Republic Design Award

Another project that I have been participating in alongside the exhibition project is the Republic Design Award. This is a competition for students to take part in across the country. I received a brief at the beginning of the project stating what the task was. The task was to design an outfit for the travelling student. It needed to be not only fashionable but practical as well.

I completed a questionnaire to hand out to people to gather information of the preferred items of clothing to wear abroad and started to design an outfit in response to the answers.

I then started to think of the practical elements which my outfit needed to have. It needed to take up minimal space within a backpack, quick drying, lightweight, correct climate fabric, versatile and most of all it needed to look good!

I decided to design a pair of shorts, a top which was reversible and a top that could be worn as a dress or a top and a pair of shorts. Just by designing these three items I had a minimum of four looks that all complimented each other.

I put together a mood board and picked my colour palette from this which was rose, orange amd grey. I then concentrated on developing a pattern for both the tops. The pattern that I designed is inspired from animals around the world. I selected a few animals and drew an abstract pattern from their faces. I thought that the possibilities with designing a pattern like this are endless. I also stated on my presentation boards to send to Republic of an idea I had had of donating a precentage of the profits from these items of clothing to protect endangered animals. I thought that this would be a great ethical policy for Republic to have and a globally accepted concept.

I named my collection 'Second Nature' and designed a logo for this although the items of clothing are designed for the collection Miso which is in Republic I felt this could be a collection within a collection.

Featured above are the technical drawings for my designs. These are all hand drawn and I am very pleased with the overall result. Also included on the board are my chosen fabric swatches samples of the Coolmax fabric mentioned earlier on in my blog, pattern examples, colour palette and a swing tag which I made.

This is my mood board.I gained inspiration from animals around the world and other aspects you see from other countries but my main inspiration that I began with was my research into Australia. Again this mood board features my colour palette as well.

This board shows the overall looks that I designed. I really pushed my creative skills with this project and by looking at this board I can see how much I have developed. I love this board and couldn't be more pleased with the results. I spent a lot of time adding extra detail to really emphasize my designs. In my next project I hope to push my skills even more and have high expectations of myself to improve on this further.

This is the logo that I designed for my clothes. I felt that alongside the ethical policy I came up with that this fitted well. I designed the butterfly myself and then altered it on Photoshop. I have never completed a logo before and for a first attempt I am happy with it but will definetley be looking to work on this sort of thing in the future.