Product 3D

Day 1 ( Week one)

To begin this project we visited the Paul Smith exhibition at the design museum. The aim if this project is to create a collaboration between a designer and a brand, this could be something like Chanel and BMW for example. Looking at some of Paul Smiths work was a great starting point as he designs beyond fashion and clothing. I am not a great fan of Paul Smith as Before visiting this exhibition I was only familiar with Paul smiths menswear designs and his signature fragrance, which I find to be a little old fashioned, so it was interesting to be able to look at how he has collaborated with other products, including the MINI car, a tea pot, and heinz HP, which I liked and found to be really unique. I love how he involves himself in so much more than fashion, and works towards lifestyle products.

Now that we had more of an understanding of how we are able to create a collaboration between absolutely anything, we began our shop research. We were asked to research mainly into the type of product we hope to make, and for me I really wanted to go into contemporary jewellery or body armour. I began by visiting really high end stores including Selfridges, Liberties, and Harvey Nichols. I spent the majority of my time in these stores because I wanted to research into what contemporary jewelery designers are doing now and how styles have modernised.

Jewellery is very broad so I focused on looking at neck pieces as that is my main area of interest. I noticed allot of heavy embellishment which I was really attracted to. I know that statement jewellery continues to be a big trend, however these pieces were extraordinary with huge rein stones and a bold use of colour. For this project I really wanted to stem away from ordinary contempory jewellery and really make something that can form away from the body and make a much stronger impact. It was hard for me to find something like this in stores, however looking at some of the really powerful designs in luxury department stores definitely inspired my concepts.

Day 2

After conducting all my initial research Into some contemporary jewellery I began to use my images and sketches to brainstorm the type of collaboration I might like to create. I was first attracted to a lot of crystal, heavy embellishment and reflective materials so I began to think of brands such as sowoski that are known for their crystalised jewelry. It was quite difficult to try and think of a collaboration because I wanted to find a real contrast between a brand and a designer.

I began to think about the type of jewellery I am attracted to and like to wear. I love big statement pieces that often have reflective patterns on them. To Inspire me further I looked at the work of fashion designer peter pilotto. 

I love his work In particular because he uses bold colors and obscure shapes, but most importantly his designs are quite symmetrical, and this is something I thought would be quite interesting to combine into a neck piece. I found some reference images of his work which really highlighted his use of exaggerated shapes, and symmetrical patterns. his work is a combination of Women's clothing and statement body pieces due to his use of large shapes that form away from the body.

The best way to really understand the structure of his work was to make some quick sketches from it, and I find this a very useful way of conducting research from existing designers. 

using a fine liner I made very rough sketches of  the most visually exciting parts to some of his pieces, such as the overlapping circular neck line, and triangular hemmed skirts, just to get a feel for the way he likes to design and combine shapes. this already started to give me some great ideas as to How I can experiment with a variety of different shapes and Sizes to create something really unique in collaboration with a brand such as soworksii. 

Day three

It was important that I began to generate some design concepts and extract some shapes from existing research to create inital ideas for my piece. 

My peter pilotto research was a fantastic starting point in terms of getting inspiration from exacting designers, however to develop my idea fuehrer I wanted to use his philosophy of symmetrical and exaggerating shaping to form the basis of my own design concepts. My collaboration idea is merging peter pilotto a and swokki, so to build upon my interest in crystal and reflective materials I took inspiration from a chandelier I have in my bedroom. 

The elegant form of the crystals and symmetrical structure to the chandelier was really interesting, and I really loved how the light reflected onto the crystals creating obsure shaped shadows, which reflects well into the work of peter pilotto.

To begin the process of designing, I took some photographs of the chandelier at angles I found to be of most interest, I tried to highlight the symetcay of it and the beautiful shapes,. For me the best way to extract shapes from photographs to form Into designs is to trace shapes from different Reas of the photos and translate it into a new design, for me I like the unexpected and relying on trial and error when developing my ideas, because it often results in some really unsual design concepts. 

