18th January
During this week we all discussed what team role
we played after completing the set task of Belbin distinguished team roles.
My primary role was the 'coordinator'
Characteristics
Calm, self-confident, controlled.
The distinguishing feature of
Coordinators is their ability to cause others to work to shared goals. Mature, trusting and
confident, they delegate
readily. In interpersonal relations they are quick to spot individual talents and to use
them to pursue group objectives. While Coordinators are not necessarily the cleverest members of
a team, they have a broad and worldly outlook and generally command respect.
Function
Coordinators are useful people to
have in charge of a team with diverse skills and
personal
characteristics. They perform better in dealing with colleagues of near or equal rank than in directing junior subordinates. Their motto might well be "consultation with control" and they usually believe in tackling problems calmly. In some organisations, Coordinators are inclined to clash with Shapers due to their contrasting management styles.
characteristics. They perform better in dealing with colleagues of near or equal rank than in directing junior subordinates. Their motto might well be "consultation with control" and they usually believe in tackling problems calmly. In some organisations, Coordinators are inclined to clash with Shapers due to their contrasting management styles.
Strengths
Welcome all potential
contributors on their merits and without prejudice, but without ever losing sight of the main objective.
Allowable Weaknesses
No pretensions as regards
intellectual or creative ability.
My secondary role was the 'implementer'
Characteristics
Implementers are well
organised, enjoy routine, and have a practical common-sense and self- discipline.
They favour hard work and tackle problems in a systematic fashion. On a wider front they
hold unswerving loyalty to the organisation and are less concerned with the pursuit of self-interest. However, Implementers may find
difficulty in coping with new situations.
Function
Implementers are useful
because of their reliability and capacity for application. They succeed because they have a
sense of what is feasible and relevant. It is said
that many executives
only do the jobs they wish to do and neglect those tasks which they find
distasteful. By contrast,
Implementers will do what needs to be done. Good Implementers often progress to
high management positions by virtue of good organisational skills and
efficiency in dealing with all necessary work.
Strengths
Organising ability,
practical common sense, hard working, self-discipline.
Allowable Weaknesses
Lack of flexibility, resistance to unproven ideas.
I personally did not find these results to be
unexpected and find them to be quite accurate to how I believe I contribute
within a team, I found the allowable weaknesses to be quite insightful, as humans being we do not like to admit we have
any faults and aim to throughout this process be more open to everyone's ideas
and think of ways they could be done instead of saying no if they are not
possible straight away.
20th January
This week we held a group meeting and decided
each person within the group would look at different designers and the concepts
surrounding the designer and create an inspiration board to present to the
group, before we decided on one specific designer carry forward throughout the
rest of the project.
I chose Felder
Felder who showcased their S/S16 collection at London fashion week (London
Fashion Week - FELDER FELDER, 2016) and identified key
themes within the collection to be;
Miami;
§ Hot
pink lips
§ Bubble
gum/ heart shaped glasses
§ Candy
colours
§ The
fair
§ Moschino
§ Andy
Warhol
§ Sun/beachwear/tropical
§ Roller
skates
§ Hot
right now video with Rita Ora
The mood board that was created in inspiration of the collection
The mood board that was created in inspiration of the collection
27th January
ALEX
MULLINS
Alex Mullins is a British menswear designer and working for brands like Alexander McQueen and Jeremy Scott can be seen within his own collections (London Collections Men - Designers A-Z, 2016).
His A/W16' could be interpreted as taking
inspiration from Italian artists, the rising idea that the consumer is
becoming homogenous, wanting to hide your identity, lots of double denim with
quite a raw artisan feel to the collection, almost like it could fit into a
painter workshop with the overalls the feature within the collection as well as
being quite free and almost rebellious.
1st February
Portraiture
Self portraiture is said to have began in the middle ages,
“because it was an age preoccupied with personal salvation and self-scrutiny.”
