Designed with art. Designed with culture. Designed with story.™
FAEBELLA BLOG
15 OCTOBER, 2020
HOW I BECAME A DESIGNER
ALISHA JAYNE|FOUNDER|FAEBELLA
I am not a designer but I designed the Starfish Dreaming Collection.
Usually I don’t design Faebella Activewear. I work with different designers to incorporate indigenous artwork into designs who have fashion and graphic design backgrounds. This is for a few reasons; I did not study design, have never wanted to be a designer. In fact, I never expected to be building a fashion business.
It would make sense for me to get into design, however, but up until this point, the only bit of design work I have done for the brand is selecting my favourites. Designers I work with are so incredible and usually able to offer me up to 20 choices of different designs incorporating the artwork we’ve been working with. So my job has been to cut the designs I don’t think people would like.
At some point during my business journey, I discovered a tool called Placeit which allows you to incorporate a design onto a mock up photo which can be of absolutely anything you can think of, an iphone, a book, a couch, even women wearing activewear. I started using this tool to satisfy my own curiosity of how some artwork would look on activewear. Then I got more strategic with it, manipulating different design aspects by changing the size, direction etc. to produce designs I really liked.
One day I produced a design using Placeit that I fell in love with. And that design became the “Faith” legging of the Starfish Dreaming Collection. I sent the mockup photo to my supplier and asked them if they think they could bring the design to life. I didn’t normally ask to use their graphic design service, instead preferring to select my own designers and send them final designs.
The design they sent back, made up in vector form, looked so good that I decided to go with it and had the first design I'd ever created made up on real fabric, as real leggings! But the real decider of whether a design was going to work was and has always been Faebella supporters and customers. So I organised a photoshoot of women wearing the Faith legging's and posted the photo's on Faebella's social media platforms and website.
Thankfully, the design was a success! People loved it and I found this so encouraging that I figured I'd try to design the rest of the Starfish Dreaming Collection myself.
For each artwork that Faebella works with, I like to create a collection of about 3 different legging designs. I believe this amount of designs gives each piece an opportunity to incorporate the artwork in an appealing way and show off different parts of the artwork since each element that goes into indigenous artwork is so special and well-thought out by the artist.
So my job was now to complete the Starfish Collection by creating two more legging's designs. Again, I opened Placeit and arranged some elements of the artwork on a legging's product image. And through this method, I created the Truganini and Pearl legging's which now, along with the Faith design make up the Starfish Collection - the first collection designed by me.
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