PRESENTATION FEEDBACK & REFLECTION

On Thursday 29th April I presented my initial ideas to two of my lovely tutors. It felt good to express my ideas out loud and to get some valuable feedback to take forward.

Often it is hard to put yourself forward to go first with things like presentations, but I happily volunteered to go first and get it over and done with! I was overly pleased with my presentation and was confident with how I got my ideas across. As some personal reflection, I am really proud of how much my presentation skills have improved. I remember at the beginning of the year when presenting for other modules, I could barely speak without getting nervous and out of breath. Now I can proudly present if I pace myself and am confident in what I’m talking about.

My tutors were really kind about my work and gave feedback about what I did well and what I could improve on.

Good points included:

• Strong presentation skills.

• Good use of words/tone of voice to represent the brand e.g. fortitude, transparency etc.

• Good job of talking about the brand name/story and strong context set at the beginning.

• Relevant justification to choice of values e.g. how they all begin with ‘t’ to be memorable and in a way that rolls off the tongue.

• Phrases used to set the tone of the consumer were effective and start to see glimmers coming through tone of voice throughout.

• Good reference to research at the start regarding testing logo ideas etc.

• Good and relevant trend identification and analysis.

Things to work on:

• Edit vision to make more concise and impactful and edit brand essence to be more emotional, intangible and about a feeling (as opposed to stating simply what the brand does).

• Rethink primary and secondary consumers to tie in more with the sustainability focus of the brand.

• Better define the sustainability focus of the brand and make sure it all aligns and that it’s all connected e.g. how it’s different to competitors and how it’s important for the designer’s designs.

• Consider how ideas will translate well into written work and visually.

• Consider labelling and subheading in a way that fits with the brand; everything is about context.

• Define a tone of voice that links everything together and reflects the brand’s personality.

DEPUTY LEAD NOMINATION!

Here is another post about the collaborative platform/project. Honestly, I am finding this part of the module the most difficult. Reflecting upon my initial thoughts of this task, I can confirm that I find team work difficult in some aspects, and it has been hard getting the ball rolling with this part of the module.

Over the past week, we have been acting on our plan to post initial mood boards (which I mentioned in my previous collaborative platform blog post). However, unfortunately, it didn’t quite go smoothly to plan like we had hoped. Getting everyone to send/post their images and mood boards on time was difficult. Nataria’s communication and commitment has been great and this is definitely nothing to fault. Not every member of our team has efficient communication and proactive skills which is a shame because it has meant that our post scheduling has been disturbed, and not all 9 mood boards were uploaded making it easily identifiable that team work has been lacking. A reflection on this I think is that we need to be extra clear and strict with deadlines/dates with what we post in the future, so that we don’t get off track and so that we can stick to our posting schedule that it is in line with our brand developments and creations.

I can proudly say that I have been the one supporting Nataria as team leader the most. Thankfully this was recognised by Nataria, and she surprisingly nominated me deputy lead! Nataria and I had been privately messaging each other about the bumps in the road with this project, and I have been wanting to give Nataria efficient support. I was really chuffed when she asked me to be deputy lead, and I look forward to helping her and our team to move forward with our collaborative platform.

COLOUR PALETTE AND VISUALS

“A brand’s choice of colour is a fundamental element that reinforces personality and the qualities of the products and/or services it offers” (Consultancy, 2018).

For the Brand Proposal Presentation I wanted to portray the brand and my ideas for its development in a visually engaging way, with a solid colour palette and visuals/effects to best reflect the brand that will take me through the rest of the project. I have learned to understand how important colour is with branding and marketing, so choosing a colour palette for Fortitude that 1) represents the brand efficiently that satisfies Evie’s vision, 2) attracts consumers and 3) stands out from competition, was key.

A few weeks ago I was experimenting on Adobe with colour swatches to come up with a colour palette that I thought would be good to represent Fortitude. After a long few hours of indecisiveness and experimentation, I confirmed a colour palette that I was happy with. I ensured I ran this past Evie to make sure she liked it, and thankfully she did. I remember in our initial meeting she said that pink is very much her colour, and she also mentioned she could picture blues being part of the branding to reflect the 'ocean' element; all of this I took into account. Here is the colour palette that I hope to stick to throughout this project to represent Fortitude:

As you can see, the colour palette is very vibrant and eye-catching. Although the concept around my designer's brand and inspiration is an off-putting and disturbing issue, I want to ensure the branding isn’t like this. It is important for me that I create a brand that is still visually attractive and engaging for consumers, despite its intentions being about raising awareness for an unpleasant and sad topic. I also noted that in one of the recent seminars, one of my tutors highlighted that the branding and the colours to represent the brand through logos etc. doesn’t necessarily need to be the same as the designer’s collection. This comment made me doubt my ideas and re-evaluate if I had chosen the right colour palette for my brand, because it is very much the same as my designer’s designs and colour palette in her garments. However, I decided that actually this colour palette does work and I should be confident in my creations (despite the logo being minimal and monochrome). Considering I haven’t gone down the ‘holistic view’ route, I imagine that Evie would stick with this colour palette if she was to ever design more collections inspired by the ‘plastic ocean’ issue, confirming that I have chosen a colour palette that works and that I should be confident with.