FMP - Mindmap & Initial Ideas

This week we were given the brief for our FMP's. I decided to do a mix of both publishing and moving image, by making a magazine and promotional video to go with it. This is a mindmap I made while thinking out ideas for what this magazine could be based on:

From the middle bubble I branched out into four different magazine themes - Fashion, Youth, Skateboarding & a magazine/lookbook for a brand.

For the theme of fashion I started to think out locations, brands and models. I chose to focus on streetwear brands like supreme, palace, bronze56k, converse etc. because these are the brands which I'm most interested in and know the most about. I also asked myself where I want to shoot my photos and went for urban locations such as Bristol and Bath, as well as countryside heavy rural area's where I could capture nice light and blue skies. I think these two locations contrast against each other and will look good together. Lastly I had the task of picking models. I decided that I wanted people who look different and/or interesting, in order to stand out. I will research further into this.
The theme of skateboarding was very appealing to me as well as it's something I'm very passionate about. From this theme I wanted it to have variety, because there's lots of skateboard magazines out already so mine would have to be different in order to stand out. I also wanted it to feature interviews with skateboarders from the local area and focus on skate culture. To do this I plan to research via platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to find individuals. The magazine would be fairly photo heavy so I jotted down some ideas of cameras I could use (digital/35mm film) and different editing techniques.
I chose not to create a clothing brand and do a magazine around that however, because I had already done a very similar project to this in previous publishing lessons and wanted to do something different. Also with this idea I'd be fairly limited in what I could write about and present in a magazine, and it would take a lot of time.

I found that it would be quite hard to make a full magazine just focused on a specific theme. Due to this I started leaning towards the theme of 'youth' because through this I would be able to incorporate all of the themes into one magazine. After making this decision, I made another mind map which focused on the youth theme and what I need to do in my magazine.

I decided that it should focus on youth culture, and contain pieces focusing on music, skating, fashion and youth. I came up with these four things because I asked myself what interests me. In this mindmap I also listed the technicalities of the magazine which I need to decide. In the end I chose to make a 210mm x 210mm magazine, in full colour which is 30 pages long (including the cover). The pages will be 170gsm and the cover 300gsm.
In pre production I will have to create a moodboard, plan of pages, contact people and create a storyboard and shot list for the advert. I will also do lots of research in this pre production period.

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.