When given the ‘Get The Look’ project brief, I was at first worried about the amount of work it included. The different units within the assignment was what confused me as it felt as though I had work in all different places that needed to be put together to form a final outcome. After pulling the brief apart and dividing up the work, it became much clearer and I felt as though I knew what I had to do. In the first week, I wanted to start my project by starting the research for the eras of 1900-1949 and what fashion was like in those decades. I also signed up to joomag and started to play around with what it could offer me. I found the first week useful to get to grips with the brief and what I needed to do. From making a start with both my sketchbook and joomag, this allowed me to follow this through for the next few weeks.
In the next couple of weeks, I visited locations such as Liberties, Selfridges and the Fashion and Textile Museum to gain inspiration for my sketchbook and research folder. I found these trips useful as I was able to broaden my knowledge for retailers today and for how fashion developed through the 1920’s from the Fashion and textile Museum. Visiting the V&A museum allowed my group and I to attempt at a Get the Look video. Although we were successful in demonstrating the fashion from the eras of 1920-1989, if we were to do it again I believe we should choose a different location. Due to filming it inside the museum, the background noise took over our voices therefore making us very hard to understand. If we were to choose a different location, I believe we should choose one where the background was more aesthetically pleasing and fit with the eras we were talking about.
I found the hardest part of the project was using joomag and trying to create a magazine that looked professional yet included everything from the brief. I found this hard because a normal magazine would not usually include a Garment Specification sheet or an article about integrated and non-integrated supply. To try and incorporate all of the tasks and make it look professional, I used inspiration from magazine layouts from the likes of Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Grazia. I found this research extremely helpful as it gave me ideas on how to lay many of my pages out and how professional magazines would use different fonts, pictures and backgrounds for their pages.
After getting the hang of joomag and how it worked, I found it much easier to create pages that I was happy with and that looked professional. I found some aspects of it harder than others but I challenged myself to learn how to add certain things such as interactive pages. Using ‘thinglink’ I managed to create interactive pages that I could add to my magazine. I was very pleased with the outcome of these pages because it meant that I didn't always have to use lots of writing and I could hide this by using pop ups. I think that overall this made my magazine look and feel more like an online visual rather than a plain document. I am extremely pleased with how both my magazine and sketchbook have turned out and the information I have gathered for my research folder. Although my sketchbook took a lot of time and effort meaning that it was hard to balance my time with it and my magazine, I am happy with how each page looks. I spent my time trying to get each page to look interesting and well as informative and I believe I have achieved this goal. I am especially pleased with my 1980’s page as I believe the neon colours really reflect the era and it shows that I have thoroughly researched into this era. I am also very pleased with my favourite designer page as I feel as though I have really reflected the style of Vivienne Westwood with the orange colour theme that I used. I am also pleased with the overall outcome of my joomag as I have gone from having never used it to being able to create interactive pages and pages that I feel have a very professional finish. I am especially pleased with my news of the day pages as using inspiration from Grazia and Vogue, I was able to make the pages look like real news story pages from a magazine.
I am pleased with my final outcome of this assignment as I feel as though I have gone from not knowing what to do to being certain that I have achieved every area of the brief. This project has helped be to broaden my knowledge on fashion and the development of the industry and has allowed me to learn new ways of working and presenting my work that I would not have known before.
If I were to do this project again, I would start my joomag earlier than I did. Although I signed up in the first week, I didn't start adding pages to my final magazine for a couple of weeks as I didn't know how to work the sight. This meant that I spent more time on my sketchbook and not my magazine which then meant in the weeks after this I had a lot of work to do. However, even though I didn't spend as much time on my magazine as I did with my sketchbook, I felt as though I still completed it on time to a professional standard. The only thing I would change about my magazine is to alter some of my pages to look more realistic as I found it hard to create some pages to make them look like a real magazine. Overall, I am happy with the final outcome of my project and how it all turned out.