Lookbook Project - Publishing

Research & Ideas

Fashion is everywhere in the world and part of everyday life - everyone wears clothes. That's why I'm interested in clothes and styles which are 'out there' and different. Because of this, the brands which I'm most interested in tend to be designer brands as they produce extravagant clothing which strays from generic clothing worn by the majority of people. To list some names, some designer brands which interest me are Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Comme Des Garcons Play, Vetements, Off-White & Yves Saint Laurent. Despite being very interested in these brands, the garments are sold for a pretty penny, so these brands don't influence what I actually wear that much. I will however take inspiration from these brands for my lookbook.

I think what most influences what I wear are my hobbies - skateboarding and music. It's commonly known that there's a huge culture around skateboarding and a significant part of this culture is skate style. Companies which make skateboards also make apparel which appeals to skateboarders. Some which I particularly follow and wear are Bronze56K, Fucking Awesome, Supreme, Palace and Polar. These brands clothes tend to have retro designs and patterns printed onto their garments and produce them in a variety of colours which tend to be vibrant and bold. I will take this as inspiration for my lookbook.

Lastly, music plays a big part in what I wear. I like rap music and a lot of rappers I listen to influence my style, some introducing me to the brands I mentioned earlier or even their own brand such as Tyler the Creator creating his own brand 'Golf Wang'.

This is a moodboard I made which shows styles and fashion I like:

Designs

I decided to name my brand 'Lowkey' and aimed for it to focus on retro 80's style designs with vibrant clothing. Here's the logo which I came up with:

Taking my research into consideration, I came up with a few garments for my brand - 'Lowkey'. These consisted of:

A T-Shirt

This is a fairly basic white t-shirt. It's a baggy fit, similar to the longsleeve
and features an embroidered logo on the front right pocket area, with a full colour
screenprinted design on the back. I chose primary colours as they were nostalgic to me
and looked good together against white. 

A Longsleeve T-Shirt

I decided to make this longsleeve a mustard colour as it's a vibrant colour which
I like. The small logo on the front is embroidered and the back design is screenprinted.
I chose the checkerboard pattern as it stands out and decided it should be a baggy fit.

A 6 Panel Cap

This 6 panel cap is a forest green colour with a yellow accent. I chose these two colours
because they compliment each other and are fairly retro. The real cap will have a flatter
peak. Both logos are embroidered onto the cap.

A pair of Slip On Shoes

These are slip on trainers with a black canvas body and thick white rubber sole.
The stitching is white to contrast against the black canvas and there is a black
band of rubber on the white sole for the same reason. On the back of the shoe
there is a screenprinted flame design. 

Photoshoot

As my clothes are aimed at youth and are similar to street and skate culture, I decided to shoot my photos in urban areas in cities. I shot my photos in three different locations - A multistory carpark, an alleyway with graffiti in in Bristol & A football cage.

The camera I decided to use for my shoot was a DSLR with a 50mm lens. I chose a DSLR so that my images would be crisp and high quality, and the lens because of it's effectiveness for portraits and it's shallow depth of field. Here are some of the photos which I shot.

Lookbook Planning

I first decided to sketch out my lookbook plan so I could make adjustments and sketch things out quickly. This is shown below:

After this I created a plan using photoshop which was cleaner and easier to interpret.

Final Lookbook

Evaluation

Overall I think that this project was interesting as well as successful on my part. I enjoyed most parts of the project - particularly the design aspects of it.
Firstly the research part of the project went fairly smoothly and the only part I found hard was thinking of a brand name.

After this I had to come up with the garments. I first made a few logos using photoshop and then applied these to pieces of clothing. This went fairly well however the mockup garments didn't look that realistic and you could tell they were faked on photoshop. If I were to do this again I'd put more time and research into making this look better.

Next we had to do our photoshoots. I did half of my photoshoot outside of college time with a few friends and the rest of it in lesson. The photos came out okay but some of the lighting was off. Luckily I chose to shoot my photos in a raw format so I could go on to edit them properly. After editing I was happy with the images.

Next I compiled the lookbook using photoshop which was not too bad, however it took a while cutting out certain objects etc. I was pleased with the end result, which followed a retro style. I put all of the pages (saved as pdf) into InDesign and printed them off onto A3 (folded to make an A4 magazine). I would've liked a bit more time for this part of the project as I had to rush the printing, resulting in me having to print the magazine off 2 times before it was how I wanted. The print was overall good but it looked a bit dull and I would've liked to print it on higher quality paper.

I am pleased with the finished product and I think it looks professional and follows the brief effectively. If I were to do this again I would've taken less time on the digital side of things and spent more timing considering the print aspect of the project (layout, paper, printer, size). Nevertheless I enjoyed making the lookbook and will consider doing something similar for my FMP.

