04.02.2025 - 21.03.2025 | Week 1 - Week 7
Maisarah binti Mohd Sufian | 0358458
Major Project 1 | Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Major Project 1
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PROGRESSION
Instructions
In this module, we are required to form groups of 4 in our respective specialisations to begin ideation and develop a proposal for our Final Year Project. This proposal must encompass research, progression, concept development as well as digital and physical mockups.
Week 1
We started the first week with a general lecture including all of the design specialisations to brief us on how this module is going to be conducted. I was a bit surprised that this would be group work, as I always imagined doing my final year project alone, but I thought that this would be an opportunity to create something greater that what a single person is capable of. This was also the time where I interacted with my group members for the first time, Myra, Nadhrah and Sheren. I was initially worried about finding people to group with as I don't really mingle with my course mates, but Myra approached me and I was thankful to have found a group quickly. We continued to make a groupchat with everyone in it.
The next day we got together in class to decide what we were going to do for our project. Ms. Vi showed us some examples of what we could do, and it could be related to a cause, a culture, etc.
We immediately started brainstorming on what to do, at first it was a bit difficult as everyone seemed to say that they would be fine with anything and no one was really giving any specific options. I didn't want to be the one to decide alone, so I lead the discussion by asking them what they would like and wouldn't like to do.
I kept track of the discussion, and we mutually agreed that we weren't interested in doing rebrandings, interactive websites or board/card games. We did however not mind doing our own Branding such as product launces, magazines/publishing or social media campaigns. Next we had to decide what exactly the topic we wanted to do so that we could come up with a suitable approach. I was again met with all of them saying 'I'm fine with anything', so I listed some potential categories for us to vote from. The asterisks represent how many votes each category got and stationery got the most votes.
The thing is, we also had to decide what kind of stationery we wanted to do and since fashion got the second highest votes, we thought we could kind of combine the two and make a stationery line related to fashion. We had to decide what kind of fashion to do, as in would be about a specific brand or style or do something trending, and we decided on doing fashion trends related to a specific generation, and the easiest would be Gen Z as we ourselves are part of it. Hence, we came up with our topic:
Gen Z Fashion Trends
To merge stationery with this, we realised that Gen Z fashion is somewhat of a mesh of exisiting fashion trends that have been around for ages, and it's really about bringing back the past nowadays. Instead of only doing one, we came up with 4 prominent styles that are popular these days. While doing this we also realised we still needed a purpose, why were we doing this? And I realised that our generation these days heavily rely on social media, influencers and the Internet as our sources for fashion, contrary to back in the day where people would rely on magazines. That thought also became a base for potential product ideas.
We came up with some ideas, and without realising it slowly started to lean towards publishing, because pens, stickers and notepads seemed a bit lame to do. I stated that this is a lot of work despite the rest of them being okay with it as I knew my limits, so we thought we could stick to completing one this semester which would be the pop-up book. This pop-up book would be like a magazine, showcasing 4 fashion trends that we each came up with: Y2K, Vintage & Thrifted, Quiet Luxury/Clean Girl and Androgynous/Grunge. We also decided that we could do a photoshoot with our own clothes and models so that the book could feel more authentic.
I created a Pinterest board as we browsed Pinterest to look at all the possible outcomes and ways we could execute our pop-up book, as well as add outfits and references for the trends we chose as content for the book.
I sent this link and all the file links to everyone, and we delegated that I would fill in the slides with research as it was all on my laptop and it was their job to gather extra references and begin sketches and interactive page ideas. Nadhrah said she would make a Canva link for everyone to dump in their ideas.
Week 2
Nadhrah had also only sent in the Canva link on Tuesday morning and to my surprise it was completely empty, and no one ever sent any work into the group. I ignored this since it was only Week 2, and this week we received a more clear guide on how our final proposal would be, and for our presentation on Week 3 we should present until the Objectives/Deliverables of our project.
We began to discuss again to start on research, and I felt that the discussion pace was a bit too slow, to make it more efficient we wrote everything down on my laptop as I could keep track of our references and such. I researched different articles about Gen Z's habits with traditional fashion publications, and looked at magazines like ELLE and COSMOPOLITAN.
I also set up a timeline of our work as we noticed that there was a Gantt Chart Planning section in the proposal requirements, and we also set our photoshoot to be on Week 5.
I sent this link and all the file links to everyone, and we delegated that I would fill in the slides with research as it was all on my laptop and it was their job to gather extra references and begin sketches and interactive page ideas.
