Making the final product was a little frustrating for me as we (product design) couldn’t end up doing all that much because we simply weren’t very good at it all and we wanted it to come out with a good finish, we did however watch.

Screen Printing

We watched Seven screen print which was pretty interesting to see, it involves putting our pattern on the screen, pressure washing it then using the screen we made to apply the ink to our material

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Sewing

The making itself went pretty quickly but had a few hiccups due to badly measured parts when we made the pattern, and also members of the group not coming in when we had arranged to come in. This meant, in the end a technician had to help us with the final construction of it all.

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Overall the final product was made to a high standard other than the ink from the screen print went everywhere as for some reason it would not dry.

Thanks to the two previous models we had had conversations with some tech dems about our product, we got some valuable feedback to do with materials and construction.

In the end we decided to go with a PVC Faux Leather for the outside of the bag with a satin interior to aid with protecting whats inside. The front strap and shoulder strap are then going to be made of webbing.

We found the iridescent material we wanted which is also iron on which makes it much easier to apply to the final product too,

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We also finalised the design to commence making, images below also with the final interior print.

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Myself and Steve tackled the challenge of making solid models of the bag to try and clarify the design features but then also to figure out the sizes we though it needed to have. So, initially we made the model below to show the sizing.

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While we made the model we realised that it was much thicker than we thought it needed to be so we thinned it by 30mm to a size which we then thought was better. We then proceeded to make a smaller model which served the purpose of bringing it around to show the concept of the idea, this was a smaller scale model of the first model we made.

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To incorporate light into the design we decided we wanted to make it a collaboration with Calvin Harris. We chose this artist because in his music videos and album covers he uses light and floral patterns very often but we also like his general sort of vibe.

We made the mood board above to show off the use of light and floral patterns that inspired us to make the choice we made.

The above picture is one of our concept sketches for the design we are going forward with. Its a bag aimed at entry level DJs but we hope that it can be used by the general public due to its nature of essentially being a laptop bag but a little bigger. The lining is going to be an adidas and floral print and the stripes on the outside are going to made with some form of iridescent material

The front strap was an idea of mine to make it so you can either open the front completely or partially depending on the situation.

This is the start of our collaboration project with fashion and textiles, where for no all we know is that we have to design in line with a brand to which we are designing for Adidas.

We met our group too and saw their spaces. I’m really excited to see how this goes and am hoping we come out with a very solid product by then end.

The next day we were working with textiles to try and figure out the character of our brand but also the values, we then made a persona named lilscratch who will hopefully be the persona the rest of the project.

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We then went back to working as product to find a gap in the market to try and find something we could make. We quickly found that this would be quite difficult as Adidas seem to have done everything. After some time we came up with the page below which is a list of things that could possibly be designed by Adidas which would somewhat fit into what they do and trends in their current designs.

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After a week of generating ideas it was time to go away for the Christmas break and make some concept ideas for the next stage of the project. I’m going to use my newly acquired graphics tablet to draw my concepts because I think I can get a better finish to them.

We got our field brief, or part of it today and met our groups. The brief is that we are designing something to do with light. We have only been told this which is a little frustrating as we don’t know what’s going on at all at the moment as to what we’re making and what the project involves in general.

On the plus side we have met our groups for the project which consist of 3 fashion students, 1 textiles student and then the 3 of us in product design. I’m thinking that this is pretty good as there seems to be a large variety of skills in the group from working with other materials i.e.fabrics to then our experience in product design with soft modelling. I think this is going to be interesting to see what work we can and will complete.

We saw their respective work spaces and it is quite interesting to see the different spaces. With textiles being somewhat organised with work dotted around the place to fashion being very neat with no visible work or decoration. Which is weird compared to our own which has work spread all around the place and mood boards on walls which makes it really easy to be creative in. But the fashion studio seems very bare, I don’t see how you could be creative in that sort of environment.

In all, I think we will work well as a group as we all seem pretty open about our skills or lack thereof in the different fields of study.