References
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/394979829814645323/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/394979829814645316/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/394979829814645325/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/556476097702232163/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/614389574140847829/
https://paddle8.com/work/jen-stark/126183-drippy-2
https://www.google.com.sg/search?q=monument+valley+game&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjN8r66__vcAhULWysKHTUuDFgQ_AUICigB&biw=1258&bih=703
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150624-arts-most-famous-illusion
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/394979829814645366/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/394979829814645374/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/394979829814661179/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/394979829814661180/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/394979829814661199/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/394979829814661258/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/394979829814661261/
https://www.consciouslifestylemag.com/music-and-the-brin-affects-mood/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/71183136@N08/6947183226/
“Break the cycle” campaign application
An application will be launched as part of this campaign promoting information on campaign objectives, event updates, customisable profiles and an online apparel trading marketplace.
LINK:
https://xd.adobe.com/view/0c06f617-46ef-46bc-533a-5962ab26f6b6-7a37/
Application marketplace
Break the Cycle’s marketplace is a platform for consumers to swap their apparels within the community. All they have to do is upload their apparels under “listings” and update what they’re looking for under “wishlist”. The marketplace is a great platform for fashion lovers alike to trade their wardrobe without breaking the bank or buying more apparels they have no need of. This platform will be a long-term initiative that hopes to create a more sustainable circular mindset of recycling apparels and reducing textile waste.
The marketplace is also extremely user-friendly, allowing for easy swapping by product types, range, brands and users. Hence, users will find it easier to navigate and find items that they are looking for. For user profile, users can state their size and style preference. Hence, users can find others within the community with a similar style that they are more likely to swap with.
There is also a “my tickets” section which ties in with the swappable bazaar event and users can keep track of the type of clothing they can swap during the event.
Reflection
I think this campaign application would be a great platform as compared to other online selling applications such as carousell that works on the idea of buying and selling. For online selling platforms, if sellers are unable to sell their apparels, they would most likely donate or dispose of it. On the other hand, by trading their apparels, they are able to lengthen the lifespan of each item of clothing and give it a new lease of life.
Hence, the application would be a great start towards a long-term solution for a sustainable fashion industry.
“Break the cycle” campaign logo and event tags
Objectives
Break the cycle is a campaign launched as an initiative to promote a more sustainable business model, a platform that allows a longer lease of life for your apparels.
We believe that loved clothes last and we want to create a community that allows for an open exchange of apparels and ideas, to learn to fall in love with your wardrobe or someone else’s. Hence, the campaign hopes to create a circular mindset and culture of upcycling apparels and making conscious fashion decisions.
Campaign logo
The campaign is titled “Break the cycle”, which is to encourage consumers to break away from the current unsustainable cycle of buying and disposing of fast fashion apparels. The logo was designed to resemble that of a recycling logo with a spin of the slogan, “reuse, repair, recycle”. This is to encourage a circular mindset of reusing clothing or buying second-hand clothes, repairing and mending existing apparels and to recycle old apparels responsibly.
Conscious Fashion Week
It would be an annual event consisting of a bazaar held at selected tertiary institutions for students to swap their apparels within the local community as well as workshops held for students to learn more about making conscious fashion choices and ways of upcycling their apparels. This will be launched together with the campaign application which will be my second design artefact.
Target Audience
My main target audience would be millennials who are the largest consumers of fast fashion. The swappable bazaar will first be held at tertiary institutions given the nature of this event, it would be more convenient if it was held within a community which allows for an easier exchange of apparels. Furthermore, students in tertiary institutions are one of the largest consumers of fast fashion given its affordability and availability. The event will later be launched to the wider community once more awareness is garnered.
Campaign promotion
In order to garner more participation for this “swappable bazaar” event, tags with information detailing the event will be attached to clothing at popular retail places such as H&M–who already has a conscious fashion line–to promote the application as well as the event itself. Each tag would also come with a short description or “teaser” as to what the campaign is about.
To create a culture of change that currently thrives on an unsustainable system of buying and disposing of clothing. In order to do so, we must begin with ourselves, individual efforts on a collective scale. This starts with thinking differently about the way we buy and wear clothes, to be more mindful of the way we shop and the impacts of our actions. Where our sense of value is not defined by the latest trends, but by the stories behind our clothes so that it becomes an important piece of our wardrobe and is not easily replaceable or disposed of.
Our actions can change everything. We don’t need to boycott fast fashion brands, but we can demand better quality clothes that afford a better quality of life to the people who make them. Demand that each item we choose to buy and wear was made with dignity and made to last.
