Month: July 2020

I decided to get on and create the lookbook, and thought about some key decisions throughout which I will demonstrate below.

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So I worked on the first few pages of my lookbook which I think was vital to get my branding into it, which is why I put my logo and my brand colours and pattern on the front cover. The green and pink foliage design is one that I use for headers on my professional websites, and on my business cards and other promotional material too. I also wanted to start adding some of my theme into it, so the dormouse header I think works well here, still keeping with the branding colours. I chose a blender design behind the collection statement, as it is a subtle way to introduce the collection as it begins.

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The above is an example of a page each from the dormouse, hare and red squirrel collection, I used some coloured boxes on the pages to separate the collections from each other a little using one of their key colours. This helps to identify the secondary and blenders with their hero page I think. I considered whether to lay it out with the heros all together, then all the secondaries, then blenders, but I think the way I decided, showing each animal collection one after each other works well and I think it better shows the relationship between the heroes and the coordinating patterns, but still allows me to show some colourways that work across the whole collection, such as the dots blenders.

I like the use of the boxes, I think the plain white may have been too plain, so I think they do add something extra to the page without crowding it too much, and frames the patterns better too.

Overall, I am pleased with how my lookbook is going, once completed I plan to send it out to a few of my textiles friends, and some friends and family outside of the industry to get some feedback and opinions about it which I think is important for readability and professionalism, as well as meeting the marking criteria.

I went back over the briefs and what I could find as well when I was looking for some guidance on the lookbook, I was worried initially because of my Illustrator and Adobe Acrobat problems, however I decided this could be solved by completing my lookbook on Photoshop and automating a PDF document. I decided to use A4 pages for the covers front and back, and then an A3 sheet on landscape to create my double page spreads for the actual content of the book.

I knew I wanted my lookbook to show me as a developed designer, and also my conscious thinking towards the conservation and awareness aspect of my collection. I looked at some checklists and put together my own checklist of what I wanted to put into my lookbook.

– Introduction

– Index

– About Me

– Collection Statement

-My Unique Selling Point

– Each Collection

– Mockups

– Linesheets

– Contact Details

So with this in mind, I looked at my patterns and the colourways etc, and started thinking about how many things I could get onto each page. With my research in mind, I saw how the layouts can make a good difference, and while I would love to just have whole page images, I do not think this is possible with the amount of patterns I would be showing.

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I made a plan of pages and what would be on each one in accordance to my new pattern boards I had created, I thought this would help me keep on track with colourways and everything too.

I also drew out some layouts for the type of pages I wanted to try, for example the main placement design has to be bigger, then the variations of the different animals for that style of placement will be a little smaller to show off the largest one as the main one in the collection.

I thought next I just needed to get into it and adapt it as I am going, some things look good in my head or on paper and I think until you actually do it, it can clash in weird ways and make things too busy or jarring.

I started hearing about lookbooks in second year, when first year students in textiles were doing them, I knew vaguely what it was but never really thought about making my own. It seems like quite a daunting task, a large book showcasing all my patterns and mockups, but also something that could be interesting to keep and put on my website to show others how my graduate collection came together.

I decided I wanted my lookbook to show me as a designer, and sell the unique aspect of my collection, being about the declining UK species. I decided to explore a couple of lookbooks in terms of layouts too to see what kind of thing I need to do.

Unfortunately the lookbooks that I have found online will not embed here, I tried surface pattern lookbooks as I thought fashion ones were a little different. The first one I came across was quite an attractive collection of print designs for fashion I believe it was, the layout I would say was very simple, but effective, usually one or two images to a double page, and mostly full of mockups that really showed the patterns, although for my lookbook, I do not think this will work. The pattern collection is large and including some variations on the placements and colourways on the secondary and blenders to show, there is a large number of patterns in the collection to fit into a book, and I would not want this to be so large that it would be boring to flick through. I want to come up with layouts that are interesting enough with two, three, even four designs to a page. I think the flat patterns will work well showing the collections grouped together, and also the mockups grouped together afterwards, as some could contain patterns from a mix of collections.

