Looking back to the beginning of this module, I feel like I have come along way in growth and knowledge in this area ( Visual Promotions ). I wasn’t familiar with any of the terms and what they meant, or even what I was suppose to be doing! I remember feeling anxious about this Module and feeling like I would struggle.

I created 4 trend boards that were inspired by my WGSN research and what inspired me and my brand the most. I am confident with the micro trends that I had chosen however if I could portray them differently, I would use a variety of pictures and create more of an aesthetic. However they were still clear.

Reflecting back on my overall idea for my brand, I personally believe the concept was really good and would be successful. I feel like I would personally use it as well as my friends and family and others that I know. I made a brand that was suitable for my target audience, which is everyone, by keeping the website easy to use, engaging and fun ( like the match tool ) and available for people of all genders, style, backgrounds and interests. I wanted my website to allow my audience to feel included, safe and positive – and I believe my website allows this. However, to portray this to my audience more, I wish that I had more diversity throughout my chosen models. This would have connected a wider variety of people.

I liked the overall look for my website as I thought it was clear, professional looking and matched my brands aesthetic. Again I wish I promoted more diversity to engage more audience and really portray emotions like community, inclusivity, equality and love. However, the website’s layout turned out to be better than I expected and I feel confident with the final look. I believe that everything is easy to navigate, and my chosen colour pallet compliments everything ( including the photos ) nicely together.

I wanted my Social Media Pages to appear sustainable, nature based and positive while staying professional and fresh looking. I tried to keep both Instagram and TikTok accounts as similar as possible to keep a strong brand appearance. I feel like my Social Media content was one of my weakest points in this module. I know I should have included more videos, and more of a variety of content like ‘Get Ready With Me’ and other engaging trends. However, on TikTok I still used engaging audios and trends to boost my brand and they were still suitable for my brands aesthetic and what we stand for. As for my Photoshoots, I wish that I encouraged my models to smile more and do fun and playful poses. This would have been more inviting for my target audience and would work with the whole ‘Happy and Sustainable’ vibe I was going for. I would also shoot in a variety of different locations, to stop the repetitiveness and make the content eye-catching and unique.

The last section I want to mention is my Launch Event, The Upcycling Workshop. I really liked this idea for a launch event as I believe it was fitting for my brand. The event is sustainable, close and sociable – allowing people to feel connected. This was mostly inspired by the ‘We & Me’ STEPIC Driver, I wanted to host an event that would encourage people to join the sustainable and positive movement together as a community.  I believe this would have been successful for my brand as part of the launch campaign.

Overall my journey throughout this module has taught me a lot and I have enjoyed it the most out of all the other Modules. I enjoyed the development process and believe I have become much more successful at showing my development in my sketchbook. I believe that the concept of my brand was actually really successful and was fun to turn it into reality as much as I could! I do believe that I need to work on my experimentation and variety when it comes to Photoshoots, as they become repetitive and don’t capture as much excitement. However they are still relevant with my brand and are successful photos.

I have now started my Website development and suitable research alongside. I have started researching into brands that are encouraged by sustainability like Stella McCartney and ASPIGA. This helped me understand how they portray themselves, what they include in their websites and what makes them sustainable. I also started researching Social Media Analysis on the clothing brand ‘Timberlands’ , looking at their Instagram and TikTok to understand and learn on why they are successful and how do they do so. I also researched their ‘ICONIC’ Campaign that I found really interesting. As the audience for Timberlands, I can understand why they are so successful as they keep up with trends and are active on social media, are trying to be sustainable, a trendy brand and interacts with their Audience and Following.

I included a reflection in my sketchbook on how this has inspired me with my own brand and what I have taken into consideration. For example, how their Instagram Feed and TikTok Feed link up and match, as well as they have a clean and professional profile with necessary links to other platforms and websites etc.

I started creating an overall aesthetic for my brand using brand boards using previous development, as well as creating a logo, a customer persona, user scenario and journey as well as website development ( User Flow , Site Map, Match tool , Wireframe mock-up etc). This helped me understand my websites purpose and character, and the opportunities it has. This part of my sketchbook was what I found the most enjoyable, and I believe this is because I understood it quickly and it was something new I learned so it felt exciting to develop. I feel like I struggled not having certain equipment and websites to create logos and website mock-ups , however I tried my best and I am proud with the outcome of the wireframe Mock-up etc.

At this point I have also planned my Manifesto and initial ideas as well as completed it. And I feel confident and happy with the finished write up. I believe it covers what we stand for and the vibe we want to bring as a brand. It sounds Strong and Confident in what it’s talking about and I feel like readers will understand my brand more.

Reflecting back from how I felt and what I knew at the beginning, and looking back through my sketchbook, I believe I have gained so much understanding on many topics within Visual Promotions so far, and once I pushed myself past a point, I felt excited and motivated with this project. I believe I have shown more development in this sketchbook compared to previous ones, and feel like I have improved throughout this module.

This week I finally decided on my idea and concept for my brand. I have decided on the name ‘Match & Thrift’. It’s in the name! You match items together to visually see what the overall outfit would look like before you thrift / purchase it. The website will be similar to Vinted and Depop in ways that it will be a place where users can buy and sell garments, however when uploading photos of the product your selling, it has to be against a plain background so that it can be used in the match tool. Users who are selling an item will send off the parcel to be checked by us to make sure it matches the photos and description and then sold. Using the match tool will allow consumers to know if it’s worth buying or not and if it will match with their planned outfits. The plan is that this will slow down consumption that is caused by people ordering multiple items for an outfit just in case it doesn’t match with the rest of the look. This should also decrease the number of returns, transport lets out toxic fumes into the atmosphere damaging the environment.

