Girl Power // Slogan Tees

Slogan tees are a massive trend, especially on the high street this year. A lot of the tees include gender, race and politics. Many of them say ‘’Girl Power’’ and ‘’Feminist for life’’. These tops are an indirect way of talking about these situations, it’s a way of voicing your opinion without saying it out loud and they are also showing a powerful message. Lots of celebs have been seen wearing this trend including Victoria Beckham and Rita Ora:

A way of showing a story through our brand could be like this trend. Insta-activsm is a graphics trend which is ‘’Social- media- savvy creatives inspire a new wave of activist messages with a playful twist’’. This is showing feminist messages in a more innocent way, a way of expressing art. This is visual of what could also inspire our brand identity.

Neon Signs

Over the past few months in particular i have saw many neon signs across visual merchandising and interior design. Neon lights make your head turn, they stand out to you for being so glowing so its a perfect accessory to help market your brand and products. It created a modern, glamorous effect to whatever its added to, whether thats a shop window, your own home or produced digitally and included within your branding.  

Neon signs within visual merchandising:

I really love Patrick Martinez' work, he combines neon within in art to create beautiful pieces of work. '' These phrases, drawn from Patrick Martinez's neon sculptures, capture the artist's sensibility. It is one informed by the challenges, ethnic diversity, and hybrid nature of the urban environment, as well as the proliferation of messages we encounter there. Influenced by hip-hop culture and raised in Los Angeles'' - https://www.artsy.net/artist/patrick-martinez. I love that he's inspired by the things around him and what he loves, this shows through his work as its so much more personally and you can see the passion behind it. Ive been really inspired by how he shows a meaningful message within neon signs but not making it serious, this is defiantly something we could try out when creating our brand identity.

Thank you for reading

Charlotte

Photoshoot inspiration

For our photoshoot, we’ve explored and created mind maps of different shoots we could do. We want our shoot to show how you, the consumer would feel and look with our product. We want the environment, and models to look carefree, happy and confident, and the environment to look like a festival, fun, colourful and bold. Our first idea is to have a studio shoot, extremely prop based, this would include balloons, confetti and garlands, a visual representation of a party. Another idea would be a location shoot, outside in a field on a sunny day with free-spirited, dancing models. We want to do both ideas so we can film a range of clips for the video advert as well. For the film, we want to do a similar concept, showing how you would feel and look with our product, perhaps also showing how you would use our product. Postproduction for both the print and video will be very creative and informative, this will include rough illustrations on top and colour replacement to create a more animated look. We’ve collected a variety of images so we have inspiration for our shoot:

When planning and doing the photoshoot we need to plan the props, location, models, lighting and colour to make sure everything links to our narrative and idea to the best it can. Including props that are popular and in-trend will link with our brand identity aswell as models that are similar to our target audience. This will help the consumer relate to us as a brand.

Thank you for reading

Charlotte 

Are Window Displays important?

Window displays are the first point of contact with customers, so yes they are very important. Window displays are a retail strategy, so if you have a aesthetically pleasing window, chances are it will increase sales. Your window display needs to show who you are as a brand and tell customers what your business does, the target audience/ promotions/ what it sells etc. As a customer to many stores, I know that if a window display stands out to me, I would want to look around. Successful elements of window displays include the store’s appearance, lighting, colour  presentation and themes which bring it all together. Themes tell a story and intrigue the customer, theme ideas can range anywhere from coordinating colours to grouping products for different styles. It's good to consider the store, season, new products, overall look and feel of the brand to have a successful theme and window display. These are a few window displays that have stood out to me recently: 

My own photography:

Valentino- this was the window display from Valentino on Fifth Avenue, this is my favorite display from the images i've included, mostly due to the styling that has a significant impact to the window display. It's a very simple, clean display, however the styling is very bold and colourful which really intrigues me.

J. Crew- the window display for this is fun, creative and playful which suggests it not a really serious brand and is more casual wear.

To conclude, I think window displays are very important. They tell the potential customer what the brand is like, so you can consider it before entering. A successful window display is visually appealing which usually attracts a large amount of customers. 

Thank you for reading

Charlotte

Pink and Red

A trend I've been seeing a lot of recently is the combination of both red and pink, a few months ago if i thought about wearing pink and red together i would've instating thought no and how it would clash. However i am really starting to love it, especially within graphic tees. Its a trend perfect for both men and women to create a cool, statement look; I've personally bought into this trend and so far really love the garments i own, the key i find is to only wear the block colours, combining with a pattern could look extreme. I knew I've saw this trend within garments before, however seeing this report on wgsn proved to me how its an up and coming trend.

''This colour combination isn't going anywhere anytime soon, as Preen included several pink-and-red colour-blocking looks in its A/W 17 collection as well.''

-http://www.whowhatwear.co.uk/pink-and-red-trend

 This trend is massively within graphic tees, like the one above. This tee also shows a powerful message, which means you can show a message without actually saying it. The red text against the pink background really pops and stands out showing the text.

Ive also seen this trend within formal wear like above, i personally haven't worn into this as for formal events and evenings i stick to the dark colour palette. Saying that these outfits above are very stylish and bold, so you'll sure stand out from being unique.

Thanks for reading

Charlotte