leading creative future

p r o c e s s b o o k

brIeFthe ‘ impor tance of

creat iv i ty ’

cLIeNTlondon col lage of

fash ion

AUDIeNceuncreat ive profes-

s ionals

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT / PROCESS BOOK

Jessica Holden

BA Fashion Illustration

Leading Creative Futuree

LEADING CREATIVE FUTURE - part of final portrait posters.

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT / PROCESS BOOK

Jessica Holden

BA Fashion Illustration

Leading Creative Future

Creativity and lateral thinking solutions are the future and the out of the box thinking of einstein and alexander mcqueen, push social and historic boundaries of the ordinary. it is the reason we all have music that is invisibly playing in our pockets, on telephones with no wires, few buttons and window like screens.

Exploring the fundamental importance of cre-ativity and lateral thinking as the description of individuals providing new symbolic expres-sions and the ability to think differently.

I not only researched into how and why the importance of creativity is necessary and un-

derestimated by many, but I also intended to educate and inspire a specific audience into being more creative and recognise fu-ture creativity with my large scale promo-tional work.

After thorough research I analysed my cli-ent to be the university, London Collage of Fashion and my audience to be the least creative people in the city. My solution to the problem of creativity is an illustrative portrait campaign showcasing students as the creative future in order to voice the po-tential change and push the boundaries of current fashion illustration.

THe IMporTANce oF creATIVITY

For the final to terms of this project I looked to improve and over take that of the first and it was clear that time management and simple planning would become essential to achiev this. As I have the responsibility to support myself through part time work, keeping a dia-ry in order to remain focused and organised was vital. I also provided myself with person-al deadlines and daily ‘to do’ and ‘plan of action’ lists, which then led to mini briefs for experience and experimentation. The predicted budget and time-schedule from the proposal was pre-empted as not suitable after closer inspection, so I reproduced are more suiting and achievable budget and time-plan. When reflecting on the propos-al and feedback, it was clear that my initial approach was vague and more in-depth re-search was where I would find a successful solution and a more specific outcome to the importance of creativity.

When putting together my pro-fessional portfolio i knew a crucial part of design was to consider my audience and where it will be seen and used.

As my entire project has centred around creativity and innovation i wanted to produce a profes-sional yet innovative and unique effect. This connected with my personal development as an illus-tration student, as i found my style of drawing works best when cre-ated on tracing paper, as it pro-duces a smudged smooth effect and ensures my theme of layering makes visually interesting imagery.

This has been carried within my portfolio, using tracing pa-per and clear sleeves so when the first page of my portfolio is turned my viewer can see through to the last page, having layered illustrations throughout.

This also started the idea, that it makes it easier for brands to visualise my work as a layered brand image can be placed under-neath. I think this effect is unique and original, whilst in keeping to my clean and corporate aesthet-ic for professionalism. I am hap-py and proud of this outcome.

proFessIoNAL porTFoLIo

Creative subjects are seen as inferior to that of academic. i believe this to be wrong and i intended to change it with a project.

‘Perhaps for the first time, we hold in our grasp the potential to explain creativity’ Keith Sawyer in Explaining Creativity: The science of human innovation (2006).

So this is where I started. I explored al av-enues and definitions of creativity as the highest level of human performance from the-oretical, physiological, anthropological and biological studies. However even for scholars such as Freud, Plato and Aristotle unable to contextualise into a single understanding, causing a challenge in my work but one that also allowed for freedom and imagination in defining it myself. Instead of a definition I found themes and qualities in the understand-ing of what creativity is, that are now reflected in my final work.

The innovation in creativity is to create some-thing that is new Henry Ford says ‘The simple secret of my genius is that I something new out of the ideas and inventions of the old’.

UNDersTANDING creATIVITY

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT / PROCESS BOOK

Jessica Holden

BA Fashion Illustration

Leading Creative Future

LEADING CREATIVE FUTURE - part of final portrait posters.

People Learn best from examples.

