Category: February – March

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 –

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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 –

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

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 –

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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 –

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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 –

1. 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.
2.  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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.