This has continued to be reasoning for self portraits throughout the years,
sitting for paintings expanding to people taking photos for you, to now with
the introduction of the smart phone allowing you to take your own self portrait
or as it is now known as the 'selfies' (Selfies and the History of Self
Portraiture / artrepublic blog | ArtRepublic, 2016).
·
As self portraiture has already developed this
far, in and ever changing digital environment where will the selfies go next?
Possible outcomes could be the portrait become alive with real time images the
images themselves could be moving or have a 3D element to them. People could actually
take the frame they are being put in and change the shape, use or just remove
it all, to showcase their uniqueness.
Following on from the question of where
portraiture may go although not ethical the concept of Human Zoos was
discovered.
Human
Zoos
European societies would exhibit exotic human "specimens"
shipped back to Paris, London or Berlin for the interest and delectation of the
crowd as time moved on these "human zoos" were visited by hundreds of
thousands of people created as part of the great international trade fairs (Human zoos: When real people were exhibits - BBC
News, 2016). Although completely unethical and not being
suggested at all in being called this or used in its original form used as a
kind of an exhibition or event to show of new pieces of art work instead of painting
on canvas or other material art could be recreated with real life with the
portraits that people once sat for not being hung up on a wall but actually
have the person stand there to be marvelled at in the way that many people do
when visiting galleries and exhibtions.
I also began looking at imagery to gain further
inspiration of the collection looking at different types of portraiture,
artists, contact sheets. These can be found on the link to the Pinterest board
below.
From
picking out the images I had chosen there was a strong theme of portraiture
that had been developed and expanded during post production to manipulate the
images- the images also had a touch of surrealism with one of my favourite
images found below.
The Consumer
The Alex Mullins consumer can be seen visually
within this consumer mood board, with the demographic classed as;
Male.
ABC1.
Above
average income.
Non
married.
Lives
in a highly populated urban areas.
Eccentric, creative and impulsive.
3rd February
Following on from this week's session, having
finalised the designer we were using I began to experiment with different types
of typography that could be used. Taking inspiration from his current
typography and what I felt the collection represented to create new styles of
typography.
Black paint stripes
Paint brushes
Ink stains of finger prints
6th February
Following on from the previous weeks were we
identified as a group the key themes and concepts of the collection, I visited the
peoples history museum .
The concept within was the earlier stages of the
portrait which fitted in really well with the concept of our campaign. It
showed how images had developed and presented case studies and examples of why
these images were taken.
It also showed how the equipment used had
improved throughout the years making it more accessible for people to document
their own lives whilst also choosing what they wanted to be document.
12th February
Following on from the primary and secondary
research I had conducted there were two artists whose work I really liked, and
wanted to recreate or at least take inspiration from creating and developing
our digital campaign.
CARL
MELEGARI
Following my visit to the Artzu gallery, this
artists really stood out for me. Although they are paintings not images, I love that
from a distance they look like normal paintings but the closer you get
to them you can see that the features are almost melting. On closer inspection
the amount of painted used produces a 3D effect.
DOUGLAS
COUPLAND
The way the collection of images are set up like
and exhibition to show peoples portraits as well as the body to space ratio of
the images.
The post
manipulation of the images
The way the faces are hidden to shield the
identities of the person in question using paint.
The incorporation of colours into the
images that have a fairly neutral
background, on top of images.
These artists influenced what images I brought forward in wanting to be put into our formative assessment.
These artists influenced what images I brought forward in wanting to be put into our formative assessment.
15th February
All team members uploaded their images to drop
box then Lauren, Allana and I created our formative assessment board ready for
submission. We used illustrator and used
a combination of portrait images, photos
that had been manipulated in post production that had a surrealism influence on
them and the actual photo frames super imposed onto them.