I found some examples of different types of lookbooks, from photography and products, to fashion in both men and women styles. Above shows quite a quirky fashion example, including words. I really like the idea of the faded coloured boxes, these could be used great for adding text and showing a separation between the four mini collections too, which I think is important. If you were to randomly flick to a page in it, you could notice the background colour, and then easily see the hero page also has that colour on the background.

I think ideally I would like to explore some typography tutorials too as I think this could be helpful to me, surface pattern design is not just pretty textiles, it is a graphic design and sometimes this will include more graphic elements, such as typography, layouts and lookbooks. Skillshare offers a range of tutorials so I will probably have a look on there, my last one I watched told me about contrasting fonts, using a bold, graphic design firstly for headings and titles, then a smaller, plainer font to contrast this which I think is really important to give it that professional look.

Using faded designs and backgrounds I think is great for adding an effective bit of branding and style into it, this is something I have seen on the more quirky lookbooks that are not just plain images and maybe a caption.

I love this lookbook for the dark contrast with the white, I think this is really important to have contrast, and I think I will try and take this away, even if it is using dark text against white or faded backgrounds. I also like how they were able to get a range of images on each page, so this being an A4 lookbook, the pages will actually be quite big and I think this will be good for viewing the patterns and not forcing them to be as big as they could be, making them fit nicer with the pages.

So I think my next step is to start planning out the lookbook on paper, knowing exactly what I want to get on each page in what order especially, then maybe sketch out some layouts that make sense and I think just get into doing it and trying things out to see what they look like.

After my critical look at the pattern boards I created from my designs, I had a chance to evaluate them and realised what I wanted to change, whether it was as simple as a colourway or scale, but also noticing too many similarities sometimes and changing it up with something a little different.

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So the left one is the old board, and the right is the newer version. These actually look very similar because I was quite happy with the designs that I was producing and putting together here, but I did notice a few things. The placement design was correct for this board, but I changed the size of the dots behind the dormouse which is more consistent now with the other animals in this placement style, I think this does look better for the front of a notebook or cushion like I wanted.

The secondaries I thought had a good background colour spread, but they were all showing mushrooms. I changed one of these to a berry design, and then changed the colourway of the bottom pattern to avoid too much pink. I thin the design at the bottom works well for both pink and green so I will put both colourways into my lookbook. Finally I looked closely at scale for the blenders and I think it has made more of a difference, I think it changes it from a busy pattern to more of a texture sometimes, which makes it look much more like a blender.

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Again older board on the left, and newer on the right. I decided to put a different type of placement design on each board, so the hare represents the bottom corner placement. The middle placement from the first board will be shown as a variation of the middle placement, on the dormouse placement page in my lookbook. I looked at scale on my secondaries, showing more of the hares and brought the scale of the ferns up a little. With the blenders, I have brought the mushroom one down in scale, and I just did not like the leaf repeat, so I created a new one, that was more sparse and spread out.

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The old design on the left has a number of designs on it, I think my hedgehog collection was the biggest and had a lot of different designs that I did not use and edited down too. The right shows the updated board, using the top corner placement and the green hero. I swapped the bottom secondary on the old board to a smaller scale and made it a blender instead, which I think works because of its scale and the two colours. I added a berry design as the secondaries were populated by leaves, a similar problem to the Dormouse having all the secondaries as mushrooms. I changed the colourway of the top blender to avoid a majority pink background collection with the blenders. I also adjusted the scales on the linear leaves and the new sycamore blender from the secondary column previously.

