Alexander Millar- Working Man at the Hancock

This exhibition is on at The Hancock Museum at the moment, it follows a character simply called 'gadgie' at various places in and around Newcastle during the peak of the mining and shipping industry. I found it interesting because its different to a lot of the art I've seen lately. The figures are cartoon like and you never see any faces, perhaps this is to allow the characters to represent anybody living in the northeast in the 60's.

Ethical Fashion

For my marketing module I am required to

Trip to York turns cultural!

On a recent visit to York I stopped off at the Art Gallery to see if anything caught my eye. This gallery visit, more than any other, made me see how much my background in fine art at A-level has influenced my taste in art. I was more drawn to little Henry Moore inspired figures and a hologram portrait of Queen Elizabeth than the still life paintings of fruit and skulls.

I also came across two pieces by John Stezaker which were intriguing. He used 50’s stars photos, cleverly masked with a postcard. The photo on the postcard takes on the features of the face beneath because of its placement. The image below was one of the pieces on show at the museum; you can see that the tunnel and shrubs become the woman’s eyes.

Publish Post 

Half way meeting

Branding seems to be on my mind every minute of the day. Logos are everywhere when you think about it, from the second you wake up you're bombarded with branding without even being aware. Its on make-up, hair products, bottles of water, phones, buses, chocolate bars...everything!

We had a meeting with Colin today to see how we're getting on with the project. He likes our company name Re-Find and thinks we should put more emphasis on it as its the strongest part of our work. We also need to push the idea of eco-friendly fashion further and stay away from the obvious. I'm sure Vogue did a piece on Make Do and Mend a while ago, with a dress made out of yellow rubber gloves amongst other things....must find it for college tomorrow....

Image from orfalseglitter.blogspot.com/2009/11/make-do-and-mend

First Crit

This morning started with a crit of what we had gathered and produced over the week. We did some peer assessment first which was very helpful as we got to look at another group who had obviously worked hard on their research. Their mission statement was flawless and there was such a wide range of research from historical art to shop handouts.

We quickly realized our own work paled in comparison so I had a lot to write down when we regrouped to talk about each other’s work.

Notes from the crit:

Mission statement- is very clear just need to identify a style for the brand and each of the collections.

Shop report- needs drawings and more depth such as key features of the shops

Branding- should be more fashion like, perhaps change the name and drop the obvious links to recycling such as the arrows.

Perhaps make the logo different for each audience and also look into recycling and eco fashion more.

After this we discussed in the group how we could improve our work. We decided to look back at the original ideas of the brand and came to the conclusion that we had put too much emphasis on the eco-friendly side of it. We need to make it clear that we are making fashionable trend driven clothes, which isn’t what people expect from environmentally friendly garments. We also don’t want the brand identity to limit us when it comes to designs.

So the logo will be revamped but the name will remain the same. We decided on festivals as a theme for the collections, which also defines our customer profile quite easily.

Today we did a lot of discussing as a group which meant we were all chipping in and analyzing each other’s ideas. We coped well with this and I was pleased at how we all listened and compromised with other members of the group. The work load is being shared equally so far and the enthusiasm for the project is still there which I find encouraging.