I tried to overlay the extracted shapes onto one another and even turn them upside down just to really exhaust the idea as much as I could to form into a final design to laser cut 

Day four ( Week 2)

My aim was to try and complete my final design concept ready to laser cut, however my design needed to be simplified so that I was able to convert it into illustrator more easily. I have never used illustator before so i think I was being a little over ambitious with my until deisgn concepts. understanding the concept of creating a design suitable for illustrator was an extreamly tedious and time consuming process. 

My initial idea for the final piece was quite an intricate design that I would then go onto make symmetrical, however after gaining a little more knowledge on the process of illustator I  realised i needed to really simplify my design. I went back to my original deisgn and looked at the intricacy of it to find a way of toning down the deisgn but still keeping an impact.

I asked one of my tutors if she could help me to re develop my idea, and she suggested that I increase the number of  simple shapes to my deign and remove some of the intricate ones, so that a build up of simple shapes can still be effective and much easier to translate into illustator, 

We began brainstorming the idea of making a long neck piece by adding rectangular shapes to the bottoms of my two main symmetrical pices, and then adding a triangular shape to the bottom in order to crate more of a refined neck piece, this will make more of a statement. Now that I have accomplished more of a simplistic outline, it will be much easier to transfer my design onto illustrator.

Day five 

Today I was finally ready to transfer my design onto illustrator and begin to laser cut! I was slightly worried about having enough time to fully cut out my design, as I only had one day left of the project. I have never used the illustrator software before, so I was quite excited to try something new! I firstly tried to scan my design into illustrator, however the lines I used to draw out my design were not quite thin enough, and the software rejected it. This really set me back, as I had to now draw out my entire design using the illustrator software instead of my scanned drawing.

My tutor reminded me of the fact that I had to make my illustration completely symmetrical, and using illustrator will be of great benefit to me, however I was really struggling to get to grips with using the software. I was able to draw out most of my design using the pen tool, however making my lines curved was a really important aspect of my design, and I had some intricate shapes that I wanted to ensure were perfect.

After a few tries I managed to perfectly draw out my design into illustrator, and with the help of my tutor I was able to make my design perfectly symmetrical, as well as making the layout as economical as possible. This software was extremely helpful in making perfect circles where I will be able to feed wire through in order to actually join my piece together. It was also really easy to copy multiple shapes and make each piece the same size, which was important for me as my work is inspired by symmetrical shapes.

Once my design was transferred into illustrator, I placed my perspex onto the laser cutter bed. I chose silver perspex for the main rectangular neck pieces, as i wanted to use a reflective material that was representative of my chandelier isnpired design. For the two intricate shapes that will be placed on either side of the necklace, I chose a vibrant blue, as Peter Pilotto uses allot of these bright tones in his work.

Once my perspex was correctly in the laser bed, It cut out my design within about 30 minutes, and I was ready to assemble it.

Day Six 

Today was the final day of our project, and I am now ready to assemble my neck piece. When joining it together I wanted the affect of a natural dangling fall down the neck, so I had the idea of using small jewellery rings to assemble it all together, so that its not too tightly put together. I wasn't able to find any of these in time, so I used jewellery wire instead.

The wire was actually perfect for this, as it was really thin and bent into shape nicely. Assembling my piece took me hardly any time at all. Joining the individual rectangular pieces was simple, however joining it around the back of the neck was quite hard, so I had to move onto the manikin. Using the manikin helped me to establish how many rectangles I needed to give a good fit around the neck, and i joined the two large blue pieces on once the rest of my piece was well situated.

The main problem I had with my piece overall was that the two big blue shapes didn't fall upright as I intended, instead they almost fell lopsided. The idea of having these pieces was to make a statement and really hold sharply upright across the shoulder. I think I could have overcome this if I had joined them to the rectangles as a whole piece using the laser cutter, instead of joining them with wire. However I did receive a great deal of positive feedback from my peers and tutors, labelling it as a great contemporary piece that was well representative of the collaboration between Peter Pilotto and sowoski.