Month: March 2019

Month 5

On March 31, 2019

In February - March, Internships, March - April

Month 5 and nearing the end of my internship year.

The past month has been unusual but exciting with a trip to Iceland, week at home getting to do hand drawn pieces, designing shoes and drawing animal skins.

Top 5 skills I have learnt and now gotten to put into practice –

Shoe design and construction, during my first year we learnt about shoe design and construction. As I have been designing shoes for Bottle Blonde recently these skills have been of great help in my initial shoe shape design. Understanding how the base of a handmade shoe is created helped me understand to an extent what is and isn’t possible so that I didn’t design any completely infeasible shoes.
Textile appliqué, when designing shoes I needed to consider how the prints could actually be applied to the shoe. So for some of the designs I specifically designed them with the theory of the patterns being in appliqué. This skill widened my options of design rather than keeping everything flat and digitally printed.
Drawing animal skins, at Amanda Kelly I learnt about how they draw some of their animal skin prints however while there I never got the chance to attempt to draw any myself. Now that I’m at Bottle Blonde I have gotten to experiment with how to draw some skins in lovely neon colours. Learning about how to draw them has really improved how I draw them and has resulted in some wonderful and adaptable prints.
Hand illustration, in my first year I learnt about fashion illustration and how it doesn’t need to be as generic as I originally thought. Learning more about fashion illustration and abstract illustration has been useful for creating unique prints and widened my skill range for design.
Colour changing in Photoshop, whilst working in London I learnt about how to colour separate a pattern for screen printing. However I discovered that the tools required to do this can also be used to change the colours of a pattern swiftly and smoothly.

Pen leopard print hand illustration

Top 5 skills I have learnt on the job that will be useful in final year –

Drawing animal skins, as I have been drawing animal skins for Bottle Blonde I have developed how I can draw them as well as the types I like drawing. I feel if I make a collection in my final year I want to do my own prints, being able to draw skins gives me a wider range of prints I can do.
Shoe detailing, when designing shoes there are a lot more details to a shoe than I had ever thought about prior to my project. Researching platforms has widened my understanding about how much thought and creativity goes into designing shoes.
Presentation of print designs digitally, over the year I have learnt a lot about how to develop my portfolio pages and present digital prints that haven’t been applied to physical products. As I am looking at lot at potentially working in print design as a career I need to develop my print portfolio and understand how to present it in a layout that visually shows the full potential of my skills.
Multitasking, when working in the fashion industry the ability to multitask is key. As you could end up working on 3 different things and then need to balance your personal life on top as it’s an ever changing industry. Over the year I have learnt a lot about balancing my time and multitasking which will be useful to maintain my mental health in my final year.
Multimedia design, whilst working on my shoe project I have really gotten to experiment with multimedia designing. In order to design my prints I have been using photos, paint, watercolour, markers, pens, glue, sticky notes, anything I could get my hands on and it’s really given life to some of my designs which otherwise would’ve been flat. This will be useful for again designing my prints in my final year if I choose to do a collection.

Coventry – Week 9

By Sarah

On March 31, 2019

In Internships, March - April

Hi everyone,

I’ve been back at BB HQ and catching up on everything that’s been going on the past 2 weeks. Whilst Chloe has been away the team who were in the office were very productive and got lots of orders sent out. At the beginning of the week I met with one of the other interns to talk about our shoe designs and look at each other’s work giving feedback. Looking at each other’s work and seeing the different approaches helped us both with developing our work further prior to showing it to Chloe for the final shoe choices. Peer feedback has always been incredibly helpful at uni to ensure the best sketchbooks and I have found out also useful in industry when working in small teams.

After our catch up the work for the week began and this week I have been dipping in and out of different areas getting to learn more about how products are made, designing web graphics and designing packaging. I began with learning more about how the iconic jackets and earrings are made. Chloe wants to reshoot the dolly earrings in all colours which involved us making new pairs in every colour. I had previously made keyrings with the team for an event so I had some mild knowledge of how they are made but this time I got to do more of the assembly rather than just folding tinsel in half. The earrings were assembled quite easily for my hands although I did nearly burn my hands a couple of times. Although my hands don’t function fully I loved getting to be a bit more hands on. Jewelry construction is something that has always been of interest to me and I feel these skills combined with our workshops from first year have potential to develop even if only for personal use.