For me this was the moment that my project became about people. A peo-ple project, sparking the research into different types of creativity and the pro-cess in which people are creative; the ‘where’ and ‘how’ by looking into illus-trator’s sketchbooks, studios, interviews and creative works. Another problem arose from these ideas, as on reflection and tests, I was no longer creating my own new work, but merely portraying others in a new way. I found this to be conceptually weak, so went back to the drawing board. Inspiration for change

I needed to apply the creative research and understanding to the field of de-sign, fashion and illustration, to cause change in my own work. I found re-search suggesting that people learn best from example, which resonated within my research, and this combined with people started the idea of show-casing creative individuals within my work to inspire those to be more cre-ative.

With this my research took me to areas of leadership; as my final outcome will work as a metaphorical leader (start

peopLe

of logo idea). An article about Oba-ma’s leadership style that unites people through inspiration also influenced my final design. Shown through extensive research into current social behaviour, the significance of influence from oth-ers is paramount with instant instagram images, twitter, blogs and street-style. One finds commonality, inspiration and relatable persuation in the reality of culture.

The realisation that my concept will ‘in-spire for change’ or ‘change through inspiration’ took me back to the brain-storming process and caused question-ing such as how can illustrate people that is emotively moving enough to make the public more creatively aware.

EXPERIMENTATION - illustrations, pencil and charcoal on paper

brIeFthe ‘ impor tance of

creat iv i ty ’

cLIeNTlondon col lage of

fash ion

AUDIeNceuncreat ive profes-

s ionals

Within all areas of my visual de-sign aesthetic, the focus on the brief, client and audince was carefully considered in order to keep a consistant and succesful approach for the client, answer my brief, and ensure my work will work for my specific audience. Considering where my work will be seen best by city professionals, newspapers while travelling? and quick/ striking visual posters with little text for speed and simplicity to the corporate and profession-al physical and digital aesthetic (portfolio and website).

My audience research progressed post proposal into a mini project allowing me to find the individuals that would have the greatest bene-fit form my project. This to me was the group of least creative people, which, due to the pressure blocks that stop the creative process, this was inner city professionals as they have the most time, risk, challenge ad stress pressures upon them.

THe reALIsM ArT MoVeMeNTMany people view art as a luxury, something to decorate a home with or simply something for people to view or create for fun or relaxa-tion. In truth, art lies at the core of human ex-istence, and with it has the power to not only influence an individual’s thoughts or beliefs, but can actually shape nations.

Realism, in literature and visual arts refers to the attempt of classifying subjects according to empirical and secular rules, as they are considered to exist only in a third person’s objective reality, without interpretation and embellishment. The approach believes in the principle that reality is independent of an individual’s conceptual schemes, beliefs and linguistic practices, and thus may be known to the artist who can represent this form of ‘real-ity’ faithfully.

pHoTo-reALIsM/ porTrAITs/ kA-MALkY LAUreANo/ AHMAD rAMADAN/ cHUck cLose/ MAN rAY/ ALYssA MoNksMore research led to the discovery that the human face has a more dramatic effect upon the viewer than anything else. My findings suggest that there is a special part of the brain that recognises faces identified by Nancy Kanwisher in 1997. Her findings also state that due to the significance of this part of the brain ‘face information’ is bypassed and pro-cessed at a higher level than anything else, also meaning faster. Considering my audi-ence are city professionals with already pres-sures of time, this supported my idea to work with illustrated faces as my focus.

After research in many areas of fashion il-lustration, photography and design I found myself steering towards the idea of a portrait due to its rich history and ability to be stereo-typical and tradition. I wanted to use innova-tion to make this more compelling and as little fashion illustration outside of beauty editorials and advertising is currently used, it, is also

conceptually undiscovered.