Gamut

The word 'Gamut' simply means a complete range or scope of something. However when colour is concerned a gamut means a range of colours available on a certain device or platform. For example, a computer or tv screen displays colours by mixing RGB light, so the gamut is fairly large (as shown by the diagram below). A print based piece such as a newspaper or magazine uses CYMK mixing to display colour, and therefore the gamut is smaller. A gamut is useful if you want to preview how something is going to look when printed, as it can show the range of colours available on the device being used.

Textual Analysis of Two Film Posters

Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)

This film poster uses a specific colour scheme of yellow, red and black. The background is yellow, which is a bright colour therefore making it stand out and grab the viewers attention. The black text against the yellow stands out by contrasting against it, and the yellow and black connote danger or hazard (e.g. hazard tape, a bee/wasp).
Another way the poster is effective is the text used. It is in all caps and the typeface (Impact) looks dramatic and serious. The title takes up almost a quarter of the whole poster.
Another way the film sells itself through the poster is by showing off the main actor, Uma Thurman who is famous and will make people want to go and see it. She is holding a weapon which suggests the film will contain violence making it seem more admirable to the target audience. She takes up almost half of the poster, which really makes her stand out and is likely to be the first thing the viewer will see when looking at the poster.

Goodfellas (1990)

The Goodfellas poster is mainly black with some blue, a colour scheme which immediately suggests the film is going to be dark and could be sad. The top half shows three main actors, all famous, showing through the darkness. They are arranged as a group, symmetrically which makes the overall poster look more appealing. The actors names are all shown above their heads in white and all caps to stand out and fit with the dramatic theme connoted by the characters.
The poster features a quote by a real person as well which is situated in the center, suggesting that it's significant. Underneath this is the title in a large, bold font, helping to bring attention to it. Alternative to Kill Bill, it is lowercase, suggesting formality.
The directors name is presented underneath the title, making the viewer more likely to watch it if they are aware of Scorsese's other films.
Lastly, a dead man in the street is shown which denotes the atmosphere set by the film.

Both posters have some similarities which make the viewers more likely to want to watch the films presented by their posters. One of these things is that the main actor(s) are shown and they are making eye contact with the camera. This creates intimacy with the character shown and the viewer in order to make them connect more with the poster. Another similarity is that the title of the film is made to stand out and is the largest of all the text shown on the poster. Lastly, both posters use a certain colour scheme which helps connote the overall themes and tones of the film.

(If you can, please fill in this survey about the Kill Bill Poster)

Primary Research into Film Posters

Primary Research

Poster: Blair Witch
Location: Odeon
Fonts: Serif, All Caps, Formal, Loose Tracking
Colours: Red & Black
Size: Quad
Economic: 2 Colours used, no shading
Constituent Elements: Symbolism, Slogan, Release date, Production company, Social medias
Style: Minimalistic, connotes evil
Artistic/Commercial: 30% commercial, 70% artistic
Target Audience: Under 25 as it is a horror film



Poster: Captain Fantastic
Location: Little Theatre Cinema
Title Font: Mix of serif and sans serif fonts in all caps
Other Fonts: Sans serif, capitalised, quotes in italics
Colours: Pastel colours and natrual aqua colours
Size: Quad
Economic: No, a range of colours with an image included
Constituent Elements: Presents main characters, looking at camera to create intimacy with viewer, Reviews, Star actors name
Style: Minimalistic, eye grabbing
Artistic/Commercial: 50/50
Target Audience: Appeals to all four quadrants

From this research I had a go at designing my own poster for Spirited Away:

 

Reflection on my poster design

To make this poster I used the Ellipse tool to make the clouds at the bottom of the poster and the circles, as well as the eyes for the soot creatures. Other shape tools I used are the Polygon Tool for the gold and the Rectangle Tool for the background. I had to research how to make a star shape in photoshop to draw the soot creatures, and I sourced the other characters from the internet, which I would draw myself if I had enough time. Lastly I used the text tool for the title.

In the original poster I made, it didn't look that effective to me because the colours didn't follow a specific scheme. Therefore the poster wasn't eye catching and looked jumbled. The posters I researched both had a specific colour scheme to give a certain mood/atmosphere e.g. Blair Witch was red and black for horror, so I decided to change the colours of my poster. 

I updated my poster with an orange and red colour scheme, to connote nature and warmness. It also made the poster more visually appealing. Overall I think the poster is effective and it shows the title & director which stand out, however it is missing out a lot of common features usually seen on posters that I listed in my research. Firstly it doesn't have credits at the bottom which are evident on all real film posters. I could've extended the bottom of this poster to make space for credits. Another feature missing is reviews and ratings which help to make the film more desirable to an audience. Lastly, to make the poster more realistic I could add production company logos and additional information about the film. This would make it's appearance more legitimate and professional looking. I left out the log-line and release date as I wanted to keep the posters minimalistic look.

For my next design, I aim to add all of the features which I missed out this time, especially a credits block at the bottom as this helps the poster to look real. I'm also going to make sure I add a release date as this is necessary for all films.