In the previous project I used a mixture of photography and hand drawing in my designs but never used the two together so this is something I would like to use in my designs. I also decided that my combination of wall panels and wallpapers in my last project were successful so I have decided that I will create both these again within this collection.
I started my visual research by taking photographs of flowers and buildings. In my past project photography was a significant part of my research and I decided to create my own page on Viewbug, which is a website for the photography community where you can participate in contests and helps to promote photographers and gain recognition. This was a good place for me to promote myself as a designer as it is linked with my Twitter account for people to see both my design work and photography work. Since completing the last project I have gained another award from the judges, this will be shown on their website, Twitter page and blog, giving my work more exposure. Because of this I have decided to continue adding some of my photography work onto my Viewbug page.
http://www.viewbug.com/member/emmasenior1
I started research into vintage wallpaper at the Special Collections within University where I viewed a lot of William Morris' designs, these will become helpful when I start to look at how he used to assemble all the elements within a design and also how he would represent an element with paint.
I decided that I would create my colour palette from my photographs of flowers as this would give me a better range than in the photographs of buildings. I created these two colour palettes; my final palette will be a mixture of the two.
I emailed different companies enquiring if they had a print design job I am able to apply for as I know some companies don't advertise jobs, they expect people to contact them regarding jobs. I know that I have to broaden my job searches as I don't have any job experience within print design so I have to apply to places which I have not specialised in but are adequate to do the job. Hallmark contacted me saying they would like to view some of my designs so I sent some which I thought were the most appropriate, but they emailed me back saying that my work was not characteristic of Hallmark designs so they would not take my application further. I have since joined Simply Hired, Total Jobs and Monster for daily alerts on appropriate jobs for me to apply for. Print & Pattern blog also have a jobs board which advertise for print designers, and Drapers also has appropriate jobs for me to apply to, so I aim to look at these once a week.
Ways I will promote myself as a designer throughout the project:
- I have created a Pinterest board for inspiration on my concept to help acquire my contextual research wherever I am http://www.pinterest.com/emmasenior1/unit-x-inspiration/
- I have created a board for my work for people to follow http://www.pinterest.com/emmasenior1/my-work/
- I will use Tumblr as another place to showcase my developing collection http://emmasenior2.tumblr.com/
