Thursday, 30 January 2014

Reading Week Activities

Reading Week 


Book:

Fashion Brands: Brand styling from Armani to Zara
Tungate, M  (2012)  
ISBN: 0749464461


Once a luxury that only the elite could afford, fashion is now widely accessible. While brands such as Zara and Hamp;M have made fashion an affordable choice for the mass market, sports brands such as Nike and Adidas have transformed the image of their products from merely practical to fashionable. How has this transformation occurred? Fashion Brands explores the popularization of fashion and explains how marketers and branding experts have turned clothes and accessories into objects of desire. Full of first-hand interviews with key players, the book analyzes every aspect of fashion from a marketing perspective. It examines how advertising, store design and the media have altered our fashion sense. The new edition includes chapters on fashion bloggers and the rise of celebrity-endorsed products.

Video:


Design in a Nutshell: One-Minute Animated Primers on Six Major Creative Movements



From the fine folks at Open University — who have previously brought us delightful 60-second animated primers on philosophy’s famous thought experiments and the world’s major theories of religion — comes Design in a Nutshell, a lovely six-part series of their signature animated primers on six major design movements.
Gothic Revival gave us many of the ideas that changed architecture, includingthe magnificent vaulted ceilings of European cathedrals, and without it Lewis Carroll may never have given us Alice in Wonderland:



The Arts and Crafts movement emerged as a rebellion to the negative impact of mass-production and the Industrial Revolution, and its romantic ideals still reverberate today:


Bauhaus, one of the 100 ideas that changed graphic design, revolutionized design education by introducing a cross-disciplinary curriculum and embraced the intersection of innovation and inspiration:

Modernism emerged from a disillusionment with history after the World War and spanned every corner of creative expression, from art (e.g., Agnes Martin) to music (e.g., John Cage) to design (e.g., Charles and Ray Eames), becoming the single most influential creative movement of the 20th century:



After The Great Depression erased consumer demand, American industrial designset to out rebuild the world of tomorrow and reignite people’s appreciation for objects by making things that previously didn’t need to appear attractive now sleek and desirable, effectively bridging form and function and ushering in The Century of the Self:

Postmodernism criticized modernism for having failed at reinvigorating society and set out to transform culture politically, philosophically, and creatively, pushing society to question why things are the way they are:


3-Part BBC Documentary on Perfume


Friday, 24 January 2014

Tuesday, 14 January 2014

Photoshop Skill Development


For my current 'brand-zine' project on Tom Ford (Project Three) I decided to use a gold leaf style lettering to reflect the luxury and excessive side of the Tom Ford brand. This was something I didn't know how to do, so I used a short tutorial video on YouTube to learn, seen below:






From this tutorial I managed to produce the text below, which will help to add both an element of texture and added colour to my predominantly black and white brand-zine.


Saturday, 28 December 2013

Tom Ford Research

Here is a collection of images that I gathered as research for my individual brand-zine project on Tom Ford.



Friday, 27 December 2013

Lady Acland

Lady Acland, one of the leading models of the late 1940's and early 1950's, dies aged 85. During her modelling career, Myrtle Crawford appeared on the covers of Vogue and Harpers' Bazaar. Below are images from this time:




Here is an image of the newspaper article published after she died:



Sunday, 22 December 2013

Tumblr

Below is a screenshot of my 'random inspiration' tumblr called 'Ciao Bella'. This is where I post all sorts of images that interest me regarding content, quotes used, colour choices and composition. I believe this tumblr blog will be a great research source in the future to help with creative ideas.
The link is www.whoamitocallyoucrazy.tumblr.com


Below is a screenshot of my 'fashion image research' tumblr called 'Bella Moda'. This is a much more fashion specific tumblr, however the contents is till fairly random. On this tumblr blog I collect any fashion images whether they be advertisements, magazine shoots, runway pictures or street style images. This platform allows me to create a 'board-like' composition of images as well as the archive which can help me pinpoint trends within specific time frames. 
The link is http://crazyaboutbeautifulfashion.tumblr.com