Autumn/Winter 2015/16 Trend Booklet

As another part of our Summer brief, we were asked to create a trend booklet for 2 trends that we felt had the potential to be big trends within the Autumn/Winter seasons for 2015 and 2016.

I decided that my first trend would be called 'Back to School' this was due to the amount of trends that I had seen based around clothing that showed a resemblance to that of school uniform styles. I choose to look in particularly at The pleated skirt and The pussybow blouse as my two subcategories within this trend, as I had read a lot about how they were coming back into fashion.

For my second trend, I based it around 'The Sixties', I decided on this as I had seen a lot about the seventies and eighties fashion making a comeback but I also noticed a return of Sixties inspired clothing. After doing some research, my trend prediction proved to be correct as I saw that Guy Ritchie's remake of 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E', had affirmed a comeback for the sixties within the fashion industry. As my two subcategories I looked into the new form of sixties style in general and then sixties inspired accessories that I had seen a lot of.

We then we were asked to take one of the two trends and show how it had been represented within the media. I decided to take the 60's trend further as I felt that it would not be as well known as a trend and therefore had a lot more depth about it, as it has come about following on from a new film release.

You can have a look at my trend booklet by clicking on the link below for my ISSUU...
http://issuu.com/harrinicholls/docs/aw_201516_trend_booklet._spreads

Portuguese Fashion

As part of our Summer brief, we were asked to document how we kept an interest and widened our knowledge within Fashion Communication and Promotion over the summer. We were then asked to use this information to make two moodboards.

As I spent 5 weeks in Portugal over the summer, I thought it would be a good idea to look into Portuguese fashion and see how how it was represented in their culture.

Immediately I noticed that there were two contrasting sides within their styles. In the smaller towns and villages, Fashion was very culturally orientated, and most clothing was focused around the famous mosaic Portuguese tile, that predominantly follows a cool blue colour palette. This famous print has been designed to fit all different types of garments for all age ranges, that can be worn in the day or in the evening.

However on the contrasting side, in the more upmarket towns, the style of clothing was much more expensive and over the top. Women were dressing to uphold a high class ethos being covered from head to toe in designer labels. I was intrigued to see where the designer garments were being purchased as I had not visited anywhere where these garments were available.

After doing some research, I found out about 'The Fashion Clinic', which is located in the picturesque setting of Lisboa, The Fashion Clinic has two has two shops on the fashion concious street of Avenida da Liberdade. A shop for women is in the Tivoli Forum. A companion men's shop is at No.2 192.

Founded in 2005, these concept stores have become the place in Portugal to pick up elegant, ready to wear clothes, shoes, bags and accessories, as well as perfume and candles, cosmetics, books and music, eyewear and jewellery. Some of the brands that are being represented within The Fashion Clinic include: Balmain, Diane Fon Furstenberg, Tom Ford, Etro, Gucci, DKNY, YSL, Jimmy Choo and Missoni (to name a few)!!

To enter The Fashion Clinic you must make an appointment with a stylist to ensure that you get the best service possible for the items that you require. Inside, you are said to be treated as an A-list celebrity no matter what your budget.

I paid a visit to The Fashion Clinic to see what the Visual Merchandising was like in the shop windows, and I can honestly say that it was completely breathtaking..the way the windows were put together were effortless and perfectly showcased the high end brands to there full potential..even the glass windows were glistening with not a smear in sight!

I found the whole experience of looking into another cultures fashion really exciting and interesting. It helped me to open my eyes and see beyond the high end designers, and actually look into a culture and how it is used to be represented in fashion to consumers on the street. I feel as though researching and creating these moodboards help me to gather a wider knowledge of how fashion is represented in different countries, as well as getting more involved with the primary research that was needed to find out about what I did!

First year of being an FCP Student: Stop, Start, Reflection..

First year seems to have flown by in a flash and I am now looking forward to broadening my knowledge moving into second year! Looking back over my first year as an FCP student, I believe I have become more confident within my work and the skills I have learnt during the course. 

What are my strengths?
- Creating a strong structure and design recipe to reflect the brand being analysed
- Authoriative and convincing tone of voice
- Clear documentation of research - Harvard referencing was precise and well sourced
- Extensive research from both the required reading list and extra resources
- Considered, organised and detalied approach to my workbook; showing a clear development of ideas
- Clear and detailed Blog; frequent posts with a mixture of personal reflection and posts to show how I am expanding my FCP knowledge
- Good use of historical and cultural references

What do I need to improve?
- Ensure all visuals are of the highest quality to ensure I don't loose marks over these small details
- Pay close attention to professional publications for inspiration
- Play up to my interests within my workbook and blog posts

How will I keep the 'passion alive' for FCP?
- Continue to keep my work at a high standard by ensuring that I have a genuine interest in the work that I am creating
- Spend time researching other areas of FCP to broaden my knowledge for the course
- Experiment within my work to see how far I can take it and how I can make it unique

Promotional Plan Inspiration - Cereal Magazine

For the inspiration of the layout of my Promotional Plan, I decided to look into Cereal Magazine. The reason behind this was because I liked the minimal, clean line approach that they presented within their layout. I also felt that it was a fitting choice, as I believe it would be one of the magazines that our target consumer would read.