I also began designing some new packaging for Bottle Blonde, not only am I designing shoe boxes but general clothing and accessories packaging and graphics to be put into the packages. Of course like any project I instantly started researching what exists, what could be innovative for us and what I need to achieve with said product. I chose to focus on shoe boxes first as that is the only product we intend to produce currently that we don’t have any packaging for. I researched into some recycled packing ideas with an aim to reduce the waste at BB. However as the final shoe choices haven’t been made yet once finishing my initial research I moved onto researching if our current packing could be adapted. As we do reworked vintage jackets, graphic tee’s and personalised bags, I chose to look into stick on features for our current packing to make it even more extra than it already is. In order to design them I took several photos of our packaging and then began to write and edit phrases straight onto the packing to give a more visual concept to show Chloe. This is only the beginning though and I shall be developing and researching more and more to create hopefully some sustainable quirky packaging.

Finally in my personal life this week as it was Mother’s day I went home for the day to see my family. We took mum out for a meal and generally tried to relieve her stress for a day. I have also began to look into places I wish to visit for inspiration towards my final year and planning these trips out with my boyfriend. As September draws ever closer I feel strongly that whatever I do I want to incorporate as much digital elements and my print skills as I possibly can.

Coventry – Week 8

By Sarah

On March 24, 2019

In Internships, March - April

Hi all,

This week has been rather dull in terms of work, as Chloe is still away I went home to Leicester to continue working on my shoe designs and a couple of shoe box designs and see my family. As I’m at home I have access to all of my art supplies so I took the opportunity to experiment with some hand drawn skins. I learnt about skin drawing whilst I was working at Amanda Kelly in London and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to try out my skills and see if I have improved.

Normally because of my hand issues I draw everything on my computer as it’s painful drawing on paper. However when trying to draw leopard prints on a computer I haven’t quite mastered how I wanted them to turn out yet so I tried drawing them by hand as I was taught to do in London. I’m personally rather happy with how they turned out, and I hope Bottle Blonde will be equally happy with the designs they are incorporated into. You can see my leopard skin print attempts below.

I also took the opportunity to do some splatter paint prints as this is extremely hard to achieve the same effect on the computer. Unfortunately I didn’t have any neon paint to match in with Bottle Blonde’s colour scheme, however with a bit of Photoshop using some more skills I learnt about prints in London it was easy to change the colours to fit in. Once I had drawn all my different styled leopard prints I scanned them in and got to work. I learnt about how to colour separate patterns whilst working in London but discovered the same tools were extremely useful for changing colours of patterns and smoothly adding hand drawn elements into my prints. Below you can see the original scan of a print and then an example of how I have photoshopped the background and strokes to make sure the print was even.

Original Print
Edited print

In my personal life this week as I have been home for the week I went to pottery with my godmother and had great fun painting and molding clay. I decided I wanted to make 3 Brian the snails and I was given a gnome and inspired by my godmother to paint him to look like my boyfriend which turned out wonderfully.

Coventry – Week 7

By Sarah

On March 17, 2019

In Internships, March - April

Hi everyone,

This week was an unusual week in terms of work space as I started the week in Iceland and then have been working from home for the rest. I’m going to be working remotely for 2 weeks including this week as Chloe the founder and owner of Bottle Blonde is away for her sister’s wedding abroad.

When designing patterns I often find that a lot of my time is spent drawing elements that can be reused in other prints. As I am working for one brand producing prints for exclusively their company I can reuse shapes when designing patterns. However if I were working for a print design house for example Amanda Kelly that I worked for in London, I would not be able to as they sell to many different brands and it could jeopardize the company if they sold 2 similar prints to different brands. Designing prints for Bottle Blonde however it is helpful for me to have this database of elements that fit in with the brands vision, this includes shapes, patterns for example checkers and skins.

When it comes to drawing skins I learnt that there are endless ways you can draw them and they still not be the same however when selling a skin they can look too similar for sale. For my shoe designs I’ve decided to put into practice some of the knowledge of skins I learnt in London and attempt to draw some myself. I chose to begin with a Zebra print as I wanted to try and keep as much of my illustration digital this week. To draw the zebra print I researched zebra prints and took several as inspiration for my own. I chose to use illustrator to draw my first zebra print as I wanted to achieve a very graphic rather than realistic as you can see the beginning of below.