Reflections
Through this assignment, I learned a lot more about organising information and hierarchy within texts. It is important to knock out certain information and this can be done through the use of text weight, size, colours, font choice, sequence etc. Also, it is difficult to visually represent information and to find that balance between visual appeal and communicating data. Takeaways from this assignment of organising and structuring information can definitely be applied to future projects. As a whole, I felt that I could have done more to establish clearer hierarchy but I am relatively satisfied with the final outcome and it is a huge improvement from the first draft.
Fast Fashion Infographic
The solution
A business model of the future should aim to foster a deeper and longer lasting connection to fewer and better clothes– sustainable, valuable relationship
Draft 1
Receipt concept of laying out information
Feedback:
Draft 2
Feedback:
Hence, I decided to go with a flat lay of a receipt to create more dimension and reduce visual noise.
Final Infographic in the next post.
1. What are some of the current issues confronting our world today? Amongst them, what is of interest and a cause of concern to you?
1. Sexual assaults/ harassment
For every 1000 rapes, estimated that only 310 are reported ( just under 1/3) Rape is the most under reported crime
Only a fraction (57) lead to arrest
Only a fraction of the arrest lead to prosecution (11)
A fraction of the prosecuted lead to incarceration (6)
For sexual harassment in the workplace, the least common respond was to report it and only 30% of those harassed speak up – 70% remain silent
75% of employees who spoke out against workplace mistreatment faced some form of retaliation
Fear is the number 1 reason (20%)
These stats only reflect those experiences of straight white women and not women of colour, gays, men, trans etc.
According to a 2015 survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality, 47% of transgender people report being sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, both in and out of the workplace.
http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2017-silence-breakers/
2. Takeout Waste
Takes a lot of energy and resources to produce single use items, more resources needed to be extracted to replace it
Reduce & Reuse > Recycle – Waste Minimisation
What is being done to mitigate this problem?
Reduce
Reuse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qx2WFpNTPs
3. Inclusivity of make up brands
“ African-American women spend $7.5 billion annually on beauty products, but shell out 80 percent more money on cosmetics and twice as much on skin care products than the general market.”
Why do most companies not have the same inclusivity or the success to go with it?
Fenty Beauty is not the first company to have such extensive foundation shades – but what made it stand out from the rest?
There has been efforts made in mainstream beauty industry to be more inclusive, but why is it taking them so long?
There are products for women of colour but beauty industries still focused a lot on skin lightening products
Cultural movements– Black is beautiful and the all out effort to install racial pride in black people have done much to neutralise and offset much of the damaging effects of oppression from being black
Black owned cosmetics – Fashion Fair , Black Opl, Iman, Nars, Bobbie Brown, Mac
Mac Vibe Tribe collection – Cultural Appropriation, culturally insensitive
Independent brands have stepped in to fill the mark – The Lip Bar, Cocotique, koyVoca ( rely heavily on social media to promote their brand)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5e4gwDGrNk
4. Overconsumption– Fast Fashion
Apparel industry is the second most polluting industry in the world
A trend for companies to outsource their production = demand for cheaper labour and material
80% drop in employment since 1990s
Huge consequences for the people making the clothing and the environment
Polyester a polluting plastic made from fossil fuel, now in over half of our clothing
Requires 8x the energy to produce polyester
Where is this clothing being made?
Environmental Impact
Social Impact (Who are the ones making these apparels)
Second largest polluter of fresh water globally – most developing countries release their dye products directly into the local water supply
Solution (what can be done?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r8V4QWwxf0
The True Cost
2. Why is the issue important? Who does it affect and how?
The term “fast fashion” refers to the speed at which clothes are consumed and disposed. On average, each American throws out 82 pounds of textiles each year. Large fashion companies such as Zara, H&M, Topshop and Forever21 release as many as 18 collections a year which results in consumers constantly renewing their wardrobes in accordance with the latest trends.
Inefficient production practices and the exploitation of workers in developing countries with capital-friendly labor laws allow these companies to produce clothing on a mass scale and sell them at extremely low prices. Many consumers are ignorant to the transnational flow of goods, exploitative labor conditions and environmentally corruptive production practices that result in the cheap prices we see on our clothing tags. Mass supply and affordability, combined with the incessant craving for novelty bred by consumer culture, has created a mindset of expendability when it comes to clothing that the planet is unable to sustain.
At the end of the day, fast fashion is bad for the environment, promotes labour exploitation, encourages a consumerist mindset of buying stuff we do not need and the only ones who benefit from this are corporate companies.
https://prospectjournal.org/2017/05/24/crisis-in-our-closets-the-environmental-impact-of-fast-fashion/
3. Who do you need to communicate to, and why?
Main target audience would mainly be consumers in developed countries such as ourselves who are the most susceptible to marketing campaigns by the fast fashion industries and the driving force behind the growth of this industry.