I particularly focused on using Cereal's front cover as my front cover inspiration as I liked the simplistic layout to which consists of the brand name and a singular image in the centre of the page on a soft grey background with a white border.

Cannes Film Festival 2015

The 2015 Cannes Film Festival awards saw some amazing dresses grace the red carpet..here are some of my favourites...

Cheryl Fernandez-Versini

Doutzen Kros

Naomi Watts

Lavabo advertising video

Overall, we were really pleased with the outcome of our final advertising video as we felt that it captured the aesthetic of our brand and the tone of voice that we were presenting. The video presents our concept of connecting with the senses and the context behind our brand, of owning a collection of allergen free and non toxic products which is shown through the use of outdoor filming that captures all elements of nature.

If we were to do the video again, I would have liked to have taken more care with certain close up shots as some are very shaky which makes for a poor quality finish.

Graphic Burger

Graphic Burger is a website that allows you to take a template and create a mock up of a scenario using you own photographs. This meaning it is perfect for finding mock ups of potential advertising settings for our brand.

For social media channels, I decided that it was most important to have these advertised on smart phones, laptops or tablets. The reason behind this is because I felt that these 3 communication tools are the ones that are most likely to be used by our target consumer; a 25+ year old mother who is always on the go. I used these 3 platforms to advertise Lavabo's social media channels and website as I felt that these were the best fitted to the platforms used. Here are some of the advertising ideas that I came up with, using some of the templates from Graphic Burger...

Aswell as this, I also created mock ups in potential advertising scenarios for our campaign. I decided on using a gym changing room and a shopping centre as I felt these were 2 settings that our target consumer would spend her free time, as she leads a healthy lifestyle and takes care of her appearance.

Overall, I am really pleased with the outcome of these images as I feel that they reflect the aesthetic of our brand and the settings to which our target consumer would place themselves.

Guerilla Marketing Examples

Swiss Skydive

























Nikon


Discovery Channel


Bounty kitchen roll


Maximum ride


Elmex


Beau Rivage resort casino


Colgate Toothpaste


IKEA


Copenhagen Zoo


Guerilla Marketing shows off a new and innovative way of marketing within the media. The fun and quirky take on stereotypical marketing campaigns make for an eye catching and memorable campaign that will be remembered for years to come.

Lavabo - Final Advertising Campaign

Here is the final advertising campaign for Lavabo. Overall, I am really pleased with the outcome of the final campaign as I feel that it truly reflects the concept and essence of our brand. Lavabo is all about connecting with senses- you touch it, feel it, smell it. Therefore the ad is perfectly fitted to our brand as it involves the movement of stitching and the use of different fabrics on top of the image to reflect the idea that our product makes the consumer want to involve their senses to smell the scent of our product and how it works with their delicate clothing.

The closeup of the Lavabo bottle placed on top of the 3 woolen yarns therefore creates a direct link between our product and the materials and fabrics that it is involved with.

By having the main focal campaign image on the left fully bled to the edge of the page and the opposing image on the right centered with a border of white space surrounding it, adds a sense of visual contrast to which makes it more visually engaging, inviting and exciting for the audience to look at.

The colour theme within the campaign is very soft and subdued to reinforce our neutral colour palette for our brand.

Overall I am really pleased with the final outcome of our campaign, as well as it being extremely exciting to finally see the end result for our brand after working so hard on it!

Lavabo joins the World Wide Web!

To create Lavabos website, I used a basic template design for an online layout and varied the colour tones within the page to ensure that it fitted best within our colour palette for our brand. I used soft greys, lilacs and dusky pinks to make up the 3 main colours within the website layout.

The website offers consumers the chance to shop our range of products, as well as being able to contact our company incase they have any questions about our products and their use for different garments. Consumers are also able to explore different product ranges depending on their preferences surrounding scent notes, products for specific fabrics, as well as being able to find out where our products are available to them in their nearest location.

The website contains links to our social media pages, to ensure that the consumers can keep up to date with all of the latest Lavabo antics!

In order to grab the consumers initial attention, there is a subtle discount offered at the top left hand side of the webpage, in which offers them the chance to redeem 20% off of their first purchase if they join our mail list. This discount not only helps to draw sales in from new consumers, but also to boost our sales and returning customers if they stay updated with the brand to see what other potential promotional offers we will offer to them.

Overall, I am pleased with the final outcome of our website as I feel that it represents our brand essence and tone of voice perfectly; refined, minimalist, neutral and sophisticated.

Lavabo joins Instagram!