Drawing on illustrator is something I have done a lot of whilst working for Bottle Blonde and it’s helping me to improve my accuracy skills which aid’s my flat drawings. However as I have done so much drawing on illustrator I’m looking at how I can make my prints for free flowing, more natural and see if I can add hand drawn elements in, so hopefully there shall be some interesting things to come in the next few weeks.

In my personal life this week I have been asked if I would like to join a project to design and build website for Dance Research. I was very surprised to receive the email asking if I would like to take on the project and am excited to help them build the site they want. Hopefully I’ll be able to build my own web design skills as well as help them achieve their goals with the site. A brilliant bonus is that I will also be getting paid for creating the site, it’s not much but with an unpaid placement year and bills to pay it’s great.

Coventry – Week 6

By Sarah

On March 10, 2019

In Internships, March - April

Hi everyone,

This week was the return to Bottle Blonde. I was ecstatic to be going back to Bottle Blonde and work on more prints and designs for the company. Currently we are working on producing the first set of manufactured clothes for Bottle Blonde and my task for the next couple of weeks is to work on unisex shoes and the boxes to go with them.

Like with any brief I began my week researching the style of shoe Chloe wants to be produced. As the brand is very bold and 70s/80s/90s we are designing platform boots as the first shoe the brand will produce. I spent most of my week researching the shoes, styles of patterns and how they could be applied to the shoe, for example printed, embroidery or appliqué. Towards the end of the week I started to develop my shoe shape inspired by my research and my personal shoe preferences. Below you can see a page of my shoe research from the internet.

Shoe Mood Board
(Shoe links – Top left dolls kill Burner Boots, top right YRU Bloq Hi – Hologram, middle left YRU Qozmo – Sky sky,
bottom left dolls kill Discotheque glitter platform boots, bottom right YRU Nightmare – Checker)

Once I developed some initial shoe shapes I could start to design some prints for the shoes which I can’t show you quite yet but I feel they strongly match in with the brand. Working on shoe design is very different to all other internship work I have done so far this year as rather than just designing a print it’s for a specific product and I am able to design the product which it’ll be on. This has allowed me to put into practice my design skills and understand more how I could work print design into my final major project.

Finally in my personal life this week I actually went on a short holiday to Iceland! And no I’m not on about the supermarket. Me and my boyfriend went on a long weekend away to Iceland and it was one of the most amazing experiences. My trip has begun to inspire ideas for my research for my final major project and I took some amazing photos whilst there. If you ever get an opportunity to go to Iceland I would fully recommend going.

Month 4

By Sarah

On March 3, 2019

In February - March, Internships, March - April

Over the past 4 months of working in the industry I have developed a lot in terms of self confidence, skills and goals in life. In this months summary I’m going to highlight not only skills I have put into practice and skills I have learnt, but also skills I want to improve on which I think will be helpful in my career.

Top 5 skills I have learnt and gotten to put into practice –

Marketing, During my second year we were given briefs in which we needed to design packaging and marketing campaigns. Learning these skills about how to layout visual pieces helped me to create a my own magazine styled print for Bottle Blonde which looks professional and bold.
Self motivation, A lot of our projects at uni are very self lead. This means we have to be very self motivated to do the work without supervision. This self motivation has been very important for my time working remotely for Boodcia, as working from home can make you feel more drowsy and be distracting but from doing projects for university I have developed my self motivation to be able to stay focused in this environment.
Timekeeping, With many deadlines for university timekeeping is a key skill. As I’m a design student timekeeping can be even more critical to a successful project as you ideally need to complete the basis of the brief well before the deadline to be able to then develop it even further creating a stunning final piece. This skill has been very useful for me to create ideas and develop them within a time limit working for Boodcia, allowing me to create unique designs without running short for time.
Clothing Design, Of course being a fashion student one of the main skills we learn is clothing design which so far through my internship year I haven’t actually gotten to do. However with Boodica I finally got to put into practice my design skills which was great and allowed me to design new silhouettes for the brand.
CAD’s, With clothing design comes CAD drawing, CAD’s are the flat drawings that can be sent off to manufacturers which clearly show how the design should be sewn together. CAD drawings is one of my strongest skills I have developed at university and now I have gotten to put it into practice I am even more confident in the quality of my flat drawings.