Hopefully to raise awareness on the detrimental effects of overconsumption socially and environmentally, as well as lifestyle changes they can adopt to mitigate this problem. As consumers, we need to shift our habits toward investing in quality attire. We should buy clothing with the intent of wearing it for years to come and eliminate the desire to constantly renew the items in our closets. Each purchase must be backed by the consciousness of personal responsibility.
4. How has visual communication contributed to address the cause?
http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/ad-day-patagonia-136745/
Celeste Tesoriero’s “anti-campaign”
Celeste Tesoriero is the Sydney-based designer who has shot her AW’16 collection on location with every model wearing every garment inside-out.
“Sustainabilty doesn’t have to this big scary thing: it can be as simple as asking who made my clothes?” “You see this ripple effect: once people start asking simple questions, they soon start asking more complex ones, and they can make their own choices about what feels right for them and their morals with more knowledge.
http://www.styledbymarieclaire.com.au/inspiration/designer-spotlight/celeste-tesoriero
Fashion Revolution ( #whomademyclothes )
http://fashionrevolution.org/about/
Fashion Revolution believe in a fashion industry that values people, the environment, creativity and profit in equal measure.
“We want to unite people and organisations to work together towards radically changing the way our clothes are sourced, produced and consumed, so that our clothing is made in a safe, clean and fair way.
We believe that collaborating across the whole value chain — from farmer to consumer — is the only way to transform the industry.”
Zine #002: LOVED CLOTHES LAST
http://fashionrevolution.org/resources/fanzine2/
#lovedclotheslast explores the issue of waste and mass-consumption in the fashion industry, and hopes to inspire you to buy less, care more, and know how to make the clothes you love last for longer.
I think that the idea of a zine is a really smart way of tying it together with the cause – given its fresh take on a traditional fashion magazine. It is visually engaging with its infographics, illustrations, visuals, text, layout etc. It is bold, fresh and just screams “rebellious”. It is a great idea to create visual interest while providing the relevant information that makes the viewer want to pick up a copy to learn more about the cause.
We have finally come to our project of the semester!! Initially I had a hard time coming up with an idea for my project but I knew I wanted to do an extension of our project 3 – type as pattern. I thought that slapping a pattern on a notebook would be too cliche and overdone so I thought of all the possibilities of when I could use type as pattern.
Moodboard
I came across a bunch of typographic card designs online which inspired me to make my own. I wanted to incorporate 4 different typefaces and a different colour to differentiate the 4 suits.
Design Exploration
These were a few of the design explorations that I did. Initially, I wanted to make a unique design for each alphabet / number with different styles, playing with repetition, scale, gradient, density, opacity etc. However, after my first consultation, Shirley mentioned that everything ended up looking disconnected as there were multiple styles in a single set of suits and and it was better to stick to a single style throughout. Also, for the design such as the “K”, the “pattern” aspect of the design was lost as I was just cutting up the K into fragments. In the end, I decided to just go with the style of the “A”, sticking to interlacing and slicing up the font. There was also the issue of whether I should use letters or numbers for the 2-10 but in the end, I decided to just stick to numbers to avoid making it too complicated for the user to read the cards.
I wanted to keep the design consistent throughout all the “A”s but I found it a little hard given that each typeface has different anatomies and it was not possible for everything to follow a fix template. For instance, the difference in the height of the crossbar would mean that I have to alight it higher or lower according to the different types. As shown above, Bodoni has a lower crossbar, hence, it is cut off when interlaced with another “A”. It was also hard to interlace certain alphabets with certain typefaces being narrower or wider.
Design Backing
As for the backing of my cards, I used my pattern design from project 3 but I had a hard time deciding on the colours. In the end I decided to stick to monochrome as using multiple colours wouldn’t make any senses given that the colour would give away the identity of the suits when playing. And sticking to blue would not match the other colours used on the front.
Design packaging
I used elements of the different fonts on the box itself. The name font play is a dual meaning title. It means playing with the physical cards itself and playing with the typography at the same time.
Font Play is a deck of cards that features the anatomy of 4 different typefaces– Baskerville, Bodoni 72, Superclaredon and Didot. A unique pattern is created for each set of number or alphabet based on the type’s anatomy. Notice how the characteristics of each font affects the design as you play!
The whole concept behind Font Play is to get users to compare how anatomy of the different typefaces affects the patterns created and to spot the differences behind each unique design.
Coming up with the dimensions of the box was a bit of a challenge for me as I based the measurements off a generic poker card box template. However, the paper quality and thickness would be differ from the original poker card and I was afraid of whether my cards would fit.
End product
Reflections
Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the results. Despite the tedious process of designing 52 cards, I really enjoyed myself and it was pretty fun exploring the anatomies of the different typefaces. Had I more time, I would probably explore more compositions and maybe include a “fun fact” sheet for each typeface used to tie the designs together better. Cheers to the end of project 4 to conclude this semester 🙂