Lavabo's Instagram page is connected to their other social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter. It follows the same layout and colour scheme to ensure that all 3 platforms are coherent alongside one another, making for a more sophisticated and professional finish.

The Instagram account offers the audience a chance to have a sneak peak behind the scenes of Lavabo's latest campaign shoots as well as the release of new products.

Lavabo joins Twitter!

Aswell as joining Facebook, we felt that it was important to branch out to other social media sites, to ensure that we reached out to all of our target consumers and the specific social media sites that each individual consumer may use.

We decided to use the brand logo as the main profile image, and the stacked fabrics and materials as the header photo, in order to keep a cohesive flow throughout our social media platforms. The colour theme used for our twitter page is made up of soft, neutral tones to ensure that our brand essence is best represented through all of our promotional platforms.

Lavabo joins Facebook!

 As part as the launch and promotion of our brand, we decided to join Social Networking sites in order to connect with our target consumer to ensure that we get the word out of our new brand to allow us to be as successful as possible!

The reason I decided to use the cover photo of the stacked fabrics and materials, was a decision made that I felt best described our brands concept, to which is all about the touch, feel and smell of our product and how it connects with your senses. Also the strategically placed pink blanket forms the shape of a bow in the centre, something that I felt also helped to reinforce our brand name, LavaBO.

 The Facebook page allows users to follow our journey as we transition into a well known fragrance brand.

 The Facebook page will be updated regularly to ensure that our consumers can keep in contact with our brand and what we are up to. Aswell as keep an eye out for various promotional offers and competitions that we will be advertising.

The different photo albums placed on our page will showcase the behind the scenes shots of our campaigns and the final outcomes to make our consumers feel as though they are a part of the creative process within the creation of our brand.

Met Gala 2015 - The dresses!

Waking up to the scene of Met Gala dresses draped across every social media channel on my phone this morning, made it a little easier to wake up! 

Every A-lister you could possibly think of were dressed to the nines in the most extravagant gowns strutting down the carpet. Although slightly underwhelmed by the majority of dresses, there were a few that were utterly breathtaking. 

The Good (My Favourite looks)

The Bad....

 The predictable...

And the goddamn ugly! Although, how ever horrendous it may be, Rihanna no doubtably got what she was after...the media attention!

Also, within this years Met Gala, I also noticed an overriding theme of Oriental style dresses.

Outdoor & Indoor photoshoot reflection

Following on from our 2 days of photoshoots, we decided to look back and reflect on the days events and see what we felt went well and what, if given the chance to change, we would.

Outdoor Photoshoot: Positives
- Being in an open space allowed us to created the natural and relaxed feel of our brand with the help of soft natural lighting and natural props from our surroundings such as trees, grass, blossom etc.
- Planning ahead of the shoot to ensure that we knew exactly what we wanted to have achieved by the end of the day, allowed us to be fully focused and have good time management skills, as well as keeping a structure to the day.
- Being in an open space allowed us to try out different shot ideas that we had not pre-planned, ultimately giving us a wider range of shots to choose from for our campaign at the end.

Outdoor Photoshoot: Negatives
- The weather...unfortunately it seems you cannot trust weather forecasts! We were expecting a clear blue sky, sunny day but instead ended up with gale-force winds, the odd bursts of rain mixed with the occasional blue sky..not ideal.
- The extreme windy conditions therefore restricted some of the shots that we were hoping to perform throughout the day, as the wind made them near impossible to complete..not for our lack of trying!

Indoor Photoshoot: Positives
-Pre-planning the shots that we knew we wanted to capture allowed us to manage our time sufficiently.
- Having more props than necessary allowed us to try out different shot ideas, as well as taking direction from the photographer on ideas that he felt could work well, that we had not thought of already.
- The white background made for a luxurious and high end finish to our shots.

Indoor Photoshoot: Negatives
- Shadowing from certain props, eg. when holding up the branch we noticed shadows from our hands due to holding up the branch infront of the backdrop, that could be seen within the shot, but unfortunately we could not do much about..

In Studio Photoshoot - Day 2!

Today we had our in studio photoshoot with the professional photographer. Following on from our outdoor photoshoot, we went into the studio with a clear idea of the images that we wanted to focus on.

The main shots that we wanted to focus on were that of the different fabrics, so that we could truly show of the concept behind our brand that is all about connecting with the senses, therefore we decided on having a variety of different fabrics stacked upon one another, within a close up shot frame to which would show the soft detailing of the luxurious fabrics and garments.

The photographer instantly grasped our concept and the vibe that we wanted to arouse within our campaign shots, which made it 10x easier, as we were able to direct him within the shots that we had planned out, but also allowed us to get some professional opinions on what he believed may work better on camera.

Overall, the day went better than we could have hoped for. The pre-shoot planning that we did allowed us to get stuck in straight away and make use of the limited time frame that we had in the studio with the photographer! Here are some of our favourite images from the day!