The New Brief

The new brief.
This week we received the brief for our new module; creative design practises. There is two halves to the brief, we are working on one before Christmas and the other half after.
This module is about trends, different market levels, fabrics and designing for a specific purpose. When I first read through the brief I was a little apprehensive, this was an area that I was quite worried about and I feel is probably my weakest point.
After discussing the brief further and with other people I did feel a little more at ease but still slightly hesitant. We were asked to use trend websites, such as ‘trendsetter’ and ‘WGSN’ to find out the four main trends that are occurring in this season; Autumn/ winter 2008.
I started doing my research and reading about the different trends, and you do start to realise that this is what you see in the shops, you just don’t tend to realise it.
We were asked to go into different shops, for different market levels, and identify these trends in the shops. I went out to some of the high street stores and sneakily took the things into the dressing room to take photos, when you know what you are looking for it is easier to spot the trends occurring. In the designer and higher market shops, taking photos of the window displays and doing quick sketches of what I had seen in the store felt more comfortable as the staff are more aware of what I was trying to do.
I am going to go out again some point this week to see if I can take some more photos in different stores just so I have a wide selection of different things.
I am also going to use some of the things that I have bought recently and I feel fit with this season’s trend and take some photographs of those. I am also hoping to find some prints/ material and textures that I can use. Using this research I am going to create a trend board for each of the four main trends and also a shop report on the different market levels and different things that I have found out.
After doing this research I do feel a little more confident with the brief and hope to make some real progress with it in the next couple of weeks.
On Fridays sessions this week, we were continuing with creative design realisation. I had finishing making my dress pattern and had cut out the material with the pattern pieces still fixed. I had a really stressful day; I had not had much sleep the night before where I had been quite ill in the week, and was very tired the next day and kept making mistakes. I did have to adjust my dress as I was going along to make sure that it all fitted together ok, I am pretty much just over half way there, so hopefully I can finish that off in the last session next week, and get all the other things that I need for my technical file completed.
I am now really looking forward to Christmas and spending some time with my friends and family, and having a bit of a break, which I really think I need now.