FMP WEEK 7 (WC: 11/01/2021)

My productivity levels in the weeks prior to this one had been running fairly low due to working overtime, adjusting and coping with the new national lockdown amongst many other lifestyle changes. This led me to turn to my ever-growing inspirational Pinterest board I curated to influence my design decisions and stimulate my work flow and idea generation for the day.

Previously, I had stated that I wanted to progress my talents and venture further into skills I had not previously explored in depth to add some more dimension to my FMP, learn some new skills and adapt them to my work appropriately. This led me to investigating the idea of trend forecasting; as design concepts for my FMP to fit into, adapting my work to trends that I have research for the future to ensure my FMP brand stays relevant, up to date with news but also ahead of schedule. Trend forecasting is a transferable skill which can be dissected and transferred into several other elements of professional work such as utilising the skills needed to research into a developing micro or macro trend and applying it to the developing fashion industry and placing that in a different design concept for a graphic designer, for example. Exploring further into current social affairs, culture and sustainability and how they influence elements like interior design or the main colour trends for a season is extremely interesting for me as I had previously not given this much thought as the only time I had done it previously I had not enjoyed it. This is teaching me to go back to old skills I haven’t developed in a while and see if there is a way I can apply that to my more recent style of working.

I remembered an essential piece of information from my studies on my Art and Design Foundation course which was to really utilise the productivity of creating mind maps frequently and to aim to start each project with one. A mind map is an organic documentation of a thought process; I have often found that mind maps produce the most instinctive ideas, the ideas which come to mind first with no filter are often the most obscure and interesting, therefore the most useful for transforming into a marketing plan for example. Reminding myself of these techniques which ensure a more productive work flow is essential as my ways of researching and producing work are constantly changing and adapting therefore it is useful to know what has worked well in the past and how I can use that in my future work.

The example below is one of my trends, out of seven. Using Adobe Photoshop, I created a format for each trend: a mind map, several pages of research into different obscure areas which influence the whole trend, a trend report and an overall trend board with colour palette and visual imagery. I aimed to keep all the pages as visual and engaging as I could to practice suing Photoshop for my own skill development, as well as constantly challenging myself to experiment with layout design and creative direction.

I am very pleased with this outcome, each of the seven trends have a different quality to them which creates and harmony with the other trends as they all compliment each other to fit into larger macro trends which everybody is affected by in the fashion and creative industry. I made the presentation of the work consistent through the use of repetitive fonts, layouts and background designs which work effectively when dissected and presented both individually or grouped together to show the whole design process.

Following on from this, I have generated a surplus of ideas through the use of these mind maps which is a technique I will be embedding within each of my projects as an essential starting point. I will gather these ideas and begin to collate them into different files for each section I need to work on for my magazine; such as website/online space design, creative direction, magazine layouts, copywriting idea generation etc.