Top 5 skills I have learnt on the job that will be useful in final year –

How to make a gif, This skills although some may question how it could be useful in my final year I believe will come in use somewhere. GIF’s can be an innovative way to make a flat project more interactive and being a heavily digital designer the more digital and interactive I can make my work the better.
Design pack, Whilst working for Boodcia I was given the task of assembling a design pack which was a pdf of the garments drawn in CAD format on bodies, CAD’s alone and fabric suggestions laid out in a clear format. This will be helpful in my final year for designing portfolio pages that show off my CAD skills and some garment technology knowledge.
Graphic design, As I am doing a lot of graphic print design at Bottle Blonde I have learnt more and more about graphic design. This will be helpful in my final year for not only developing my portfolio digitally but developing my sketchbook layout as all my of sketchbooks are digital also.
Self confidence, Personally I have lacked self confidence in my work usually thinking it’s not good enough, it doesn’t look professional, other people have better skills than me. However over my time working in the industry and even interviews prior I have developed a lot more self confidence in the work that I produce and myself as a person. Believing in myself will be key in my final year to developing a final major project that reflects me as a person and my skills.
How to draw mesh on a CAD, Working with Boodcia on sportswear I learnt how to draw mesh into CAD designs without any preset tools. This will be helpful in my final year if I choose to do a collection and decide to include mesh panelings, because of my hand issues if I am unable to sew myself it’ll allow me to set up someone else to sew the garment together without my presence.

Top 5 skills I want to improve on –

Marketing, I had a lot of fun designing magazine covers for my print for Bottle Blonde and it’s made me curious about developing more skills in marketing which will also help with my portfolio and website layout.
Photography, This is a key skill for creating shoots of my collection however it’s something I have become increasingly more interested in during my year especially with running a blog I want to include my own photography with the best photographs I can take.
Illustration, Over the course of the year so far I have done a lot of print design which I have discovered I rather enjoy however as I work very digitally I want to redevelop my illustration skills to my current capabilities to design prints to their full potential.
Sewing, I personally think I have quite good sewing skills however after a year of not sewing and my hands becoming more restrictive it’s something I want to improve on to make sure I am able to sew as much as I can in my final year.
Coding, From running my blog for my placement year I have found I really enjoy blogging and it helps relieve my anxiety. However I would love to learn more about coding in order to give me more freedom with the setup and layout of my blog and any future websites I run.

Remote working – Week 2

By Sarah

On March 3, 2019

In February - March, Internships

Hi all,

This week was rather slow in terms of work with me spending the whole working week drawing the CAD’s or flat designs for the chosen approved designs. CAD’s are something I have a great amount of skills in but that doesn’t mean they take any less time to draw. I did however create a design pack of the chosen designs to be shown to a manufacturer and with some editing be put into production. I had never done a design pack before so I learnt how to assemble a pack. In the pack I had to include, the garments drawn on a figure in colour (although these don’t need to be the final choice colours), fabric suggestions which I struggled with not knowing much about gym wear however from some deep research I managed to make some good suggestions however the manufacturer will change it to a more precise fabric, flat designs and zoomed sections of the designs if there is any fine details. Creating this pack has made some great additions to my portfolio that I can use in my applications for jobs once I graduate. Below you can see examples of design pack pages that I have designed although these aren’t being carried forward into production.

Design pack page 1

Design pack page 2

Design pack page 3

A useful addition to my skills I learnt this week was how to create and fill your own mesh pattern on illustrator for flats. To create a mesh I learnt how to use new tools on illustrator that I haven’t previously used, this skill will be useful for my final year if I choose to make a collection as I struggle with hand movement. Understanding and being able to draw accurate flat designs will allow me to design a collection as I want it without having to struggle because of my hands, the CAD designs allow another person to look at my designs and construct the garment even without my presence with may be useful for my final year.

However this week I was also offered an amazing opportunity to go back to Bottle Blonde and work on their new items going into manufacture soon. I simply couldn’t turn down the offer so this week was my final working for Boodica. It’s been an intense 2 weeks creating a set of 6 items ready to be sent off for manufacturing however I’ve learnt somethings about the industry and I’m thrilled to be going back to bottle Blonde.

As I currently have more personal time I have started to think more about my plans for my final year, I have started to research places that inspire me and could be the base research of a beautiful collection. I feel strongly currently that I want to incorporate my own print designs into my collection however I need to think about what I wish to design my prints for whether it be women’s wear, men’s wear, kids wear, interior and furnishing or something else entirely.