I chose the name ‘Match & Thrift’ due to the inspiration from previously researched STEPIC drivers. The main one being play power. My thought process was that the word ‘Match’ links with other words like play, creativity and games – encouraging playful creativity when online shopping sustainably. I have also included a visual idea in my sketchbook of matching pieces of clothing and accessories together (Not my Photo).

This week I have developed my colour pallet, which I feel really inspired and confident with, as well as begin development on my initial ideas. Using what I have previously researched, I bullet pointed different initial ideas that developed on from one another and noted them down, I find this the easiest way to connect ideas together. After doing this, I felt mostly inspired by my last initial idea which was a website that allows people to buy and sell pre – loved items, however to stop over-consumption, there is a section that allows you to search other pieces of clothing and pair it to style outfits before purchasing.

After this, I created a rough initial ideas board so I could visually see all my ideas. I also looked for how I could pair clothing together when thinking of the idea that inspired me the most. However, I feel like I could do better and create something more fun ( thinking of Creativity – Play Power ) , which allows people to think joyfully and excitedly about sustainability. I know that it is trendy at the moment to create collages of outfits and share them , so maybe I could include a section in my website where people could share their ideas and different ways of styling garments to show there is more than one use to a garment and it can be worn in different ways.

At the moment I am feeling hopeful with my development in this module. I believe that I could develop these initial ideas into a really good concept that I will feel strong about.

This week I have continued on with my development by researching areas like SS27 Predictions , Key Prints and Graphics for 26/27 , Personas , Forecasted Colours for 26/27 as well as Forecasted Colours for SS27. Now that I have my initial thoughts of sustainability and the STEPIC Drivers, I wanted to research these areas to get an idea of what the Fashion Trends and Market will look like when I would plan for my business to Launch ( Spring / Summer 2027 ). I researched in detail on each of these areas as well as done a persona workshop where we were given a random age and name and created a persona from it. This workshop taught me a lot as I wasn’t very educated on how to successfully do this before this module.

After researching closely at the Forecasted Colours and other predictions, I feel inspired even more by sustainability and it’s earthy and peaceful colours. Researching deeply through the different colour pallets, I finally picked the 3 I was most inspired by which was a colour pallet taken from of the forecasted colours of S/S27 ( Clay ) , a colour pallet taken from the colour of the year 2027 ( Luminous Blue ) and the last colour pallet that was inspired by Meadow Green in action.

All of these pallets together brought me emotions like calm, trust, grounding, inclusivity and free. They are all earthy colours that compliment each other well and in my sketchbook i go into detail about why i felt inspired by these 3 pallets. Moving on I am hoping to think of my colour pallet using my initial ideas and development as well as what I feel inspired by. I also now feel much more confident on researching colour predictions and trends, especially using sites like WGSN.

This week I was not able to complete as much work in my Sketchbook as I would have liked, however I experimented with styling using a plain white T-Shirt. It was only a rough photoshoot – nothing professional. However I was able to develop more of an understanding on Styling and how I can promote clothing to be  multi-styled and upcycled. I used styling techniques like different ways of rolling up sleeves, untucked, tucked, etc. This helped me imagine different situations and emotions when styling this top. Depending on how it is styled changes different things like;  Occasions, Events / Situations , Personality ( Messy , clean , organised , always late etc ) expresses you as a person or how you feel / are you feeling comfortable enough to untuck your shirt to feel relaxed? I enjoyed this mini experimentation with styling as although it was meant to be rough and quick , it benefited me a lot in terms of understanding styling and how it creates an aesthetic / vibe for the person wearing it.

Since my last Blog, I have continued to research on my 10 pages of STEPIC Drivers. I have now developed a much clearer understanding on what STEPIC Drivers are and how they contribute to the Fashion Industry, as well as feel confident in knowing what most of the forecasted STEPIC Drivers are for 2027 – We & Me, Play Power, Sharing The Stage, Climate Change, Protective And Open and Wise Tech.

I am feeling inspired by Play Power and We & Me, and have been linking ideas from both of them together and developing on in my digital sketchbook. I have also been feeling inspired by Climate Changed for reasonings like personal interest on sustainability and geography. My initial ideas from these STEPIC Drivers was how power movements could be created by encouraging the ‘We & Me’ mindset as well as using play power to bring joy, trust and community – allowing connection and positivity. This is what lead me into thinking of sustainability and Climate Changed – developing ideas from creating powerful movements to creating powerful communities and movements through the message of sustainability in the fashion industry.

Overall I am now feeling confident moving on with WGSN and STEPIC Strategies / Drivers. I feel like I have a secure level of understanding on the overall meaning of STEPIC and the website WGSN, as well as the individual forecasted 2027 Drivers. I also understand briefly on Future Consumer Emotions, as I research through each Driver and their Strategies.

This Module is the Introduction to Visual Promotion, where we will develop understanding in multiple areas of visual promotion like; Trend Forecasting, Second – hand clothing brands , creating a website, creating content and more. We will be creating a multiplatform marketing campaign to launch with our websites.

My first thoughts are that I don’t know much about Visual Promotions, I feel like I have a lot of understanding on Social Media due to my generation spending most of their time on it, and Social Media being an overall huge thing in everyone’s day to day lives. However, I’m struggling to understand WGSN and STEPIC Drivers as it is a new thing for me. And this is making me feel a little bit uninterested. I am going to try and research in depth on STEPIC Driver’s as it is something I want to learn, so I have planned out 10 pages for me to research and develop my understanding on what WGSN is, how to use it, and what the content within WGSN means and how it will benefit my development and website / content.

I want to learn what macro – trend boards are, what the forecasted STEPIC Drivers for 2027 mean and what is important when taking into consideration for building a website / brand. I am very new to all these words, meanings and ideas however I am aiming to feel confident by the end of my sketchbook and this module.