transparent background.

   

I then put the two sets of fashion designs together using visualisations and I was extremely pleased with the outcomes. I think the first 3 designs are very on-trend for this upcoming year, and I would be excited to create these as a final collection if we had the time on the unit.

The final section to my collection of mini-series is interior lighting accessories, so for each of these designs the objective is to have them as light coverings e.g. Lampshades, light box art or backless photo frames, allowing the daily change in light to change the strength of the image.

Locating Unit - TigerPrint Brief

After doing some more research into Marks and Spencer’s current products, I noticed that many were brighter colours to mine, and so I decided to make some changed to some of my designs. Whilst I liked the composition and design, overall I think the colours would not have been very suitable for the target market. These are some of the products available currently at Marks and Spencer’s. I think most of them are bright and vibrant and have an interesting repeat structure.

These are the final five designs that I worked back into and finally submitted for Tigerprint. I enjoy working to Tigerprint briefs, I think they give you enough of a direction to work toward without forcing you to work to a strict brief. It has also helped me to start to understand the requests of industry, and the level of competition out there.

Locating Unit

Now knowing exactly where I was heading I worked on creating all of my designs. I kept in mind the guidelines I had set myself for each section and carried on developing. I found creating my upholstery designs the easiest, the simple geometric repeats meant that the focus was simply on the shapes I chose to make, rather than the colours or the idea of creating an asymmetric repeat. These are some of the designs I came up with and below are visualisations, doing these helps me to visualise the intended outcome.

I found the commission designs a little more difficult, trying to design for a certain space or shape based purely on an image proved to be harder than anticipated. I knew I wanted these designs to be simpler, avoiding standard grid repeats. I tried to think about the space, for example on of the designs I did (right), I took into consideration that when stood outside the building you would see through the transparent window covering straight through to the image coving the wall, thus creating a double exposed image that changes with perspective. For some of these designs I worked directly into the space within the image, responding to the space, (image third from the left). I felt it was essential to have these designs photoshoped into images to show how I have intended the designs, it also helps to demonstrate scale.

  

Original images from: www.google.co.uk

Locating Unit - TigerPrint Brief

I chose to also take part in the second Tigerprint competition brief, because the previous brief and my self-directed brief were both photography based, so I thought it would be a nice change to do some drawing based work. In addition, the brief was floral repeats, which is something I am always keen to work on. So to start the project I started researching, looking at different styles of drawing. The brief asked you to consider the marks you make so I thought it would be nice to mostly use watercolours for my drawings as they always create nice textures and marks. I then took all my drawings and scanned them in to create motifs and brushes in Photoshop.

These are some of the brushes I used. For my designs, I decided to create square repeats, keeping it simple and suitable for commercial use. These are some of the first designs I created. I like the fact that I used my drawings for the brushes and I think the marks have translated well into my designs.

Locating Unit

After learning where I went wrong with the first roll of film I decided to try again. I planned to take darker images as the first set and lighter images with more contrast for the second set. I bought two rolls of film and decided that on one I would have darker nature images, avoiding large volumes of light, followed by architecture images with contrasting shapes of light. The second film I decided to test using portraiture silhouettes, looking back at my initial research, this was then followed by images of trees. The intention was to cast the tree silhouettes onto the portraits. This was the outcome for the two films.

These images were much more successful that the first set and some of the frames were really interesting. Because of the fact that I rewound the film and took a second set of images, the frames haven’t all lined up perfectly, creating shadowed lines and empty spaces. I am excited about these marks and the effect it has had on the images. It has blended and merged frames together creating a bigger image. The way the images have layered up is also exciting; because of the spontaneous way the images have merged together.

  

These are some of the successful frames, these are completely unedited in terms of composition, the only changes I have made are to the brightness and contrast. 

Locating Unit

Based on what was said in the previous tutorial and after thinking about it carefully I decided to challenge myself and create four different collections. Using the same inspirational starting point and developing four collections suitable for four different areas.  My intended areas for my designs are:

·         Upholstery fabric- working with monochromatic geometric repeat patters
·         Fashion fabric – colourful repeats with occasional twists
·         Commissions and Wall pieces – large one off designs
·      Interior lighting accessories- playing with the idea of light and transparencies.

Now knowing what I wanted to do and having done some research I started making designs for each of my areas. I tried to ensure that each design was different, yet at the same time withholding a theme that ran through-out. I also tried to make some of the collections overlap and link, demonstrating the versatility of some of the designs. My intention behind having four different outcome areas is to show that no matter the initial inspiration point, you can change and tailor things to suit where needed. With the intention of this unit being for us to develop an understanding about getting our work out there I realised that if you want to get your work out into the real world you need to learn versatility.

These are some of the designs I create for my fashion outcomes. For the fashion designs I decided to use more of the softer photographs, I feel they seemed more suitable and worked better to create fashion fabrics. I also injected colour into my designs, making them more suitable for upcoming trends, an aspect which is key for consideration when designing fabrics for a fashion outcome.