Professional Practice: Business Cards

During my time doing my FMP I will have to make business cards at some point so that when I have exhibition at the end of this project if people wish to purchase items that I have made then they can pick up a business card with my details on to get in contact with me about payments and possibly if they could have some make larger etc.

So I have started looking at good and bad business cards to take inspiration from and not what to do when making my own.

These are some business cards that my tutors class last year produced and a few a some that she has just picked up when being out and about places.

These are examples of good business cards, they are all very different, imaginative

 and aren't like normal typical business cards you can tell that quite a bit of though have been put into these business cards. The day of the dead skull is quilted like a pillow which has been make with heat transfer, another two methods that has been used on one of these cards is screen printing and  one of them have been hand made out of wood.

These business cards are bad examples as things have been done like: edges haven't been cut straight, shoddy handwriting that cannot be read, same with another one a word font has been used that can't be read and they just haven't been imaginative with their designing with the cards. They just look unappealing an very boring.

Final Major Project: Dreams and Nightmares

For my final major project I have decided to research/look at Dreams and Nightmares, I took inspiration for it from my recent trip to Paris when visiting Les Art Decoratifs, whilst in the museum there was a exhibition to do with nightmares and symbolism which was full of weird and wacky pieces of work that were based around visions of nightmares. Therefore with me being interested at the time I decided to take plenty of photos for primary research just in case I was definitely sure that I wanted to do this subject for my FMP.

I will be questioning what Dreams and Nightmares are and looking into dream dictionaries, tarot card reading and things that can happen whilst you sleep like lucid dreams where you can control your dreams (like an outer body experience) but sometimes lucid dreaming can be quite unnerving and there have been occasions were people have heard and seen supernatural beings whilst lucid.

Along my line of research I will looking at mythology, fantasy, Tibetan art and a range of artists & designers, I have already chose a lot of artists and have started to think about creating artist research boards and pages in my sketchbook. Although I have a pretty good idea of my whole general theme that I have chose I still am unsure what I will produce as and end product.

Evaluation: Live Brief Moo

For this I will be evaluating my Live Brief for a small local Boutique in my town called Moo, in this project brief we were asked to produce a range of A3 samples on marine invertebrates. So first thing to do like any other project was to collect primary research, for my primary research I firstly went to to the Moo shop to take photos of their garments that they produce and just get a general look at the shop I also went and visited the World Museum in Liverpool, I took photos in the aquarium part but unfortunately there was not a lot of marine creatures that were invertebrates but it was still primary research to work from. My secondary research were images from places like Pinterest, Tumblr etc.

From my research and images taken I produced mood, visual and development sheets from these I took certain elements from my sheets like my waves, tentacles, sea urchins and coral pieces, I chose these as I thought they all looked really good together and it looked very ocean like. Also from visiting the shop I took inspiration from some of the colours and the fabrics used , the clients from the shop had asked for the product to be designed for spring/summer in monochrome (black, white and grey) and one single colour of my choice, therefore I could not use a wide range of colours like I usually try to use in my work.

Even though throughout this I was only limited to monochrome and one colour I still tried a variety of different fabrics to show what my design would look like on thicker and different textured fabrics. Although when I tried using devore velvet which I found quite troublesome as when I came to use to devore paste it was very thick and wasn't a very good consistency to screen print with, so I had to pull it through the screen as hard as I could for it to print onto my velvet, after that the devore did not show up very well and some bits were missing completely which was really disappointing because I enjoy using devore and seeing the outcome. Also I experimented with satin which turned out lovely the feel and finish on it was better than I expected it to be, I would have tried alot of other different types of thicker fabrics but I didn't want to stray too far out of the brief and try and stick to lighter materials which were suitable for spring/summer, not only would you not want to be wearing thick clothing in spring/summer you also wouldn't want to be wearing very dark clothing which brings me to my next point. During summer or spring you don't want to be wearing darker type of clothing so I tried to make my colour very natural, light and quite pastel like, I would have liked to try a wider variety of colours but with the constrainst of it having to be monochrome and summery I had to limit my options. 

Whilst doing all of my processes I have looked into artists along the way that have inspired me, the first artist is Mariel Manuel her "Keep Your Eye On The Doughnut" collection was widely based on sealife/sea creatures she also uses light weight material as her collection is also based for spring/summer her patterns, colours and designs are beautiful and are very much how I imagine the people from Moo were looking for something similar to her designs. Another designer I looked at was Iris Van Herpen I was highly impressed by his crazy patterns and designs, he is a fabric manipulation designer and some of his work is so quirky which made me think that with this project it needed a little bit of quirkness/unique style as the product was going to Avant-Garde.

I took my final design from one of my development sheets as it look quite different and a little out there, I also thought it fitted the brief quite nicely with the colours I had picked and the design is a repeat pattern, my final piece is also very easy to reproduce as tracings are available for screens to be made but I already have screens made up, along side screens already been made up I have a recipe card for pigment inks to be easily made up without hassle or messing about. I have used different processes during this I have done a small weaving sample made out of non slip underlay for carpets, when woven together it looked very corally and I really liked the outcome out but it was quite difficult to do with it being quite thick and rubbery so pulling the sticks out was very hard to do. Fabric manipulation is also on the list I took a lesson to sit down and learn about how do it and it was a lot easier that I thought also it was very fun and I enjoy trying out new techniques, then finally and most obviously I did screen printing.