My link to fashion was a challenge that i did not rec-ognise until the presentation pitch, an overlooked aspect of my development that i needed to immedi-ately amend. as i was already focused on the study of people research lead me to faces of persuasion that brain studies say aces are emotively processed in a separate area of the brain and thus are recognised and remembered much more rapidly than any other text or image. to me this meant celebrity, illustrating indi-viduals leading the way in the fashion world however after revisiting the thinking’s of my target audience, i discovered that they are already exposed to such indi-viduals making ground breaking creativity in fashion yet this has made no change to personal creativity, the only scope for this option seemed to bring the faces of fashion celebrities in a more focused way, too easy, wanted to challenge this idea more and delve deeper into inspiration.

A fundamental problem faced throughout was my weak link to fashion. My illustrations have always re-mained conceptually fashion based however i strug-gled to connect to the mass changing business/ corpo-rate clientele of my audience. The link to a corporate audience sparked information of the University if the Arts rebrand to fit a more corporate reputation.

In this I found a fashion link solution. My client is London Collage of Fashion as their outward audience is comparable to mine. A hub of creative talent from the next generation, the students will become my models for the portraits and the inspirational effect on my audience will be the emotive quality from the faces of the future. The LCF logo/ my log line reads Leading Creative Future, toying with the already ex-isting lcf abbreviation but spinning it to my concept, I took the typeface, colour scheme and minimal aes-thetic in order to create a justified project in-keeping with London Collage of Fashion’s visual and digital aesthetic but also contributing to a new direction for fashion illustration in methodology.

LoNDoN coLLAGe oF FAsHIoN

INspIrATIoN IN LcF sTUDeNTs

After brainstorming that my client is now more fashion based and personally connected to me so my first step was to visit all of our campuses and take as many photos of current students as possible. I collaborated with a BA CSM student and together we teamed to take photos. These would become my primary inspiration when illustrating the final portraits for my campaign. Model release forms were created to cover any ethical issues and the primary research helped communicate my ideas to an audience.

As part of my PPD i studied various aspects of portrait taking, from passport to studio to edito-rial in preparation for the research. These new skills hav equipt me with basic photographic skills that may became incredibly benifical.

THE COLABORATION FOR PHOTOGRAPHY

I was aware that as the final major project was my last at university and I anted to contribute to current conceptuality of fashion illustration I then took the risk of teaching myself the process of screen printing and mix-ing this art with my illustrations. My traditional hand-sketched/ mon-ochrome style has progressed as a discipline throughout my studies to a professional point that I am proud of, however it is a clear oxymoron

to silk screening making this the biggest risk my work would take so far.

screeN prINTING process

The stages of screen printing, form illustration to bit map, to print

My ‘doing things differently’ mood board sketchbook pages

Half way through the experimentation process I started to feel a lack of emotive potential within the portraits, questioning what innovative approach does my work contribute to or improve upon photographically or in illustration portraits?

This is where I revisited the research of innovation and where I studied the addition of ‘The Fun Theory’, influenced by Bompass and Parr, Apple, Alexander McQueen and Marc Jacobs, and the new Prada film, all using innovation to draw attention. This was also a clear link to guerrilla advertising methods that use pure creativity and innovation to cause successful change within the minds of others.

THe AsToNIsH Me probLeM

Buddy Nestor/ surrealist artist

Within my work, the fun theory outcome is subtle but can be seen somewhere within every portrait, the bubble-gum, the turned faces and the tongue; all breaking the con-ventional stereotype of a passport picture or standard portrait.

I believe the result of screen-printing a tradi-tional style illustration sketches is successful however it could not have been achieved without tests and experimentation within the editing and preparation stages, proving a

vital lesson.

Within my work the fun theory outcome is subtle but can be seen somewhere within every portrait, the bubble-gum, the turned faces and the tongue; all breaking the con-ventional stereotype of a passport picture or standard portrait.

I believe the result of screen-printing a tradi-tional style illustrans is successful however it could not have been achieved without tests and experimentation within the editing and preparation stages, proving a vital lesson learnt within this project. I now know who i am as an illustrator, what work i want to pro-duce and where my work sits in the industry.

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT / PROCESS BOOK

Jessica Holden

BA Fashion Illustration

Leading Creative Futuree