Week 3
With the presentation coming up and no sketches so far, I waited until Tuesday morning to ask incase they needed more time. I guess that was my mistake, Nadhrah had also only sent in the Canva link on Tuesday morning and to my surprise it was completely empty, and no one ever sent any work into the group. As I asked for sketches while I moved on to complete the slides, it seems that my question was completely ignored by everyone. Sheren was the only person who had even joined the Pinterest board as a collaborator, and no one had added any pins to it at all other than myself. This was when I noticed that our group's workflow was starting to fall. They replied to my messages super late, and at the time I thought that we needed to have some sketches to present so I was a bit frustrated, thankfully we didn't but it still would've been nice to have some, and I wondered what exactly they were doing for the past two weeks as I worked on everything in the slides.
Despite asking me if I need help with the slides, the one thing I asked for was ignored and no one sent anything into the group chat, other than Sheren who just added a few interactive page ideas into the Google Doc with no sketches. It was getting late and I decided to give my name suggestions first and did a poll as soon as someone else sent other options.
Ms. Vi also brought some books for us to feel and see the different possibilities we could so with different types of paper, and after class we took vids and pics of it.
I also immediately started to delegate tasks to fill in the missing parts of our proposal. The thought of who would be doing the logo sketches completely missed my mind, and it seemed so did everyone else's.
At the same time, Sheren went to look for some books that were similar to what Ms. Vi had shown us at a few libraries, while I went to Kinokuniya. Sheren couldn't find any, and while I did it was wayyyyy too expensive and I just asked Ms. Vi if she could bring the books again so that I could study and make notes out of.
I had also decided that our book would be 19cmx23cm, and the pages/chapters structure while making notes.
As usual, no one had sent any progress in the group, so I trusted that they would show us an discuss the next week in class.
Week 4
Sheren told us she couldn't make it to class on the morning of, and I was a bit speechless because she had never sent any book layouts or sketches despite being asked for it.
And so, we had not enough to present and we seriously needed to expedite our progress. After feedback on the survey questions, we immediately got to work. Maybe I should've reminded Sheren about her due part, but at that point I didn't really want to waste my time or energy haggling people to do their work when I could do it myself. I immediately got to work on the book layouts and mockups of the prototype.
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| I lost the binder clip ToT |
While I continued to work on the book layout and Myra the survey questions, I delegated tasks to Sheren and Nadhrah to create some logo sketches. We also planned to consult with Ms. Vi earlier as we are very behind on work.
In the meantime, I also helped Myra as she asked for my input for the survey questions for her to continue to gather data.
Ultimately we decide to conduct the photoshoot on Wednesday after our class. Sunday came, and no news of sketches from Sheren and Nadhrah, so I bumped them on Monday.
Nadhrah made some bookmark sketches, Myra did the PR Kit and Sheren made the fashion journal. After receiving and collecting all our work, we placed them into the slides to show Ms Anis and Ms. Vi the following day. At the same time I also reminded them on more interactive page ideas I've been asking for since Day 1.
Despite me giving creative freedom, I still seemed to be the person who looks like they have all the answers when I too am just as clueless as them sometimes......
In the midst of this, as no one had found any other models I proceeded to get in contact with the models I gathered and created a lettucemeet to schedule a day for the photoshoot, and was gathering help for equipment such as lighting/cameras from Taylor's Filmmaking Club (which I'm a BOD of, bod privileges hihihi...) I was also involved in asking them the clothes they have, etc., and choosing which to bring to the shoot.
Ultimately we decide to conduct the photoshoot on Wednesday after our class. Sunday came, and no news of sketches from Sheren and Nadhrah, so I bumped them on Monday.
Tuesday came, and after consultation we realised we were missing our sketches for our deliverables, we were still a little lost at what to do for those as we haven't fully understood it yet, so I tried coming up with some random ones and asked them if they had any ideas on how to improve or what to change (no one gave any ideas and just followed what I already wrote ... )
Nadhrah made some bookmark sketches, Myra did the PR Kit and Sheren made the fashion journal. After receiving and collecting all our work, we placed them into the slides to show Ms Anis and Ms. Vi the following day. At the same time I also reminded them on more interactive page ideas I've been asking for since Day 1.
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| (spoiler alert: NO ONE GAVE ANY) |
Despite me giving creative freedom, I still seemed to be the person who looks like they have all the answers when I too am just as clueless as them sometimes......