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The old board on the left here shows the middle placement which will now be shown with the dormouse placement as that is the board the placement style is represented on, for this one I switched to the header design, which I think is quite dynamic for the squirrel as they symmetrically jump away from each other with their nuts. This allowed me to show a little more of the heroes here. I liked my top two secondaries, the middle one has a lot of variation on colourways and alternatives too. I did not like the bottom secondary design, I just did not love it and noticed all three of the secondary were tossed. So I decided to swap this with this new linear design with the yellow foliage. I adjusted the scales on the top two blenders here and replaced the third one as I just did not like it, I think there were too many colours in it for the blender, so I swapped it with this simple nuts repeat which works well with the theme.

Overall I think these are far better designs now and work well as collections, I am excited to get started on the lookbook and put these together in a more professional context.

I decided that since some time has passed now since I finished my patterns, I would like to go back over them with fresh eyes and try and see any problems with them. I remember in Consultancy, I would create the pattern board, show it to Helen, and she would make comments to improve it, and this process continued which I think was a massive help for me understand exactly what I had to do to improve my work and meet criteria.

So with scale and colour in mind, I went back over my pattern boards, I know some things I already wanted to change, such as changing the placement on each pattern board to a different one, so I was able to show more diversity in my collection. I also considered this with my blenders, I have blenders using dots for every little collection but only showing that on the one board with a range of colourways allows room on the other collection boards for a different style of simple blender, the dormouse for example using squiggles from the mushrooms, the hedgehog using small sycamore leaves etc.

So as shown here, I decided I was happy with the hero design and the half drop style hedgehog secondary, although I think I need to reposition it, and with this one I need to put the top corner placement of the hedgehog on this board instead of the header placement, as the header placement will be displayed on the squirrel board instead.

I was happy with two of the middle secondaries, I have been using these throughout the mockups I have started creating too, the bottom one however does seem a step down, but not quite a blender, I might discuss leaving this in but adding another secondary design as I think they all represent leaves, instead of the berries and other things.

I think the blenders, the top one is very unique within the collection but I think there is too much pink in the backgrounds here so I think reversing the pink and the green in the top blender will help that. I think the last blender may need to be a little bit of a smaller scale to it, so I think this will be useful to make it look more like a blender too.

The next one is the red squirrel collection, I said again here I was happy with the hero design but the placement design needed to be changed to the header placement design and actually change it to a yellow and blue design, to differ it more from the hedgehog patterns, I was happy with the secondaries as they differ in scale and colour, I was just unsure whether it matter that they were all tossed, maybe the middle and bottom one could have been the same pattern just coloured different and slightly scaled up, so maybe I could look into a different secondary design for this one here, as I do not like the blue and yellow one anyway.

The blenders I said I was happy with the dots, I have colourways for this one that covers the whole collection too. The top two I said could use a smaller scale I think, and the third one down I think maybe needs less colours, or to switch to a blender I created using the nuts designs.

The dormouse collection was the first I created, and the mushrooms were made first out of all of the patterns. The placement design is right here but I discussed earlier that I need to alter the size of the dots a little. I am happy with the hero again but the secondary designs do all contain mushrooms, although I do like the variety of background colours. I do have a nice berry design that I could use instead I think, so maybe use that as a pink background, and then the bottom secondary just with a green background instead.

My notes for the blenders were to try a slightly smaller scale for the three of them as I think it would be more effective.

The placement design is the corner one here and I think this is quite effective and interesting, I am happy with the hero design, but the secondaries I think the top one could be altered to a different background colour and a slightly smaller scale to show a few more of the hares within it. I think I am happy with the other two and one of the blenders, however I think a smaller scale on the mushroom will show it as a more textured appearance. The middle one was originally green leaves, and I just think it looked a little too much like a cannabis leaf at a quick glance, so I changed the colour of this, but I just do not think it goes very well with the collection as a whole. I thought about a tossed design but then it could just look more like the secondary, so maybe trying blue leaves on a white background or something on a smaller scale.

So the next step will be to make these changes, and I think then I would be in a good place to put them together and see how they all look as a collection, and maybe ask around for some opinions on further improvements.