Self Negotiated Project: Clothing Brand Week 1: Brief Analysis and Proposed Idea

Brief Analysis and Proposed Idea

The brief for the 'Self Negotiated Project' has been provided. After reading the project synopsis, it appears that it is less restricted in comparison to the previous briefs we have been set on this course. I heard details about this project prior to the brief going live, which meant I had ample time to come up with a solid idea in preparation for this project. The project will undergo over a period of 5 weeks, considering the idea I have in mind with just over a month to complete it is going to be precarious. However the combination of the preparation prior to the brief and consistent development with the idea, I believe that I have a step up from the deadline.

The Idea I have decided that I will be developing relates to the subject I am currently discussing about in my essay. The subject of my essay is, the discussion of the influential effects and social impact that the subculture and genre of Cyberpunk has had on modern day artists and graphic designers. Due to Cyberpunk being close to my heart personally, I believe that this project will be engaging, additionally I think it would be nice to have some visual material along side my essay to go hand in hand with what I am discussing. The solid idea I want to develop has been rattling in my head for about 3 years and I never had the opportunity or time to get it off the ground, until now. This idea is a clothing brand, Inspired by cyberpunk, for cyberpunks. 

Cyberpunk fashion is unique, it's futuristic, it's neon, it's asymmetrical and it's practically ripped out of the fictional worlds it's inspired by, what's not to love about that. The slight issue with cyberpunk clothing, is either it's difficult to find apparel that isn't a piece of conceptual fashion or the items that you do find can be very expensive and made out of mass produced nylon and falls apart within a month. This issue tends to apply to the more 'urban crawler' stylisation of the clothing aspect. Below are two examples of this style.    




However, not every form of cyberpunk fashion is hard to find or expensive. The brand Cyberdog provides a range of cyberpunk clothing at an affordable price. Cyberdog appeals more towards ravers with most of their products sporting neon and holographic colours instead of blacks and ash greys. The apparel that Cyberdog sell have unique features such as ultra violet reactive, especially with their t-shirts, With my clothing brand idea I wish to take inspiration from both the clothing range of Cyberdog and the fictional world of cyberpunk. 

Realistically thinking however due to such a short deadline date (5 weeks) it's a tall order considering that not only do I wish to create some live products, I need to come up with an identity for this brand such as a logo, name and possibly a website. As a base plan for this project, I intend to have a full corporate identity, a proposal of my brand and a small selection of visual live products such as t-shirts and possibly a hoodie. 

Brainstorming Ideas and Coming up with a Plan of Production. 

Brainstorming ideas is essential regardless if I already have a solid plan to pursue with. It's going to provide me with a node of ideas I can refer to and adapt. During a Friday session I sat down and brainstormed a variety of possibilities for this project. In result I created two mind maps, the first was very roughly created in order to bring ideas to the table, whilst the second was a more refined mind map focusing more towards the clothing brand idea. Below are scans of both mind maps.  

This was the rough mind map created to get ideas onto paper.

This is the more refined mind map.

Additionally I believe that it would be wise to give myself a 'plan of production' due to only having 5 weeks to complete this project. having set goals and targets to achieve each week could give me an upper hand on the deadline. The plan of production I created consisted of the following:

Week 1: Brainstorm, Plan and document ideas for the Clothing Brand.
Week 2: Using ideas formed in the first week, begin designing a corporate identity such as logos, banners ETC.
Week 3: Create a proposal of brand for project and develop ideas, designs. experiment new ideas as well
Week 4: Create a solid design and possibly create some live products that can be modelled in as mock ups
Week 5: Finalise designs, proposals, concepts and art boards as preparation for submission.

Whilst this is all being done I will be documenting a vast majority if not everything onto blogger as well as creating an art board presentation using Adobe Illustrator to present my project for both the formative and the summative assessments.   

Deciding on a Name for the Brand.   

