Creative Reflection

I wanted to apply to this competition again because i enjoy illustrations designs and last year it didn’t go as smoothly because it was my first time taking part in it and didn’t know what to expect such as the challenges i faced. The quality wasn’t as great due to the smaller frame which reduced the quality. So i learnt from my mistake and used illustrator to create my design. I focused on the main characters of Santa, elf and his raindeer to capture the warm and fun times together during Christmas with a twist of cool with their trendy glasses. It was fun to create and i would like to take part in it again next year.

When i printed my illustrations, it was blurry and i asked one of my classmates for advice as well as researching online. It is important to know how to print it to the highest quality. After this, i know how to print my illustrations in the highest quality and is something to remember when i will be printing my future works.

I decided to use bookbinding technique to put my travel guide together as i have been to an induction class before and have enjoyed it. So i wanted to use it for my travel guide puts it together neatly.

It is a very exciting day as we are presenting of our whole concept and outcomes. I felt really proud of my group because we all worked really hard to ensure everything was made with the highest quality and to the best standard. The feedback we got from the creative director – Jo Glover was good as she said it is Selfridges style and they really liked the interactive website, pop up store and everything is really something Selfridges would do. She mentioned about carefully choosing the right people for the mockups which was one of my peers work. I also take it into account so next time if i do mockup taking professional advice. Hearing the other groups was very nice and it gave an insight of their concept and how they bring it to life – what things did they do differently, what areas of designs did they chose. It made me think that it could be created like this and i saw everyone’s hard work that got put into this. This was an wonderful opportunity and grateful for everything that has happened and i can put this project into my portfolio

This was an amazing opportunity to allow myself to focus something i am passionate about and want to change. I immediately thought about travel guides and improving them to have more brighter colours and fun to it. This is because i love travelling and i have always seen the boring and typical ones where they would have a lot of text and some photos. As a designer, this was something i wanted to change for it to be more exciting and reflect the happy mood of travelling. I have also seen illustrators on instagram with beautiful travel diaries or journals. When i see them it makes me want to travel instantly and i love the creativeness. This is something i want to improve on as it takes practise, time and patience. I used procreate to create this because i can freely sketch what i have in mind. It was harder to think what i could include to make it interesting so i researched different styles and saved illustrations i like on pinterest for inspiration. I tried to include more colours originality of designs.

During this time of the Selfridges project, we started to get into groups based on our ideas from before. I was more interested on the interactive website and joined the group. It was very exciting to work with others from different courses. I love working with other people as i get to learn a lot from their ideas and thinking process. I wanted to try lots of new ways of creating so i insisted that i can try and create designs for the 3D space too. I worked with my peers on creating the best ideas and visuals that would work with our topic which was reuse. I also used my illustration skills to create the map of reuse and illustrations for the website mockup. I really enjoyed the process which i used illustrator to create it from. I felt like before adobe programs would be difficult due to the many tools it has. But using the program during this project has allowed me to be more confident and it is more memorable. We had a great teamwork as we all helped each other we had troubles and equally divided roles.

For the start of the Selfridges project it was more calm as we focused on our own research and thoughts. I felt like i had more time which i didn’t want to waste so i decided to work on my illustrations work and create more of what i want to create, what i am passionate about and improve on my illustrations skills. This is something i should regularly do to improve my work and to share with the world through instagram.

We had our first meeting online as a group and this was really nice to discuss the brief and share our ideas of what we thought. It can be a little overwhelming because it is quite a big brief. There were many outcomes we can choose to create such as windows concept, space design, poster design etc. i was very excited as i wanted to work in these of areas of design before so this project would be a really good opportunity to try new things. This month we focused on working on our own ideas for project earth briefly. So it gives a direction of where we want to work towards. This was a good starting point.

This brief was held in the Selfridges pop up store where they already had a exhibition called universe. This was the future of feel-goodness as part of superself, they are embracing the enriching and uplifting power of art and fashion with Op-Art artist Victor Vasarely. It was really interesting to be in the space and see how they have they displayed the products. It gives me inspiration what can be included and i like when installation includes everything from the wall, floors and the ceiling that transform into another world as if it has taken you away from reality. This is something i can consider when creating designs.

I went with some of my friends to Kew Gardens and then to this exhibition called Natural Reserve which was located there. I love art that focus on the beauty of nature as I like to create art on flowers and sceneries so it was very exciting. This was an immersive 360 degree floor installation that contains 17,000 steel flowers painted and assembled by hand. On one side, it was colourful that showed life and on the other hand, it was all black which showed death. I didn’t expect the change of colours and was surprised on the two contrasts it had and made me see everything that was lively and colourful to things that were dark and lifeless. It was beautiful and reminded me of life, that nothing lasts forever and we should enjoy the moment and not take things for granted. I enjoy installations so seeing other artists works inspires me a lot and I can learn lots of new ways to create visuals and meaningful work and create in the future too.

This project was to produce a product packaging for their limited edition (hot cross bun) that will be released in March. Product packaging is something I am very interested in and I wanted to do more during this year. So it was very fun to experiment with the designs and colours. I had 3 design ideas – one on Grenada which the cocoa beans were from, second one was inspired by 58% of cocoa content and the third was inspired by the factory and the easter season. When the designs are judged in December, I am planning to create the final design using illustrator. This will be a really great chance for me to upgrade my skills so I’m more confident in using it. Also using a software during as project helps me learn better and remember it!