Week 5
We came together to show our work and made further refinements together, and I asked Sheren and Nadhrah if they could somehow combine some elements of both of their logos into one as they showed me their work for my feedback. During this meeting we also attempted to create an identity, and I had some colour suggestions such as off-black, off-white and maroon, but we wasted 10 minutes thinking about colours and the rest of us besides Myra were busy doing other work, so I let her explore different colour combos, but despite showing me multiple combinations, she never sent any final ones. I don't even know what happened to that. We then showed our progress to Ms Anis and Ms Vi.
The key take aways was that our deliverables were totally off the mark, and our branding seriously needs more work. After feedback, Sheren and Nadhrah were expected to come up with some new logo ideas. I also talked to them in class, and reaffirmed them that we are severely lacking behind and we need to have something to show every day. I made it clear that everyone should also have some logo ideas to show by that night, at least 3. (another spoiler alert, NONE WERE SHOWWWWNNNNNN)
That way, we could move on to work on our deliverables after establishing our identity. For the sake of time, each of us could also explore different potential name ideas as well.
After class we too a break and headed to our photoshoot. Nadhrah told me she couldn't make it because she has online class, and Myra appeared sick in class so she had to go home early :D.
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| Cheng, Zaky, Syed, Abner and Samit |
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| Gorgeous model Aliya <3 |
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| Model Zaky! |
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| Cheng helping to hold the light as Sheren takes pics of the clothes |
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| Me with Sheren taking pics of Zaky |
I brainstormed a bunch of other related words that I could potentially use and created keywords to decide my concept.
I imagined something quirky, a bit weird and unforgiving after settling on the word BARE. I liked that bare was an almost vague word, and it had a lot of different meanings. I even asked my friends what were the words that come to mind when they hear the word bare, I also went with Bare because I knew that the rest of my group members would go for the suggested names that Ms Vi and Ms Anis gave, so I wanted to give a different variation.
When deciding the identity, I was quite intrigued by Untitled Folder and Buffalo Zine's concept, and I attempted to apply that to BARE.
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| Untitled Folder Issue #5 |
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| Buffalo Zine Landing Page |
I liked the discreetness of Untitled Folder's magazine cover and thought it was interesting. So, I got to work on logo sketches, digitising and working on some of the deliverables.
I tried going for something weird, because I thought it would convey the unforgiving and not afraid to be different message, (but after consultation clearly it wasn't working...).
At the same time, the rest of the group was slowly sending in their sketches, but the pace was too slow I felt that I needed some help on how to get them going. I had a consultation with Ms. Vi, and she gave me advice. We decided to have everyone present 3 logo variations and some deliverable executions on our coming consultation day.
Week 6
The day came... and we all showed our work and discussed on finalising one before presenting to Ms Anis and Ms Vi. Nadhrah had STITCH, Sheren had UNDO and Myra had UNBIND/REFORM.
We each gave our feedback on all of them, and unsurprisingly they wanted to go with BARE. When we showed our progress to Ms Vi and Ms Anis, we realised that it is still severely lacking (full feedback can be read in the feedback section of this blog). At this point I was in a crisis because that meant I had to do the entire book layout, while still finalising our identity. We quickly scheduled a teams meeting on the next night to settle it. The truth is I was seriously going through a major breakdown at this point because the next week would be our presentation, and our identity wasn't even final. This week was honestly the craziest week and I had consumed god know how many cans and shots of caffeine to pull 3 all nighters, and getting probably a total of only 17 hours of sleep the whole week to juggle this project with my other personal work. I made it clear that they had to show at least some progress everyday, and we had no choice but to decide our work along the way. The teams meeting was there to give them a rundown on what to do, and I just had to pray to God that they were able to understand and execute it. Knowing their work pace, I tackled on the book layout all by myself, and that left Sheren to do the website landing page, Nadhrah to do the web banners and Myra to do story ads. Sheren also quickly finalised the logo!
I quickly got to work on fixing the book cover so they could use it in the deliverables.
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| All images besides logo retrieved from Pexel.com |
I also decided to create the logo clearspace as the placement of the logo in their deliverables were not consistent.
In the mean time, I was working on the book layout. This was honestly more work than I expected, hence the three all nighters. I could only get to finish the first chapter by Sunday, and the second chapter by Tuesday.
I watched a ton of Youtube videos to figure out how I could execute the ideas I had in the book, so shoutout to these channels!!!!
The way I executed this was to assemble the layers of my pages in Photoshop, and then exporting the layers to InDesign and making duplicates to maintain size and consistency. All of these different layers were printed and assembled. I had some ideas of pages with transparency effects, so I went to the store to find some clear pastics, which I settled on red and blue which gave me the idea for the colour seperation effect on the last page. (I couldn't find any actually CLEAR plastic... crazy...) Sheren also helped to find the velcro stickers to use on our removable element pages!
