Logos and their strengths

Successful logos can make all the difference to a brand, and it determines whether or not you buy/wear an item of clothing sometimes. Looking at brands who have these great logos, you can really tell their brand stories and values, just through the shapes and visuals of their logos. 

Calvin Klein 

Recognisable and influential.

Beautiful, simplistic, powerful, symbolic, iconic, unisex, cool and pure.

 

Jil Sander

Minimal and modern. 

Consistent, pure, secure, quality. Big letters = big security. 

Vivienne Westwood

English, eccentric and historical.

Heritage, royal, futuristic, playful, rebellious, personality, subversive. Orb represents tradition and the past while the ring of Saturn represents the future. 

It's all in the power of the logo - something we need to consider during our fragrance brand development.

Style Icon

Fashion is something that changes all the time, depending on the trends around the world. However, there is one person who I always thinks looks amazing - Kendall Jenner. 

I know it may be cliche, but I really think that Kendall Jenner can really rock anything, and never fails to look amazing! With such long legs, I think that trousers or longer midi skirts/dresses really suit her, and have really influenced me to wear longer skirts much more often (I never did before). Even when she's just in jeans and a t-shirt, she always looks on point, styling the outfit perfectly with a statement accessory shoe, bag or jewellery. Below are a few favourites of her outfits which i would LOVE to own myself!

Reworked Cover - Fragrance Trend Booklet

After receiving feedback from my peers on my fragrance trend booklet, one of things that stood out that could make my booklet more attractive would be to create a move interesting cover. In order to do this I thought I could use layers and shapes to create a more dynamic and visually appealing cover that would entice someone to open it up. 

Working with an image found on Pinterest, I decided to cut it up using geometric shapes to add more diversity and an extra creative aspect to the beautiful illustration which shows all of the ingredients which go into creating floral fragrances. I then decided that I would like to add larger text in a bright colour to create a visual contrast to this grey image, whilst also complimenting some of the floral accent colours in the illustration. This text would be used on an overlay sheet of acetate to add texture and layering to the booklet, also making the booklet interactive, creating further excitement to turn the pages. I'm really pleased with the new cover, and cannot wait to work on the rest of the booklet, really testing my new skills learnt on Photoshop and In Design, and pushing my creative processing to the limit to try and create something I would never have done beforehand. Here it is, hope you like it and think it is an improvement!  

Nottingham Indie Fashion Week

With all the buzz on the big fashion weeks across the globe biggest cities, New York, London, Paris; I was very pleased to see that Nottingham had jumped on the bandwagon and introduced its own fashion week - Nottingham Indie Fashion Week. With events across the whole week, I decided that I would attend the main event, the catwalk which took place on Tuesday in the Lace Market St. Mary's Church. 

The scene was beautiful, almost perfect for a magical fashion show. The tall, dark church really allowed for the lighting to create a dreamy and enchanting setting, which really made the designers collections and model's make up look fantastic and flawless. I would however say that some of the lights were placed irresponsibly as they shone right into the audience, but this was the only main fault of the whole evening, and well - without the spotlights we wouldn't have been able to see anything at all! 

The collections were amazing, with some focusing on scarfs, shoes or full outfits, the variety really was huge. I was particularly impressed with the designer 'One BC', who really livened up the night with their more modern fashion pieces, which I could even see hitting some of the big fashion nights such as Paris Fashion Week. I also loved the idea of a goodie bag on every seat, as it really made it inviting and seem very exclusive when we arrived, and the leaflets and discounts inside really were appealing.

Overall, I really enjoyed the whole night. With a few edits to music choice (as some seemed almost too depressing - would've been good to have been livened up and magical to match the rest of the decor and styling), the event would be a huge hit with many critics. I can't wait to see if they hold more fashion events in the Nottingham area, as they are very convenient and exciting for an FCP student, especially if they're free!

Fragrance Concept Presentation

Presentations are always scary for me, as I hate talking in front of big groups of people, but it is something I need to get much more comfortable doing, especially on a fashion communication course - and it makes it much better doing it in groups rather than solo! After weeks of preparation, from our individual trend booklets to macro trends discovered in groups during seminars, we were asked to communicate our research and context developments which would go towards creating a new big idea for a brand new and innovative fragrance product.  

Working with people I had never really spoken to before was quite difficult to start with, but after our ideas starting flowing we definitely got to know each other better, and now I even meet up with them outside of the required contact hours to socialise. I really like being put in different groups as means I get to interact with new people, and this is something which is really important for preparation in the fashion industry. 

Meeting quite a few times a week we all allocated ourselves separate tasks to do, and really enjoyed working together, creating what we think is the next big thing in the fragrance industry, a customisable scent. Although bespoke scents are available in the luxury fragrance market (we're talking thousands of pounds!), there was nothing which allowed you to customise and mix scents in a completely portable and sustainable product. Our concept is to create a fragrance which has four different scents in one container, all which are solid so are long lasting, and have the same base note so mix well with each other. The 'bottle' would be much like a multi-coloured biro pen (as shown here), whilst also being refillable as each solid was completed, allowing it to be sustainable and save the consumer money on packaging when re-buying. We got our inspiration from a 'The Simpson's' episode which shows Homer using a similar device which held all of his favourite sauces, which really emphasises an important aspect - that inspiration can come from ANYWHERE!   

After being confident in our new product, it was much easier to talk about, and we decided that the commuting business man would be most interested in this product as the modern man is much more immersed in looking good and grooming, but still needs to work to support his family, often travelling and working many hours to do this. Therefore, a portable fragrance product, which allows them to put their own macho stamp on, would be very appealing to them, whilst being in this discrete and convenient container would not emasculate them when applying.  

We converted our ideas to a powerpoint, and here I have included the slides from this presentation: 

After completing our presentation, we received some feedback from our lecturers which have really helped up consider what we might alter for our next presentation:

Positives: 

• Loved the mood boards
• Great layout and consistency throughout
• Used all aspects of course so far - 7ps, brand onion, market levels, macro+micro trends, FCP process, ect.
• Lots of visuals
• Shows great use of where inspiration came from, and the journey to big idea

Improvements: 

• Maybe try not to have big clumps of talking from lots of people, interchange to ensure is engaging for audience - may be matter of preference between lecturers as others have noted they really like this!
• Try to ensure all mood boards have same style aspects so that continues consistency 

#fcpreflection