Happy New Year Everyone!
Hi all,
So it’s now 2019 and with the new year I have begun a new internship in a whole different environment, new vibe, new job and new people. 14th of January I started my second placement of my industry year with Bottle Blonde Studio in Coventry, who make festival wear and generally have a 70s/80s/90s bright and vibrant vibe going on. Bottle Blonde is incredibly different from my previous placement with Amanda Kelly who were designing prints aimed at high street stores and mass market.
For a first week at a job it was rather hectic and fast pace, however this is because we were aiming and successfully launching the new website for the Friday of my first week working here. On my first day I was given my official job title/duties for whilst I’m working at Bottle Blonde, my job is designing prints and little graphics such as postcards, fonts if needed and patterns for other items. I was expecting to be sewing some of the iconic tinsel cascade jackets when starting this job however I’m excited I get to design some more bold prints and just do general graphics for the company as it’s something I’m passionate about. The first job I was given was just researching the vibes of the brand so I could understand and be inspired to create my own prints in an 70s/80s/90s. In comparison to how I researched for prints in London it’s rather difficult to create your own images to draw from when it’s for a fashion period rather than nature/ more doodle styled prints. Fortunately my mother and boyfriend’s mother have tons of photos of them wearing 80s fashion which helped give me inspiration for colours, shapes and rough layouts without copying the exact patterns. I’ve used but also expanded my research skills I’ve learnt at university which will be useful for my final year understanding alternative research methods and how to create your own primary images when working with themes that aren’t easily available for primary research i.e. 80s fashion rather than flowers.
As we were preparing for the website launch this week I assisted Rachel who was mainly in charge of setting up the new site. For the new site Rachel wanted all the product images on the shop page to be the same standard size which involved resizing all the photos from the old website in terms of pixels to the same size. Resizing takes a very long time as we had to copy and paste every photo from the website into a correct size Photoshop document, in order to make sure they were all the exact dimensions that we required. Although it took days to resize and upload to the new site it was definitely worth it, I learnt that digitally having all images on a page the same size gives a more professional and put together visual look. This will be useful when creating portfolio pages as well as organising my own blog and such in my final year as well as my general future.
And finally in my personal life I went out to research more 70s/80s/90s inspiration ready for more pattern designs and play with my new camera I was given for Christmas. I know at some point in the coming weeks Chloe (the CEO/owner) wants me to design some graphic gift cards and postcards for the brand and so I also went and gathered some inspiration for this some pieces just for the layout, others ideas of little card packs so hopefully they’ll be available soon. Also as I’m working in Coventry now I had to find another place to live since I no longer have student accommodation and unfortunately commuting from Leicester is just takes a bit too long to be worth it, but luckily for me my boyfriend lives just outside of Coventry. Each day I commute from his village to Coventry via bus which is a big change from my 45 minute 2 tubes to Amanda Kelly in London, I also appreciate that living with him I no longer feel lonely and when I have issues I now have someone to talk to and help sort through them which wasn’t so easy to do in London.
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