Weekly Round Up: Seven

Last week was Creative Exchange Week where my main focuses were:

• Researching for all examples of writing in Fashion Writing & the Industry
• Writing an introductory descriptive piece for my brand handbook
• Experimenting with Adobe Photoshop to work towards creating advertising and product graphics for the handbook
• Researching into the Burberry Makers House exhibition
• Documenting my trip to London to visit the exhibition
• Continuing to organise my lookbook project and getting everything together for Friday 10th March, our shoot day

Tiffany and Linda were unavailable to take us for Trend as usual on Tuesday morning, which instead became an unsupervised session. I spent the morning in the library working on Fashion Writing by finalising my media list. Then I met with my handbook/lookbook group in the early afternoon where we finalised our logo and began to make alternatives for other marketing/advertorial uses by experimenting with colours and symbols. We reviewed the work that we had agreed to complete individually over Creative Exchange Week and those of us who had work to show read it aloud and gave/received feedback. In the afternoon, Megan was unable to visit as arranged due to work commitments so Frankie, a fashion researcher at the University of Huddersfield, took us for a session on writing product copies which she had past experience in. 

On Wednesday we met for a tutorial with Charlie where we discussed our progress which included:

• Showing her our finalised logos
• Discussing changes in photographers
• Showing her test shots which we took on the site of our location 
• Discussing the logistics of the day of the shoot 
• Discussing our options in terms of hiring out a studio/lighting
• Discussing our allocation of roles
• Getting suggestions on our next steps which ultimately rely on beginning to layout the lookbook design

On Thursday we met for a tutorial with Stephen where we discussed our progress again, including:

• Justifying our brand and some small changes in direction, including its name
• Making adjustments to our logo by considering more in-depth elements of its use and how it will variate on different products
• Getting feedback on our written work for the handbook so far
• Discussing our target customer and how Fauna caters for her

After our group tutorial we met to decide on our next steps, which involve finalising our written work so that we can meet next Tuesday to begin layout of the handbook and begin to develop our graphics. I also attended an individual tutorial with Stephen later on where I showed him the progress I've made with my Critical Journal and he read through a few of my most recent posts. We briefly discussed placements and an interview I had; I had extremely mixed feelings about the company and its professionalism after my over-the-phone interview and it was useful to speak to him about my doubts. We discussed the Trend module as this is the area where I feel I have made least progress so far. I showed him my moodboard which I redesigned during Creative Exchange Week to physically reflect the characteristics of the trend better and he gave me prompts in which to progress further in accordance with the brief. Our reps for the course gave us feedback from tutors; Charlie will be posting past examples of trend booklets on Unilearn which should be useful to some extent in helping to move on. 

On Friday I spent the day working on Fashion Writing by completing my industry feature article for Drapers magazine and developing/annotating my research folder. I have been using BRAD to get access to circulation figures and looking at each publication's media kit to find out readership figures and target audience statistics. I also made contact with the Pigeons & Peacocks Media and Communications Manager to make enquiries as this information was not available after searching online.