Throughout I've had my fair share of ups and downs my fabric manipulation was very well done and I found everything about it went quite smoothly. With the screen printing it had a lot of ups and downs first the bad part was that one of my screens was the opposite way round so after having to re-expose my screen everything went quite smoothly from that point on wards my screens lined up really well. Also as I mentioned earlier my devoring went quite badly and it didn't turn out as great as I wanted it to. Time mangement was very push and shove with this project as I missed a week with me going to London/Paris with college overall I think if I would have had that extra week there would have been certain things like put extra effort with my sketchbook as I feel that is defiantly the weakest sketchbook I have produced when in fact it should have been the best I have produced yet. On the plus side coming in on my days off to work in the print room have helped me out with my samples vastly, if I not have come in my days off then I wouldn't have found out the problem with my screen and I wouldn't have time to sort it out and my samples would have been catastrophically bad. 

Working with a diary has helped me out massively being able to document my progress and seeing what has been done and what needs to be done has encouraged me to work on things that need to be done on days off and the use of my diary has made me thing about buying/making one for my next project to keep on top of things. Also working with someone outside of college has been really different to thing that i'm actually producing something for someone instead of just doing it for a normal everyday college project it's been really nice thinking that at the end of this project someone is having there work made into a dress and is going to be sold. Overall satisfaction of this is that I could have done a lot better if I would have tried to get more work done in the time given and next time for my final major project I will take into consideration of creating a diary and giving myself tasks and deadlines and sitting down when I get home and telling/writing down what I need to do the next day and in my spare time concentrating on experimenting in my sketchbook and doodling and getting general ideas down. Making notes in there and writing a lot more annotation.  

Presentation

Yesterday Moo came in to see our final products and see what we had produced throughout this project, my presentation went quite well but I found myself getting a bit tongue tied and getting mixed up with words, they seemed to really like my work and seemed overall impressed by the standard of work produced. Joe and Danielle were the winners of the competition and will have there design made into an Avant-Garde dress. 

Well Done Guys!! 

Prints

These are a range of my samples that I produced in the print room and also presented to Moo, I picked these out as I feel that these are some of my strong prints. All of the colours were made and mixed by me and have been documented on a recipe sheet.

Produced on Light Cotton.

Non Dyed Background.

Printed with: Turquoise 4G, Navy Blue 5RF and Blue B.

Produced on Light Cotton.

Non Dyed Background.

Printed with: Turquoise 4G, Blue G3 and Grey BT.

Produced on Habotai Silk Heavy.

Non Dyed Background.

Printed with: Navy Blue 5RF, Grey BT and Turquoise 4G.

Produced on Habotai Silk Heavy.

Non Dyed Background.

Printed with: Turquoise 4G, Minerfoam B (puffbinder) and Grey BT.

Produced on Muslim Cream

Background dyed with Blue MXR watered down. Dried, washed, dried then pressed to make the colour not as dark.

Printed with: Navy Blue 5RF, Minerfoam B (puffbinder) and Black SN-G.

Produced on Habotai Silk Light

Background dyed with Blue MX2G and Blue MXR. Dried, washed, dried then pressed.

Printed with: Violet Blue 2BTL, Grey BT and Turquoise 4G.

Non Dyed Background

Printed with: Turquoise 4G, Black SN-G and Grey BT.

Produced on Habotai Silk Light

Background dyed with Turquoise MXG. Dried, washed, dried then pressed.

Printed with: Violet Blue 2BTL, Grey BT and Turquoise 4G.

London/Paris Trip

On the 3rd of February (my birthday!) I went on a college to trip to London and Paris, whilst in London we visited Camden Market which is way bigger than I expected it to be, I looked at loads of different stands and stalls but whilst I was there I didn't really buy anything but it was amazing to walk round and see all the different things that were on offer. Early next morning we got up and got on the road to get to the Euro-tunnel which was a really strange experience for me, after a really quick trip of just half an hour I was in Paris unfortunately we still had to travel up to 4 hours to get where I was staying. When I finally arrived there it was quite late and it was just all about sitting back and relaxing after a really long day of travelling, the next day we went shopping in Champs Elysee's and briefly visited the Arc De Triomphe it was so surreal and a stunningly beautiful place to be. The next day I visited the Les Art Decoratifs museum which was full of amazing textile clothing, furniture and other outstanding artwork, I took a lot of photos whilst there and picked up some ideas for my FMP, after looking round we then went to the Hard Rock Cafe for some dinner. On the final day we had to get on the Metro where we got separated off from the rest of our group and our tutors so we all had to look out for each other and get off at the right stop, we we emerged from the Metro we were at the foot of the Eiffel Tower which was breathtaking, I couldn't believe I was actually stood there staring at the Eiffel Tower, it was so surreal. We left the foot of the Eiffel Tower and went on a river cruise where on the cruise I learn't some interesting things about the Parisian culture after the river cruise we were at our final stop before we set off home at the Galeries Lafayette. I would love to go back to Paris one day as it was an amazing experience and the city was absolutely beautiful.

Development Sheets

Visual Sheets