Very shortly after my new office was erected I had a final year design student in for the day for some work experience - not a graphic design student, but a ‘fashion design’ student called Kelly.

I work with fashion/retail clients fairly regularly and thus luckily on the day Kelly came into the office I just so happened to have a highly suitable project for her to work on that was very fashion related and also for a client who has achieved long term success in the wholesale fashion business.

The end result of our collaboration on this project proved very useful for both of us, so it was a fantastic ‘work experience’ all round.

The Brief
To create a Breast Cancer charity ribbon shape (with the intention for it to be printed onto a t-shirt) and in-fill it with a funky illustrative design that would use words such as ‘faith’, ‘hope’ and ‘love’ along with other funky patterns and imagery.

The client who commissioned this project happens to be one of my very first clients (my first work for them in January 2003) and who over time has become a highly successful fashion designer and wholesaler. They expressed a desire for the style of the ribbon to echo the tattoo-ish feel of the below t-shirt designs she stocks in her own fashion business.

Kelly’s Creative Input
I set Kelly to work with very little in the way of instruction other than what you’ve read of the brief above. I believe it’s important not to hamper creatives with too much in the way of instructive detail. How can you instruct some to be creative? You can’t is the answer - you just have to let them get on with being creative based on the brief you provide them with and trust that they can intepret what is required in a creative and innovative way.

Kelly did not disappoint.

After an hour or so of scribbling away Kelly came up with the very fetching pattern and imagery below, which she had hand drawn onto paper. You can see how she has considered the brief and paid attention to the images presented by the client for design direction.

Kelly isn’t exceptionally experienced in Adobe Illustrator but she does have a good basic level of knowledge of the programme and so I suggested that she could have a go at recreating the concept in vector format so that it can be printed clearly onto fabric for the client.

This outline pattern below is the end result of Kelly’s reconstruction work in Adobe Illustrator and all she managed to fit in before going home for the day. I was delighted because I knew I definitely wanted to use her bird within the final design as think it’s fantastic and as the deadline was looming up this contribution had saved me some considerable time.

Below is the design I created following on from Kelly’s sketched ideas and vector bird - as you can see I’ve created a vector heart with wings for the client as she mentioned how much she liked this popular tattoo motif, and you can see this in Kelly’s hand sketched concept work also in the bottom left hand corner of the paper she sketched on (above).

I’ve included the breast cancer ribbon itself within the body of the design itself as per Kelly’s concept sketch suggestion. This probably wouldn’t have occured to me to put little breast cancer ribbons into the design, so another excellent bit of creative input from Kelly.

Another idea I took from Kelly’s sketch was to have a faded blurred shadow effect behind some of the imagery, mainly the heart and wings… I think this helps to lend the piece a tattoo air, and I’ve used colouration behind the wording of love, faith and hope also for the same reason.

Getting The Most Out Of Your Work Experience
Whilst chatting with Kelly about how I was likely to use her work within the design (she only came in for one day so didn’t get a chance to watch me working further on the design) I suggested ways in which she could use the design for leverage into the fashion industry entry level job she was aiming for and had discussed with me.

After all, what’s the point of work experience if you don’t actually learn anything or don’t use the projects you work on as examples of your capability in your industry, with the aim of getting a job in your chosen career, or freelance work depending on what you want to achieve.

I suggested that she collate three things in her portfolio:
1. The sketched concept, which she took a photo of and can also retain the original sketch.
2. The vector file to show that she’s able to take a sketch and convert that into a scalable vector image suitable for high quality professional printing onto garments.
3. A sample of the finished design signed off by the client …evidencing the extent of her contribution to this commercial ‘fashion industry’ project.

It’s important to try to get something substantial out of your work experience and I feel that should include;
1. Learn from experienced professionals.
2. Build a portfolio from your work experience days.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Art, Design Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.