Wednesday, 22 January 2014

DIGITAL DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

As my scarf designs are going to be digitally rather than hand printed, there's opportunity for experimentation with a range of colours and compositions though digital design. I have been keen to use my photography within my designs, but have felt that a digitally designed photographic print wouldn't be suited to my illustrative interior collection. Thus, I intend to use them in my scarf collection.  These designs are made of layers of photographs with drawings, using filters on photoshop to create translucent areas, revealing the image underneath. Rather than making two separate scarf designs out of these, I think they would work effectively on one scarf, manoeuvring on photoshop the different elements into different opposite corners, creating a multi directional square scarf.
Photographic elements are often used within garment. Erdem's S/S 2011 collection incorporates both photographic and hand painted layers of florals. The depth of colour and blurred distinction between which parts are photographic and which are drawing makes

LIVE BRIEF

 Humpties' live brief required students to design a new idea for their cylinder foot stool. I liked the idea of working to a circular shape as apposed to working in squares and rectangles thus far. Looking over their collection, I thought it important to produce a design that complimented their products. Although their brief stated that they were open to very different kinds of designs, I thought a graphic looking pattern inspired by my research into tribal body art would compliment their bold prints. However, looking over their foot-stools, I thought they were perhaps lacking in a more painterly texture. I used a batik dying technique to create samples with this effect to give Humpties a new element to their designs. I used simple finger painting to draw the circular pattern which I layered over the batik sample. I liked this idea of combining two basic techniques, used by the Omo Valley people themselves as a part of their every day lives.

The Humpties' live brief required each design to be put into a specific scale, fitting their cushion design. This required me to utilise my photoshop skills, using precise measurements so as to make sure my designs fitted the brief's criteria. This exercise, although challenging, has been highly influencial when designing for my own interiors project. In the past, I have often began designs for the the same collection on very different sized photoshop canvases. The process of doing this live brief has taught me to be more systematic when beginning the design process, making sure I am working to similar scales. It has also made me thing about what scale I want the motifs in my design to be when printed large scale at the  end of the project. This is an extremely important factor. as it communicates to my audience the scale that I intend the prints to be. When I print my final designs, they will all be to scale, with visualisations of my designs in situe, showing more of the repeat.