Mirjam Rouden Internship

     I spent one month working for Mirjam Rouden; print designer for fashion; in London creating digital prints. I found the internship integral to my learning as I experienced how it would be to work as a designer in a company and learnt a lot about the sales side of the company as I worked a long side the sales representatives.
     On my first day I had to bring in my portfolio so one of the designers that work for Mirjam could decide what my strengths are as to what I could do for them. They decided that my digital work was good enough for them to let me design on the computers. The company just use Photoshop to create digital designs as more people are fluent in this programme. I do think the company would strengthen with a designer which is fluent in Illustrator as this is more suited to different types of designs.
     Mirjam has certain collections in her work that can be sold to designers time and time again, such as florals, geometric and animal print; so these are created many times by the designers. I was set onto animal print in my first week and a half. I was supposed to have a designer to direct me but I did not get shown any samples of the type of print they wanted and the designer never checked up on me and because Mirjam's website doesn't show any of her animal print samples I didn't have a clear idea of what I was designing. When Mirjam came to check on my work she was displeased as some were too blurred and distorted. Another designer was set to direct me from then on.
     Although some of my designs could not be sold as animal prints, Mirjam was happy to sell them in other collections as they are good quality.

 Feathers that will be sold in the animal print collection.

Jellyfish print that will not be sold in the animal print collection.

     I found it strange to find out that it is not often that a designer would create their own drawings to put into Photoshop. Most of the time they take photographs from the internet and rework them on Photoshop until they are unrecognisable.
     During my second week I was put in charge of directing a new intern on Photoshop as the designers had confidence in me. The intern wasn't confident on Photoshop but she designed one rock print which was put onto fabric as a sample to be sold.

  One of my rock prints.

     During my last two weeks I created dot and paisley pattern designs out of drawings the other interns did. I found this a lot easier than using photographs from the internet as they were always good quality and I didn't have to spend time searching for images that I could use.

Dot print.

Paisley print.

     Around 40 of my designs were printed onto different types of fabric to be sold to different fashion designers around the world. While I was there around 20 of my designs travelled to America to be sold to different companies.

     As they are quite a small company the designers are also involved in sales, but they have two main sales representatives to set up meetings and travel around the world to meet with companies. Some of the designers also meet up with companies if they come to the studio to buy designs. Each time samples are going to be sold to a company a few of the designers come together to decide which samples to take. I realised through this how important it is to know your audience, including what kind of season they would be buying for and what kind of things they have bought before.   

  

Stage 4

The feedback from the designer from Diane Harrison Studios was very positive, he said I had lots of ideas to work with and so needed to focus them and decide how I was going to use them to create my end collection. He agreed with me that I needed to look back at my contextual research to help me decide what kind of prints I wanted to create. He said he felt that my strongest work was my own drawings and my marble paints; he agreed a combination of these would work well. But he could tell I wasn't as inspired by the hand created prints and the cubed microscope photographs so I have decided to leave these out of my design plan. I felt more confident after speaking with the designer as he confirmed my thoughts more.

I started the development of my collection by looking back on my contextual research and recognizing what kind of designs I would like to create. I especially like these pieces by print artists Claire Scully and Ce'li Lee; geometrics and mirroring are very popular at the moment in both fashion and interiors and I thought my visual research would work well with this idea.

Claire Scully

Ce'li Lee

I decided to repeat an image I had already created by doing in industry what is called a engineered design. I thought this worked very effectively so I decided to create more in this way with a mixture of my drawings and contrasted marble paintings. These worked well and I am happy to continue working with these elements. I decided that my designs worked best as bedding as they are a little whimsical and unusual to be on curtains or wallpaper. When I spoke to one of the designers on the studio visit they said that more outlandish designs usually go on bedding. I created visualisations of my designs to see how they would appear on bedding and this was successful. 

To make my work become a more professional standard I need to take into account the scale I create my patterns so they would not become pixelated if I blew them up to scale. I also need to take into account when I am creating designs that are around the boarder of the design, that once on a double bedding set, this would lay down the sides of the bed so when looking over the bed you wouldn't be able to see around 20cm off each edge. To improve my work I need to challenge myself and stop creating engineered and mirrored designs. I found a wallpaper print I liked from Tactile Wonderland that uses mirroring but has a slight change in the design; I have decided I need to do this in my work to make it more organic. 

Tactile Wonderland

Stage 1

My group had the theme of Futurism/ History. Working in a group was exciting and I think I achieved and learnt a lot from it. I found that the people who were participating the most in the group where the ones that wanted our final poster to be of good quality but also the group meetings to be rewarding, these people also took charge more of the group. I think our group also showed how a group would work together in a design company, as within this there is usually one person who organises the entire group and makes sure they are all on the same track. Me and another student did this together, but this became quite hard when one student wasn't co-operative. We tried to share out the responsibility and tell her things to research to encourage her to work but this kind of cooperation wouldn't happen in a design company.

We created a timetable together of how we would work within the week and we met up twice to talk about our progress and give feedback to one another. Before piecing our mood-board together we did research into how design companies created there's. We found that the images of the sub-categories within the theme are always grouped together to make it clearer and so we decided to do this also. We chose two people to be spokes people when we did the presentation; me and another girl, as we thought it would be a lot for one person to take on, but more professional if only two did it, with the whole group standing together.

Working in a group has affected the way I will work with others in the future as I have learnt that communication is important, also cooperation and taking joint responsibility for things because I have learnt there is always something else you can do, a different approach.