16th February
Lauren, Allana and I attended the Hollings
faculty's big issues conference on
luxury, during the morning the key points that were significant to Alex
Mullins brand and could influence our campaign were ;
- 45% of luxury shoppers are made up of
millennials
- Luxury is now wanting to be seen as an
exclusive experience
- Designers are now looking for really
innovative ways to display their collections rather than produce an constant
stream of fashion shows.
- The luxury consumer is now wanting pieces that
are more genderless, season less and durable.
23rd February
With fashion month being held at the moment I
focused my research around the new collections, to give our digital campaign
links within the industry context and how this can be relevant to this campaign
and what key trends could be applicable to Alex Mullins collection. Looking
across all market levels the concept of designs being gender neutral and the
individual being classed rather than social norms seems to be a rising trend.
Vivienne
Westwood has
been pioneering in her collections that aim to blur the line between menswear and womenswear with this
collection being no different (Sharkey, 2015).
Taking a unisex approach in the designs of the clothing and also the
presentation of the designs, models were interchangeable with male and females
having slate grey nails acrylic nails. Similarly with the make-up rather than
conforming to gender norms the focus was “all about the guys and girls as
individuals” (Featured Writer: Gender Blending
Beauty, 2016). Showing how this concept is beginning to trickle down
through the market levels is
Zara a key trend focused leader in the mid market high street
brands had joined the gender blending movement, releasing a capsule collection
modelled by both male and female models (Sharkey,
2016). Indicate the significant and importance this
movement has had on the fashion industry and the importance it carries- with
Zara now adopting this approach many other retailers will certainly follow.
Digital
output we could use;
- Following on with looking at what is happening
within the industry, when thinking of digital outputs we could use Vogue have
just launched a Whatsapp group (Arthur and Arthur, 2016), it allows selected
recipients to be updated on industry and breaking news.
This would allow Alex Mullins to increase brand
awareness, however I think it would only benefit established brands like Vogue
or the big luxury houses like Chanel or Louis Vuitton as they already have the
consumer base who would want to be updated constantly on their news. However
there may be other platforms that would
be more appropriate for this specific consumer we could use to share brand and
industry news such as a blog on the website or Snapchat to begin building these
crucial relationships with the consumers.
- At the start of the year snap chat became a
favoured social media channel with many top brands- most notable Burberry who
launched the first ever 24 hour fashion campaign (Sorin, 2015).
However for a brand like Alex Mullins funding to
display the brand at such a high platform would cost well into the hundreds of
thousands and would not be applicable, however something which could be used
and would like well with our specific concepts of frames and breaking out of
the mould would able to use a filter that could be shown for the day which
included the brand logo. This would increase brand awareness without the same
high price tag of actually featuring a story on the platform.
Street Casting:
We aimed to use an element of street casting in
our photo shoot due to the nature of the shoot we wanted a mixture of different
age groups, genders and ethnicity to be reflected in our images . However we did not pick a good time or date as going
on a Saturday lunch time the age group within the northern quarter was
generally over 30 males and female couples or groups of men out drinking- so we
did not want to approach these,
We were however able to gain a mixture of models
all with very different and unique looks from our own contacts as well as a
post on a Manchester based model wanted facebook page were we just offered to pay
their transport costs.
26th February
In preparation for the photo shoot that had been
planned for next week we each were assigned roles for the day that reflected
our Belbin team roles and our strengths and weakness- my role was creative
director.
Taking inspiration from all that I had collected
and research in the last few weeks along with what was discussed in team
meetings, I created a series of boards and images to provide inspirations and
influences to the model so that the correct images and feel could be produced
on the day.
29th February
Prior to the photo shoot a playlist was created to
make the models feel more relaxed so the photos would more natural, it would also create the correct atmosphere
and feel on set that we want to portray in our photos.
Further preparation for our photo shoot including the idea we has as a group to use plain white t-shirts and decorate them with what we felt reflected the Alex Mullins collection.
For my t-shirt I decided to cut the edges as the
collection itself is very raw lots of jagged edges and fraying material.