I retrieved all my images either from royalty-free image websites, or website references. All the SHEIN wardrobe pages were also actual images of clothes you could find on SHEIN. My tabs and downloads folder were so loaded that I kept getting full scratch disks warnings on Adobe so I had to uninstall a bunch of apps :/
We met on Sunday to work on Chapter 1 of the book, I did all of the gluing and assembling, while my other group members helped in cutting and printing.
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| On campus from 11AM-7PM XoX |
With Chapter 1 done, it was looking to be pretty thick!
We met again on Tuesday to finish Chapter 2, yet somehow I was the one who did all of the cutting and gluing on Tuesday because they were still not yet done with our deliverables the day before our presentation.. So, I told them to focus on finishing the deliverables while I was still involved in giving feedback and input into each and everyone one of them. Thankfully, Sheren was able to do the slides (thank god) which turned out super nice! She was able to help solidify the identity and with our collective input we had consistency at last.......
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| On campus from 10AM-11PM ft. Boom energy shot |
I completed the book at around 11PM, while everyone else had gone back at around 5PM-6PM. At this moment, I also started to feel my sinuses swelling, and by the time I reached home at 12AM, I was sick....... I quickly took videos and pictures so that they could also update their deliverables, my deliverables and the slides!!
Week 7
We presented.......
...and it went well! Ms Vi said the presentation before showing the book was boring, but overall, she liked it a lot! I was just glad that I actually pulled through and was able to complete the book, and I seriously think it's my child.
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FEEDBACK
Week 1
- Interesting concept, something that is definitely not seen in the market.
- Need to be more clear on what the graphic design elements will be, so that it does not lean more towards fashion design.
- The photoshoot should be done within the semester so that if each of use were to go our separate ways we still had the photos to use.
- We must come up with a name and branding identity.
- Think about what the people who visit our exhibition booth could bring back as a collectible.
- Start to research on the market and have a solid reason why we are doing the book.
Week 2
- Typography and publishing alone isn't enough to count as graphic design, and we need to further emphasise the graphic design aspects in our project.
Week 3
- The idea is clear enough, but we should further develop our deliverables so that we could emphasise graphic design into our project.
Week 4
- The questions for our survey are simply asking respondents on how we execute the book, which shouldn't be as we are to determine what the book looks like and includes. We should actually have questions to ask regarding the content of the book, such as personal fashion tastes, pop culture knowledge, etc.
- Our deliverables are very lacking, and that we must expedite our progress as we have yet to make any logo sketches or brand identity.
- For our deliverables (ad campaign) we should collaborate with an existing clothes brand/store as a way to market our book like ZALORA, H&M, etc. As a suggestion, the clothing store should be a store where you can get all of the different clothing trends/styles in our book such as SHEIN.
- Book layout needs proper thumbnail sketches done in InDesign.
Week 5
- Our group's progress is really falling behind, and our direction seems a little lost. We must come together physically as a group to get work done efficiently.
- We must expedite progress and instead of 4 chapters we can simply finish 2 chapters, as our final proposal must look complete. Out of MP1 and MP2, 80% of our progress should be done in MP1.
- Our book must have a physical mockup by the end of the semester.
- The logo for our book looks to conventional, too similar to Women's Weekly. We should take an unconventional and more grunge approach, such as Dazed or ganguro garyu magazines.
- Overall, branding is lacking and our deliverables are also far off the mark, as we still don't get the concept.
- The name of the book itself doesn't have to be so long, and instead of Style Unfolded we could look as words such as UNDO, UNBIND, etc. and we could potentially have chapters with similar names as well.
- Deliverables should be the ways we are going to promote and market our book, which can only be found online through an online store. This way, our deliverables should be mainly focused on online promotion such as web banners, storefront posters, social media ads, etc. There is no limit and we may continue to have physical collaterals, but our only obstacle is the time we have.
Week 6
- Our finalised identity looks like something done last minute, and the images aren't polished/presentable enough. It looks messy, not grunge enough to be grunge.
- The BARE identity isn't really working, and the emphasis on the body parts are unnecessary. Some of the elements look too cheesy. Should try to go for something more clean. Instead of cut and paste, we should consider collage. The elements of BARE do not have to be so literal.
- The book cover and sleeve idea is good, but the book cover is too vague and looks a bit gross. Perhaps can use a clearer image of a body part such as the nape of a neck, and the fashion element should still be on the book cover itself instead of simply on the plastic sleeve. We should try going for something a bit more sexy and elegant.
