Extended Practice

I think that this was definitely my favourite brief of the year. Although it was completely different to anything I usually do or have done, the concept for the work reflected some of my own passions and interests which made the brief so much more enjoyable.

Collaborating with J’nae was really fun, as we both have a lot of interests in common and I think that we worked well as a team. J’nae worked really hard on the brief and pushed me to exceed my expectations and experiment with a variety of different materials and techniques that I wouldn’t usually consider. For example, I have never used the lasercutter for any of my briefs before, but realised how useful that machine is and how many things I could have done in the past with it.

I haven’t ever organised or held a photoshoot before and although it was stressful, the end result was really worthwhile and I had a lot of fun on the day of the shoot. Working with professionals and models was very experiential and made me a lot more confident when talking to other creatives. I developed upon my professional and organisational skills through the planning of the shoot and learnt a lot about the fashion industry and possibilities for future endeavours in terms of creative briefs and possible career paths.

I developed upon a variety of skillsets from working on this brief. I learnt how to use some new tools on Illustrator and how to use lasercutting and vinyl properly. I also learnt a lot about managing my time and how easily you can run out of time.

The only real issue we had with this brief was working with Joe Pickering, the photographer. Although he was really fun to work with and had loads of ideas for the shoot, he promised us a quick turn around time for the photos so that we could get to work with our lookbook and get it printed in time for submission. However, it took Joe roughly two weeks to get the photos back to us, so we were just left waiting for them and had to put the rest of the designing on hold as the lookbook needed these photographs in order to figure out layout, colour, typography, etc. This was extremely stressful and both J’nae and me had a hard time not telling him off about it and staying professional. Fortunately, we kept our cool and he pulled through in the end. However, he hadn’t done much editing to the photos, which meant that I had to spend a day editing them on Photoshop, which ate out of our time even more.

Although we didn’t entirely finish our lookbook due to time constraints, we have both agreed to revisit this brief after hand in and complete the lookbook. We also plan to extend upon the brief and incorporate web design and social media in order to make the brand feel more complete and well rounded for our portfolios.

Overall this brief was definitely something to look back on and be proud of. I would love to work with J’nae again in the future, as I think that our different design styles and skills compliment one another and we can pull off a lot of exciting work together!