In September I was set the task of redesigning the current outdated template for posters and e-flyers distributed in the run-up and duration of the Coterie event held during New York Fashion Week. Coterie is an international tradeshow event which showcases up-and-coming women's fashion retailers, with similar events held across America in Atlanta, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The purpose of Forever Unique's attendance at the event is to showcase our upcoming collection to the American wholesale market, which makes up a large segment of the business. In this case, the event was showcasing our brand new and not-yet-released SS18 collection.
I worked with the branding and design teams to select bestselling styles to feature on the posters and worked from the past template to use the existing information of the event. I used Photoshop and InDesign to reach the final outcome which are two skills I have enhanced significantly during my time at Forever Unique. It gives me a lot of satisfaction that thousands of people have seen my work, although to them it will obviously be quite insignificant as I'm sure guests attending the tradeshow will have been inundated with similar posters from a number of other fashion and occasionwear retailers throughout the duration of the event! In terms of the process of designing these posters, I felt quite restricted by unrealistic time pressures and a heavy weight of my other responsibilities which meant that I wasn't able to develop my creative technique or advance my skills as much as I would have liked. In retrospect - and given more time to complete the task - I would have experimented with cutting the model images out and adjusting the background colour as I do feel that although the plain white background was easier to work with, it is quite bland and forgettable. Something that would have benefitted me during this task would have been to research into what marketing materials the direct competitors of Forever Unique and other brands present at this event have used in the past. I also would have developed the positioning and alignment of the text more, in order to draw more attention to the date of the event in particular.
In an ideal world, I would have used really impressive campaign images of the collection which would have immediately gained a lot of public attention. However, at the time of the event we as a Creative team had not yet shot the SS18 collection as a campaign so I unfortunately only had the e-commerce shots to work with. While this may be a recurring issue at a lot of fashion retailers, I can only speak from my experience specifically at Forever Unique in saying that there are often a lot of flaws in the infrastructure of the yearly calendar whereby marketing deadlines aren't aligned with the necessary shoot which could really benefit the effect of the materials and ultimately, propel the status of the brand. I think that these problems are mostly caused by poor communication from international branches of the business to the UK HQ and within the UK HQ, between and within different departments.
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