- The UNDO logo and name fits better, just the needle in the logo could be a bit better. Instead of the bright colours, the slightly muted colour coordination of UNBIND could go well with the grunge layout attempt of BARE.
- The execution of the deliverables shouldn't look too much like fashion, so avoid too many clothing images and emphasise on pages of our book. Most importantly, advertise the book, not marketing SHEIN.
Week 7
- The book prototype is great, but the interactive pages should be spread out more when we continue the 4 chapters so as to maintain the element of surprise.
- Early presentation did not reflect the excitement leading up to presenting the prototype, and that we are missing progression on our logo.
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REFLECTION
Experience
This module was a crazy ride, and the workload was so overbearing that I ended up sick by the end of the semester. It think the in-class tutorial sessions could have been a bit clearer, because in my opinion from the start of Week 1 the actual outcome for this module was a bit blurry, but over time as we had more consultations it became much clearer however by the time I finally opened my eyes and realised what we were supposed to end this module with, it was already Week 5. I realised that time flies incredibly fast, but despite all the time crunches we had this semester, fortunately we have a year to develop this to be even better before the second half of this module. I also learned that I should definitely pick my groupmates more wisely. In all honesty, my groupmates have been anything but proactive. Maybe if I had a team that was mutually passionate about our work, perhaps I wouldn't be as burdened as I was. As each week passed, I found my self-confidence wear down, and I was starting to think perhaps I wasn't as creative as I thought I was, I wasn't working hard enough, I didn't try to communicate with them better, I should've pushed them more and be more stern with them, I should have been the one to delegate tasks more clearly, maybe I should just give up this module and start all over again. I didn't know who to blame, whether it was myself and my inadequacies, my groupmates who seem to never want to communicate with me, or my lecturers who's feedback I could never fully understand or digest. I honestly broke down a lot in these 7 weeks, because this module isn't the only thing on my plate, I had other events, design jobs and film shoots and I wondered if tackling too many things at once and not putting my entire efforts into this project was my fault as well. I really did not expect it to be as heavy as it was because it was supposed to be a group effort, yet most of the time it felt to be an unfair workload towards me. Our group doesn't even have a leader! And I definitely did not expect to be the one doing most of the leading. I guess because of this, after realising our lack of progress and quality following each consultation, I felt that it was my fault. I did come out of this module with a good relationship with all of my group members, and I am just glad that I never caused negative tension within the group. At last, my resillience was stronger that I thought it was and I actually completed this project with a lot of praise from Ms. Vi and my classmates. I was happy despite being sick and tired. I am actually not quite satisfied with the outcome, and I believe there is a lot more room for improvement with many aspects that I wanted to change. However, I did great in the timespan and resources I had and I will leave all my revisions towards when I continue this journey on my own!
Observation
Communication in a group setting is super hard and not easy, and I am updating this reflection now with the fact that one of my group members reached out to me to apologise and explain their reasons for their lack of work in this project. I think more people should realise that it's better to communicate these things during the progress, not after it's all done. I have mentioned to them if they are having any trouble completing tasks to let the group know, but I guess I still have to be empathetic and understand their situations. Leadership is especially important, and despite myself naturally having the tendency to lead, I really don't enjoy it and I don't think I'm the best at it at all. I guess it's because I don't hold back my thoughts, and I don't like to waste time moping around so I'm constantly at my feet looking for something to do. I still don't like group projects, but this experience was valuable as I have to cope with working in group settings in my career anyway! Design is all about creativity and criticism, and that's the way it should be learnt.
Findings
Publishing is NOT EASYY but I actually do like publishing design more than anything, probably because there is always an actual physical product that you can flip through and experience and it feels more rewarding that way. Coming up with content for magazines isn't so easy, and although I could still use Lorem Ipsum for the prototype I realised how much more research I need to do for when I actually flesh out the content. There are many possibilities with layouts and typography, and I regret not being able to explore it more due to being to focused on the interactive aspect of the book. Despite never having done something like this before and only learning how to create flat pages in Publishing Design! The process was definitely super hard and tiring, but it was fun at the same time and felt like an arts and craft project, where I could really be as creative as I wanted. I don't really need to buy expensive books to learn, and there are already a ton of free resources on Youtube from paper craft channels. I do think that I still want to at least purchase a book where I could feel different paper samples, or find a print shop that I could continue to work closely with for the year to develop the paper types/process in the future. I have definitely learned more in depth about publishing in this module, and because it is so enjoyable to me I might just try more publishing projects for my future career.
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