My inspiration for changing his logo followed on
from previous experiments with the typography, and I went with the finger
prints option as it is a way of showing your identity and is also unique to
each person. Which was in keeping with the themes we had identified being
gender and hidden identity, different words of these definitions were then
written all over the t-shirts.
Before After
3rd March
Following the photo shoot due to the vast amount
of images that had been generated we all a group just looked over the images
and agreed that to reflect the collection- which we perceived to be quite raw
and natural that editing would be minimal and images mainly be in black and
white.
These were a selection of my favourite images
from the shoot.
4th March
In our group session today we reviewed the
images from our shoot, creating contact sheets of our favourites and the images
that came out the best. We then broke these down further into collections of
images of each of the models, and then grouped these in either portrait or
landscapes to create a story.
We decided on using only two out of the five
models that we had
The final images were then used to create a
combination of a contact sheet.
Following on from individual research we then
decided on what combination of outputs should be used throughout our digital campaign,
with the vast amount of images we had generated we wanted to display these so
chose a conceptual magazine for us to display our favourite images. A behind
the scenes video was used to showcases the behind the scenes of our photo shoot
and compliments the conceptual magazine.
Linking to our secondary research we used GIFS
to show how the portrait may continue to develop from a selfies to a moving
image.
7th March
Having created contact sheets of images and
narrowing them down we then began to do very minimal editing of the images and
decide which images and the order they would be used within the conceptual
magazine. Lauren began making a the template on in design, Katie edited the
images and Allana and I matched the images on the contact sheets up to the
numbers on the camera so the correct images were selected for the conceptual
magazine.
Due to lack of computers available we then
switched from this to begin making the behind the scenes video we just began
importing the clips and seeing which could be used and then cutting and placing
into some sort of sequence.
As we progressed through making the video we
thought of extra ideas that could be incorporated throughout such as voice
over's, incorporating colours and music . However we agreed this needed to be
thought out more and prepared in advance
so all went off over the next few days to prepare and research elements that
could be included within our behind the scenes video.
8th March
Similarly to the photo shoot music is key to
conveying the mood and concept that the campaign is portraying so a selection
of music was chosen to feature in the background of the behind the scenes
video.
As a group we wanted something with very little
words, a strong beat throughout, that fell into the house/techno genre of
music.
The
selection I chose was;
Kidnap
Kid- Animaux
Hot
since 82- Restless
Felon,
Kaleem Taylor- Isla (Radio Edit)
Rudimental-
Rumour Mill
9th March
In preparation for our next meeting to ensure we
are as productive as can be, the clips and videos from behind the scenes of our
shoot were uploaded onto drop box and a story board of what should be included
was made to give some direction of what should be included- although this is
not restricted to just these clips with
the other girls also creating storyboards so we can combine and share ideas to
create the best behind the scenes video.
I personally took inspiration from the behind
the scene films of #prisoneroffashion and chrysalide. From both of these I
liked..
The distorted sections of the film were it
seemed to flick on one image.
The
way it showed actual images that were created from the shoot.
The behind the scenes of
actually seeing the people that helped create the shoot.
The close ups of the make and the
building and surrounding areas.
With
these clips available on the links below.
My own storyboard
10th March
Katie and I continued with the conceptual
magazine adding different paint effects and frames onto the pre selected images
as well as experimenting with the layout colours being used.
Allana and Lauren created GIFS on Photoshop
using a selection of photo booth images that has previously been selected, similarly
to the conceptual magazine that was being created pastel shades and the Alex
Mullins logo featured throughout.
After each page or GIF was created we asked all
team members what they thought of what had been created and everyone voiced
their honest opinions and whether certain things should be moved, made bigger,
smaller, quicker or a different colour. This was not however seen as a
criticism as everyone is working towards the end goal of producing a really
good piece of work with everyone's ideas being considered, there is certain
examples were ideas were tested but did not work so we reverted back to the
original, but unlike other projects this was very experimental and we tested
different ideas and methods to see which worked the best.