To begin with, I thought of a name for my brand. In most cases I tend to find coming up with names to be rather strenuous, but in this case I was able to come up with a couple of names that could become a viable brand name. At first I wanted my brand name to be relevant to cyberpunk so as an experiment I attempted to incorporate futuristic and cyber themed keywords such as 'Net', 'Glitch' and 'Corp' into the name to see if it worked. The conclusive result of this experiment provided me with a small list of various names such as 'Cybernetix' and 'Glitchapparel'. However shortly after I eventually came up with the name 'Pathetic Aesthetic' which was in fact inspired by a phrase a friend usually jokingly states, the phrase is "Aesthetic more like Pathetic". I think this name would fit rather well with the clothing brand theming due to when examining similar brands, they tend to use names that are quite trashy and edgy such as 'Dolls Kill' or 'Angry,Young and Poor' because of the type of target audience they aim for centre around the goth and punk subculture.

Now that I have a name for the brand that I wish to develop, next I want to experiment with some logo designs and possibly a font.

Adding Anonymity to the brand.

With the use of a t-shirt heat press I intend on creating a few live products to use for this project, however when it comes to displaying them for photographic visuals I do not want to have the products laid out on a flat surface. Preferably I would like to possibly get a couple of people to model with the products to have more appealing visual media when it comes to presenting my project. Additionally to add a form of anonymity to the models I want to create some masks/helmets to cover the model's face. With the help of a company called 'Wintercroft' who make and sell nets to create a wide variety of 3D helmets and masks in a low poly, I purchased both a skull and a fox head that I will be heavily modifying both to make them look cyberpunk such as spray painting them neon colours as well as adding wires and various components to them.

Here is an example of the helmets that wintercroft create and sell

The first helmet I built was the skull, it was a rather simple build, attach number to corresponding number and using double sided sticky tape to attach them together. However the nets of the helmets seem to be made out of a 150gsm glossy card so I felt like the durability of the helmet was limited especially when it came to transporting it between Huddersfield and Manchester. I didn't entirely want to test the durability so as soon as the helmet was built I instantly began layering it with both PVA glue and newspaper. It took about 4 layers before I felt that the helmet would be structurally sound, the back and sides  were the most worrisome because in comparison they lacked the support the front portion of the helmet had. Another issue I had with the helmet was that I wanted to have anonymity and I felt like the eye holes and nose hole were a bit large, when worn you could see the wearer's facial features depending on the surrounding lighting and angle. to combat this and achieve complete anonymity, I intend on getting some black plastic mesh and attaching it to the inside the helmet, however this will sacrifice the ability to see slightly so I must take that into consideration when attaching the mesh.    

Above is the skull helmet layered and ready for painting.

For the skull helmet I decided to have it spray painted into a neon hot pink colour. First however I gave the helmet a 'pebble' light grey undercoat to both mask the newspaper and provide a lighter base coat for the pink to sit on. The pink spray paint however was rather heavy in comparison to the grey, it started to run slightly giving this cracked lightning effect showing the grey paint under it, a couple of light layers of the pink paint should solved this issue.

Skull helmet with grey undercoat.

Skull helmet after being sprayed with neon pink

The end result of the neon skull helmet went extremely well. The pink spray paint looks better than I expected, the paint did't run or cake much and the slight grey cracks were easily fixed with and extra layer of paint. Additionally as a possible experiment i'd love to find an ultraviolet Spray paint to make it glow under black light and UV light. 

16 page magazine spread

As development towards the clothing brand proposal, the creation of a 16 page magazine that would focus on cyberpunk fashion could be an interesting addition to my project. Instead of creating a corporate identity, I could create an editorial with varied photographic visuals featuring self designed and printed products. 

During a Friday workshop I discussed the possibility of this idea with guest tutor, Jonathan Lindley. We considered that when it came to the photography aspect, the use of graffiti and urban environments are overused and cliché. However due to the theme being cyberpunk, we came up with ideas of possible locations for a photo shoot, places such as sever rooms and science work spaces could be more relevant and appealing environment. On the other hand I could feature more trashy environments to relate to the whole 'pathetic aesthetic' title,  environments such as piles of rubbish and dumpsters off set in the background. Although this is a good idea, like using graffiti and it is also overused and considered cliché. 

This is a photo of a server room, server rooms would provide an excellent environment and background for a photo shoot that is cyberpunk themed. However gaining access to one would be extremely difficult if not impossible due to these rooms housing so much expensive and delicate equipment.