#fcpreflections

As part of my birthday present me and my parents took a trip down to London for a few days. The main reason for this trip was to visit the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition. A once in a life time opportunity to see a large selection of some one McQueen’s best and most noted work. It was the most incredible exhibition, and I was blown away from the moment I walked in to the moment I left. 

McQueen’s pieces were absolutely breath taking, he was a crazy genius of epic yet perfect proportions who took the fashion world by storm! But not only were the collections breath taking; the staging, visuals and set designs were too. The curators and designers of the exhibition flawlessly created the perfect backdrop for McQueen’s pieces.        

First year is over and finished and it’s time to Look Back again.

At the end of our first module in February I created one of these posts including a stop start continue of the next steps that I felt I needed to take to improve and move forward in the next module.  My module 1, stop, start, continue looked like this; - 

Start being more confident in my ideas.

Start to learn how to use Indesign.

Start going to the library more, as it was an environment that I worked well in.

Stop doubting my abilities.

Stop only reading half of the assigned books.

Continue blogging regularly.

Continue using Pinterest.

Continue going to all my lectures and seminars.

Continue developing my photoshop skills.

Looking over this list now I feel that I was able to use the ideas about my abilities in it to enable and further my progression. I am now more confident with Indesign, and have used the library alot more. I blogged regularly during the second module to help create a space to be able to document my ideas and progression. I have also continued to  develop my photoshop skills to help both individual and group projects.  

Looking through my feedback from both modules has helped me to further pinpoint my strengths, weaknesses, likes and areas of improvement. 

I feel that sometimes we put our strengths and likes together, when they can often be completely separate things, if not sometimes similar. I think that my strengths are; writing, layout, social media, Photoshop, content finding/creation, working to a deadline, attending  & seminars. The things I like include; writing, social media, image finding, minimalistic layout designing, trend forecasting, styling. Opposite to both of these are the things that I could improve on; Lexical choice and wording, better knowledge and understanding of indesign, utilising workbook and blog more and coordinating them together in a more cohesive way.

To help make these improvements I am going to try to be more concise in my writing and stick to the brief more. I am going to spend more time using Indesign and getting to know the programme and how I can use it for different layouts and projects. I will blog about things outside of the course, rather than just things that effect that specific module or project; and speak to more lecturers about the uses and reasons for and behind the workbook. 

 To keep my passions alive over the summer I am going to continue to write and post on my personal blog. This helps me keep plugged into fashion, style and styling - whilst also helping me to maintain my time management and planning skills as I juggle my internship and personal life with blogging regularly. I also continue to read a vast variety of different magazines and continue to follow these and other fashion brands and outlines online and on their social media accounts. 

As of Friday I’m no longer a fresher, no longer an NTU newbie, no longer a first year.

I don’t really understand how that happened, one minute I was moving in and the next I was moving out, seemingly with about double the amount of things that I arrived with, or so my dad says. At the same time, uni time and days and weeks move so differently than those of the real world. A day can feel like a week, and a week can feel like a couple of months. How that works I have no idea, but I guess that’s the mystery of uni life. 

I’ve now been at home for a night, and it already feels so bizarre. I came home for the weekend pretty much every other weekend in the second term, and I think my subconscious thinks that that’s what’s going to happen now too. In a few days I’ll be hoping back on a train or in the car and going back to I0906 again, but this time that’s not the case. First year is over and I’m not living in halls anymore, little end of the corridor room 6 isn’t mine anymore. 

I guess the good thing about all this reminiscing and all these weird subconscious confusions is that it means that yano what, I actually had an amazing time at uni. And despite the hick ups and challenges I wouldn’t change the last 10 months for anything. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve giggled, I’ve dreamed, I’ve hidden in my room, I’ve stared at a computer screen for far too long, I’ve sung my heart out, I’ve danced until the sun came up, I’ve got myself lost in maze like uni buildings, I’ve walked up and down the 4 flights of stairs to my flat too many times to count and so much more. I’ve finally found something I’m good at and enjoy in this course, and it’s honestly been the greatest feeling knowing that I can actually do something and do something to a relatively good standard. I’ve met some of the most incredible people who have made first year the blast it has been and without whom my life would definitely not be the same! 

I guess all that’s left to say is, bring on second year. and I just hope that it’s as good as first year was! 

To help develop my promotional plan, and to build it up to be the visual document I want it to be I found quite a lot of supporting imagery. I used these images to help my PP have a magazine like feel with an equal amount of text and imagery on most double pages unless one or the other needed more focus on the page. 

The majority of my found imagery was from a collection of blogs and instagram and tumblr accounts. The majority of which belonged to male bloggers and Youtubers, who have a love of photography and therefore had good quality images that suited our brand image. 

After spending the majority of this module creating visuals and graphics for our male fragrance brand I wanted todo something a little different for my portfolio. Pretty much all of the work that is in my portfolio is monochromatic, minimalist and very masculine, and I wanted to use a device or colour scheme in my portfolio that would reflect me and my personality whilst still being able to see my work clearly. 

Whilst looking at Iphone backgrounds I found a very cute but quite simple picture of pink doughnuts, and I thought this would be a very interesting device to try and incorporate into my portfolio. I wanted to use the bright, fun but light colours to reflect my personality and use the simple layout design to allow my portfolio to flow nicely and not be too cluttered.   

During the creation of my promotional plan. I started to notice that our print advert didn’t really fit in or work with the brand aesthetic and look that had been building as I put all the elements of the brand together into the promotional plan. In my tutorial one of my inspiration images was pointed out as something that may be an interesting starting point to create a new or updated version of a Rush print advert. 

I created an extremely simplistic double page spread for the brand, however I feel that this advert communicates the brand and the brand aesthetic and image a lot more clearly and seamlessly. I am somewhat disappointed that I didn’t have time to completely reshoot the advert to create a new set of images that would have been a lot more relevant however with the time and photographs I had I think I have done the best that I could to create an advert that will fit with the rest of the promotional campaign. 

When looking for key layout inspiration for my promotional plan, I knew I wanted to try and find one magazine that I could try and copy the style of. I felt that this would really help me to stream line my layout, and help me get a really strong but cohesive visual look for the document. 

After some looking, I turned to a favourite of mine, Suitcase magazine. It’s a travel and fashion magazine, and although it’s predominantly focused at women I felt that it’s clean and minimalist layout would fit really well with our branding.