Recycled Fashion

Conserve India is an upcycling project in Delhi. They upcycle plastic bags that litter the city streets and transform them into fashion accessories such as, bags and belts. The project not only aims to tackle the growing mountain of litter, but also employs locals, paying fair wages that can provide a solid income.
"Handmade Recycled Plastic is created through a unique method of upcycling plastic bags.  Because the plastic is kept in its original form and colour, Conserve's upcycling technique uses much less energy than traditional recycling and we don't need dyes.  A green way of making fashion from waste – Handmade Recycled Plastic is surely a material of the future!"

http://www.conserveindia.org/

Adidas and G Star have also taken on recycling projects to help the environment. G Star Rawt akes plastic from the ocean and recycles it into denim.



http://rawfortheoceans.g-star.com/

Online Portfolio

I have published  my portfolio online using issuu.com found on the link below

http://issuu.com/elissaflynn/docs/portfolio_for_issuu

C.V

After putting together a C.V on Word, I have moved it into InDesign and styled it to make it more interesting, also incorporating the logo I created for the business card. The outcome is a lot better than I thought my C.V could ever look, this task has allowed me to consider different design layouts, and understand how a simple word file can be transformed into an aesthetically pleasing document.

Portfolio Building

Over the past couple of weeks I have been compiling my work from the past 4-5 units into a portfolio which will be printed into a physical portfolio, and also published on issuu.com as a digital portfolio. I've been playing around with different compositions and layouts on Photoshop and InDesign to create an aesthetically pleasing and informative portfolio, however it has been difficult picking out the most important pages and aspects to include.  Putting together the pages has also been a lot more time consuming than I had previously thought, I think this is due to the fact that most pages consist of sections of scanned sketchbook pages, which then had to be edited in photoshop before they looked suitable to use.

Sustainability and Ethics

On a lecture on Sustainability and Ethics within the Fashion Industry we were shown two films, Sustainable Fashion: the movement and the Story of Stuff. The films highlighted the growing issue of Fast/Throw Away Fashion, looking into the harms of pesticides, insecticides, and chemicals, along side carbon footprints, wages and recycling. The first film focused on our actions as a whole within the fashion industry, where as the second looked at smaller groups and how a difference can be made to life in general to obtain a better goal.

We also looked into Corporate Social Responsibilities, with the example of Next being shown. All brands are required to have a CSR and work around being ethical, sustainable and being transparent with regards to these matters. I have found the CSR for Topshop, which is part of the Arcadia group.

http://www.nextplc.co.uk/corporate-responsibility.aspx

www.topshop.com/en/tsuk/category/about-us-80/home?cat2=273012&intcmpid=W_FOOTER_%20ABOUT#fragment-6

"Fashion Footprint is Arcadia Group’s programme to monitor and manage the social and environmental impacts of our business. It provides our ethical activities with a focus and framework, underpinning our objective to be a responsible retailer.

Now entering its ninth year, Fashion Footprint reinforces our commitment to sustainability; a commitment that we believe makes just as much sense from a business perspective as it does from an ethical one.
Our Fashion Footprint vision provides us with a mission statement that we can all get behind: to produce fashionable products in an ethical way and demonstrate a responsible attitude towards people and the environment."

http://www.arcadiagroup.co.uk/fashionfootprint

Other links and sites I have considered whilst looking at sustainability and ethics

http://www.consideratedesign.com/about/the-concept/

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/24/ethicalfashion

Design/Pre Press Assistant Job

http://www.jobstoday.co.uk/job/1714366/design-pre-press-assistant/?TrackID=3#sc=socialmedia&me=socialmedia&cm=0

This is the job I will be tailoring my C.V and cover letter to, a Design/Pre Press Assistant for a company creating printed fashion packaging. I have chosen to aim for this particular job as it coincides with my love of fashion and digital design, whilst challenging and engaging me with varying tasks. Although I am not familiar with Corel Draw, if I were to consider this type of job after graduation I would do some research into the software, and may attempt to learn the basics.

Business Cards

Exploring designs for business cards using InDesign

An Insight to the Creative Industry

On Tuesday I took a trip to London to visit Juliet Poyser, a bespoke wedding dress designer. Juliet has been working as a designer for over 30 years, starting out in evening wear, then moving on to be a bridal designer. Arriving at her house in Clapham Common we were welcomed with tea, and then taken upstairs to her studio, where she has been working since moving out of a studio further away in London. Dresses were beautifully hung on the rail, magazine cover pages of her designs lined the walls, and a work in progress layed on the table.
Juliet talked us through how she started out, and the particular designs that helped to establish her business, one dress selling off the page at the start of her career enabling her to buy her first flat. We learned of her inspirations and aspirations, which mostly routed back to her mother and aunt, who were glamourous women with a vast array of stylish dresses, many of which Juliet has come to own. It was a very insightful experience, and interesting listening to her views on the contrast of the changing market with the developments in technology and social media, compared to magazine advertisment which used to be the main platform. The industry is very different today as to what is was 30 years ago, with social media meaning you don't neccesarily need advertising in magazines etc to create a name for yourself, however it was still very interesting to learn how it can be done.

Meeting Juliet was very inspiring, demonstrating that it is possible to earn a living and make a career from your creativity if you have the right drive and ambition, which is why I have decided to write this blog post as I feel it is very relevant to my Professional Practice.

http://www.julietpoyser.co.uk/

First Steps to Professional Practice

Over the past couple of weeks of the professional practice unit, we have been working on personal statements for About.me and our professional C.V for an idealistic future job. Alongside the structural guidelines of a C.V we have been compiling our previous units work into a portfolio, firstly digital based on Photoshop, then to be printed into a physical A3 portfolio.

For our C.V's we have been instructed to aim for aesthetically interesting layouts on Photoshop or InDesign. Having begun transferring my C.V into InDesign, I have been contemplating creating a logo/emblem with my name or initials as a badge at the top of the page, I have explored a few possibilities on Illustrator, below are my current experiments.

 My about me page can be found at https://about.me/elissaflynn