DESIGNERS GUILD

Looking over my two collections, (accessories and interiors), I see both working effectively together in a high end company such as Designers Guild. Their Royal Collection incorporates rich, deep colours with an often botanical theme. Inspired by the interiors of the Royal residences, Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, the elegant collection offers a decadent range of weaves and prints incorporating both traditional and digital texhniques.

As well as their in house designers, the company sells collections created by renowned fashion designers including Christian Lacroix, Ralph Lauren and William Yeoward. Lacroix' collections features a range of diverse and captivating designs reminiscent of his innovative, costume-like fashion designs . This is how I see my own interior collections working. While each design is very different from the last, they work together effectively, with similarities only in their colours.

Companies such as Designers Guild will often exhibit the designs in showrooms for customers to view and buy through interior designers, rather than having direct contact with the customers themselves.

 I see myself working as an in house designer in a high end interiors company such as designer's guild. I've developed a varied range of drawing techniques which I feel would be beneficial to a company producing eccentric, contemporary collections. 

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. 

DEVELOPMENT OF MAJOR INTO MINOR PROJECT

Experimenting with mark-making, I have started to produce a more abstract collection of drawings inspired by exotic florals. My inspiration stemmed predominantly from fine art painters who's use of colour give their paintings a sense of energy and movement.

Focussing on colour, composition and texture, I am interested in the idea of producing floral drawings that aren't necessarily recognisable as flowers. I feel that this expressive approach to drawing would compliment the more motif based collection that I have been working on thus far. Initially, I intended the drawings to add to my interior collection, viewing them as a development in my major project. However, after considering them as digitally printed fabrics for interiors, I feel that actually the designs would lend themselves well to light weight silk scarves. Thus, I have been thinking about producing a range of silk scarves as a minor project. 

I came to the decision to create fashion accessory designs as I wanted to have variety within my portfolio, demonstrating a knowledge of contemporary fashion as well as interior designs. Furthermore, I felt that my drawing had developed into a more expressive, abstract style, more suited to a fashion placement print, rather than lending themselves to a repeat for interiors.

I tried to approach my drawings in a way which would allow me to easily translate them onto scarves. Thus, I used my sketchbook to map out the colours and compositions, so the drawings were designs in themselves. 

Research into high end fashion designers and retail companies has given me an interesting insight into the design of silk scarves. The designs are often very different; however, always in keeping with the designer's /companies trademark style. For example, Liberty London scarves, with a variety of floral patterns, almost all have the same proportion of borders around the edges. This is something I want to incorporate into my own scarf designs. Each designs will include very different elements and motifs, but will be tied together as a collection through their borders and finishing. 

FASHION VS INTERIORS

Erik Madigan Heck photography or Mary Katrantzou has inspired me to think about developing my designs into a fashion context as a minor project. In this shoot, the floral print on the garment often mimics that of the wall behind the model. The exotic depth of colour brings the image alive. These images also inspire me to thing about how, in the future, I could incorporate fashion photography into my practice. I see no reason why fashion and interiors can't work hand in hand in their contemporary floral print designs. I would be interesting, in unit x, to experiment with photography, playing with how fashion and interior prints can be showcased in a combination of the two. 

EXPRESSIVE DRAWING

Changing the way I approach drawing has become a key turning point within this project. In the past, I have stuck to a very precise, illustrative style, rarely changing the scale or marks that I make. Working outside of my sketchbook on a larger scale has allowed me to make bolder, more expressive marks with larger tools. I have also begun using unconventional drawing tools such as a bleach spray container and pieces of wood to create a variety of textures within my drawings

BOTANIC PHOTOGRAPHY

 A visit to Kew Gardens allowed me the opportunity to use photography as a means of development. Through this method, I tested compositional ideas that I would later be able to translate into drawing. As well as this, I was able to gather more information at a stage in the project where I feel I have discovered what it is about florals that attract me. I photographed these strange looking plants with particular interest in their texture, pattern and form.

I'm really interested in the idea of creating floral designs that don't necessarily look like florals.