The Design Process
This cross disciplinary project included students from the study areas of Fashion Design, Fashion Communication, Interactive Visual Design and Industrial Design. These students worked as a collaborative team throughout the whole project, as well as breaking into specialised teams relevant to their discipline areas – these teams were the Fashion Design Team, Accessory Design Team, Digital Design Team and Communications and Marketing Team.
Fashion Design Team
This project saw six fashion students design an eight look capsule collection using printed textiles from Hopevale Arts & Cultural Centre. These students were challenged to design a youthful and innovative collection that had commercial potential and highlighted the textile designs. The design process included image based research, design sketching, pattern making, range development, toiling, construction and styling.
“We learnt to quickly adapt looks with changing environments and design directions. This included styling for runways and photoshoots”
– student designer, Emma Wright
Accessory Design Team
Accessory design for the project drew direct inspiration from the motifs of the Hopevale printed textiles. Working closely with the fashion design team, the accessories were designed to integrate cohesively into the fashion collection. Final designs included necklaces, earrings, shoes, harnesses, and buttons. Design development included brainstorming, moodboards, analogue and digital sketches, and rough prototyping, with the final pieces being created through a combination of 3D printing, laser cutting and traditional woodworking techniques.
“The project gave the team the ability to immerse themselves into the fashion industry and understand correct practices of fashion designers”
– accessory designers Rebecca Wickham and Matthew Crane
Digital Design Team
The Digital Design Team was given the opportunity to brand the identities of the 2018 Hopevale fashion collection and the Forging Fashion Connections project. This task consisted of iterative client-based design for the creation of each brand’s logo. The two brand identities created includes style guides which influence the team’s graphic design content for digital marketing platforms such as this website and the FFC social media asset, to ensure cohesion and promote engagement. Additionally, oversaw the production for the lookbook. All images and photographs used throughout the website and instagram (excluding the media page) has been entirely in-house generated.
It is important to note that the logo used for the 2018 Hopevale fashion collection operates as part of the Forging Fashion Connections project, which is a separate entity from the Hopevale Arts & Cultural Centre.
Communications & Marketing Team
The communications team was responsible for keeping the project running smoothly. This team took on the bulk of communication with our industry partners and disseminated this information to the other design teams. Outside of these internal mechanisations, the main aims for the communication team was to increase awareness of Hopevale, and the Forging Fashion Connections collaboration. Social media concentrated on building a community within the platforms and to maintain a consistent message through the platforms’ images.
Team members also conducted research and artist interviews to document the textile artist of Hopevale and inform the design teams of the stories behind the art works. from these interviews, press releases were developed for the Intertwined and Bulmba-barra showcases to market the FFC collaboration to popular media.