Lucrecia Cruz

The better lives unit allowed us to learn and expand our knowledge on topics such as diversity, sustainability, culture appropriation, social responsibility, my chosen topic was creative direction I am glad that I chose creative direction as my focus because it allowed me to learn new creative skills that I can utilise in my future careers with creating content for brands. We learnt a variety of things that came under the creative direction umbrella, creative direction is the intersection where art and design meet. Creative direction equals visual communication, it was interesting to learn how to understand a brands aesthetic through products, collections, logos, fonts, graphic design and website design. Also understanding a brands positioning such as their customers and target consumers, competitors, engagement and communication with customers, pen portrait and positioning map. Working on the project with my group was eye opening because I got to see first hand how people interpret things differently, an example of this was when we all were played the same sound in the sound and image lecture but yet came up with completely different things, exploring this creative practise allowed me to be more empathetic because when it comes to other people’s perspectives they may not see things the way I do so I now will think about how somebody else will interpret the things I create. 
When it came to creating our project we decided to give a chance to everyone to contribute their ideas because our goal was to produce as many ideas as possible. We not only listened to all the ideas carefully but we also built and expanded each other’s ideas and then we mentioned it on all the ideas sheet so we don’t forget them or they don’t get lost. After we gathered a large number of ideas we categorized and examined them. Then we chose some ideas among all of them. Then we discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each of them. We also asked group members to vote for ideas that helped us to eliminate some of them. Moreover based on this voting we rank the ideas in priority order and then finalized them but due to the pandemic creating our project was difficult as the majority of our ideas involved parks and nature and as none of us are familiar with shooting videos we had hoped to get advice from the media team but unfortunately due to the pandemic we were unable to meet up to make this happen. This made me realise the importance of starting things as soon as possible and having more of a variety of content ideas because you never know what could happen, although we brainstormed our ideas and had a plan of what we wanted to do we could of shot content before the pandemic but we thought we would of had time. However the situation we are in forced us to think on our feet and really think outside the box and so I am happy with the outcome. We chose to make a simple video focusing on the creation of the brand, we did this by using found footage.

My second bog post is about how better lives lecture affects my future work style. My chosen lecture is emerging technologies in fashion by nick almond, nick opens the lecture by saying “technology allows us to do things we couldn’t do before, the future of technology means a change in all careers especially the fashion industry. 

Technologies are changing the way people shop and interact with fashion, through social media apps, retail shops and augmented realities. Brands are adapting to changes in order to get their products in front of their customer, this will change the future working style as I would have to make sure to create social media friendly content that will create a buzz and catch peoples attention. Furthermore utilising technology will allow the industry to be more sustainable e.g. creating virtual fashion shows. In the lecture we were shown a new technology in the industry that allows you to scan clothes and see exactly where it came from, thus shows that our physical reality is about to become blurred with the digital s it is important for us as creatives to get in the forefront of these new technologies. 

In the lecture we were shown that digital clothing could be made which allows people to try it on before it’s even made this means we will be able to completely re-design the way people interact with fashion and the clothing industry. 

I decided to do my own research in emerging fashion brands that utilise technology and came across Collusion Studios by ASOS, it is a new incubator brand developed by and for Gen Z; they collaborate with followers via social media to shape product and communications. They did this by asking their audience what they were inspired by through Instagram stories and using the poll function by putting out questions on everything from lighting to styling over the duration of the photoshoot. The outcome was that their followers had connected, created and curated a collection that they could call their own. 

Although it is difficult to see what to do for a better future as we don’t know what to expect from technology it is up to us to create our own digital realities because we have already seen a little bit of what is to come through things such as social media activism (#METOO, #BLACKLIVESMATTER, #FLINTWATERCRISIS), it has shown us the power of humans and technology together it can be really disruptive and create a positive difference. We are living in a borderless Internet which allows us to mix cultures, communities and mindsets; mixing our online with our real life. I feel that with the new technologies luxury brands have become more accessible and a lot of people feel the need to be a part of the conversation rather than an outsider looking in In future when creating events and experiences for a brand promotion I will ensure to have some sort of technological aspect that will allow the brand to be more accessible.

I have chosen to blog about the empathy lecture as it’s the one that stood out to me the most, the lecture opened with the question “what is empathy?” breaking this question down was interesting as we found out that it is defined in the dictionary as “stepping in the shoes of the other person and understanding their feelings and perspectives” there are two components of empathy; the first being an emotional response which means feeling and identifying. The second component is about coming from an understanding place which means imagining how it might be to go through what someone else is going through and imagining things from their perspective.

Understanding the meaning of empathy in more depth made me realise how important it is for artists, designers and creatives to be empathetic when we create things; Some of the world’s top brands including IBM, Apple, and Google have embraced the designing with empathy mindset in an effort to guess less and design products and experiences that truly resonate with their user base. Unlike decades prior, the one-size-fits-all, mass production approach is no longer enough to succeed and thrive and in my opinion the fashion industry is behind with doing this, it is important for us as the “future of fashion” to bring this change into the industry as currently it feels as though brands are only empathetic if there is profit to be made when really empathy should be normalized even if there’s no profit. 

We could choose to incorporate “Empathy things” as they could be mobilised to help design for empathy e.g using clothing “props” like walking sticks and glasses in photoshoots. You have to have empathy to be inclusive, otherwise you’ll be catering to only one crowd all the time, we need to think of people more marginalized than us when creating we need to practise empathy and choose ideas that help us all.