11th March
Today's main focus was on creating the behind
the scenes video, and continuing with the conceptual magazine.
After discussing what had previously been
created we and listening to the music options, we chose London baby by Michael
Woods and voice over clips deciding on using just one female and two short male
voice clips to be used within the video. With the conceptual magazine we all
agreed it needed to be more creative and colourful to be in keeping with the
brand image, other suggestions also including remove actual frames being used
and not having everything so central.
Lauren and I began creating and editing the
film, whilst Katie and Allana continued with the conceptual magazine.
We then swapped over as people began to get
tired to keep momentum going and bring new ideas into the outputs, towards the
end we had very nearly met our end goal of completing both outputs however
after 7 or more hours straight staring at a screen we decided to call it a day
and come back to finish up to ensure it was of the highest quality, whilst also
giving us the opportunity to review what we had created.
14th March
On reflection over the weekend as well as
showing it to other people such as housemates, boyfriends and friend we decided
there were additional changes we could make to the video to make it even
better. However we found we were unable to open the original video, so
following advice and help from Zoe we used the original to match up to the
story and timing and created a the newer video adding in the ideas we had
thought up over the weekend as well as using the additional tools and effects
Zoe had showed us to improve our video in final cut pro.
Taking advantage of all group member technical
strengths we once again split up into smaller groups, as we found this to be
productive the previous week, not only time wise but also for the quality of
work produced as everyone is able to contribute to the piece of work being
created and fresh eyes on the piece produced even more ideas and introduced
more tools to push the work even further.
Allana, Lauren and I created the second version
of the film, while Katie finalised all the images, effects and text within the
conceptual magazine and Rebecca created a variety of snap chat filters with
Katie's help after she had completed the conceptual magazine.
15th March
Having managed our
time well as a group we were able to experiment with other outputs that would
be suitable within our digital campaign, that would not only be in keeping with the
brand but appeal to the consumer. We chose an app as this relates to out
specific consumer group, with mobile
web access expected to surpass all electronic devices combined by 2018 (WGSN,
2016), Combined
with the information gained at the Big issue conference that highlighted the
fact the more luxury consumers are expecting and exclusive experience,
explaining why personalisation is key
becoming to the luxury consumer (Firth,
2016).
Providing the reasoning for why an app would be
a logical progression for Alex Mullins to appeal to his consumers.
We created mock ups of how this would look on
illustrator, incorporating how his official website looks- very minimal black
and white with the logo very prominent on the home page as well as
incorporating the pastel paint work that features throughout our digital
campaign- this creates a consistent and really strong brand image. After we
created the homepage, to be productive with our time we split up into two
groups to create additional pages. A shopping page which resembled tinder
giving consumers the option to 'basket' or 'bin' items from the collection, and
an entertainment page which featured the Snapchat frames that had been created
the day before.
16th March
After we had created all our outputs with a
strong brand image with similarities incorporated into each one we wanted to do
the same with our logbook, choosing blogger as our platform so the information
was easy to access. We downloaded a really simplistic and easy layout similar
to the Alex Mullins website, and added our own mark on it incorporating pastel
colours throughout as well as a slide show banner at the top of the blog to
showcase some of the photo booth images from our photo shoot that were not used
within the conceptual magazine or GIFS that were created.
17th March
Linking back to the team roles that were brought
to light in the Belbin task in the first week of this assignment, I was given
to role of introducing our campaign when presenting. With these roles and
characteristics being very similar to the team roles I naturally adopted and
undertook, being an implementer and coordinator I have an in depth and detailed
knowledge of every aspect of the journey, we as a team have been on creating
this digital campaign. I felt confident in being able to introduce and explain
the brand, the inspiration and elements we had got from his A/W16' collection
and how we had brought this forward with our new digital campaign.
