Lecture Reflections

Creative UK

This Lecture is about the creative industries in the UK. It is also more important for us as designers to connect our creative research to the wider context. Creative Britain connects talent, businesses and organisations across the creative industries; from arts and culture, film and television, video games to design, publishing and architecture and everything in between.

It was mentioned in the talk that 1 in 7 self-employed people in the UK work in the creative industries. 90% of creative businesses employ 9 people or less. I think that number is huge. And fashion design is one of the creative focus industries, with inspiration, materials and craftsmanship in which many designers are constantly exploring new ideas to interpret. Today, most consumers are more interested in visually appealing pieces, and for a good clothing brand, packaging design and the creativity of the garment are essential. The fashion industry needs all kinds of professionals: photographers, graphic branding and identities. So I think it's important for fashion designers to have some other skills as well.

Stephanie Fung

In recent years, all sectors have been affected by the new crown epidemic and people are spending more and more time in the online world, so at the same time, the digital fashion industry has grown bigger and bigger with the development. In the clothing sector, virtual clothing has shown its value as one of the digital products.

There are many advantages to virtual clothing, the first is the environmental value, creating virtual clothing, sustainable fashion that does not require the use of leather, fur, cotton or dyes, can be made without wasting a single piece of fabric, this would be a new perspective to solve the pollution problem in the fashion industry. The second is uniqueness, the essence of a virtual garment is an NFT, each part is unique and the NFT proves its ownership and irreproducibility. The third is timelessness, a digital product that relies on the internet and data to exist, it does not depreciate and the story of its owner adds to its value instead. The fourth is more opportunities for designers, affected by the epidemic and the limitations of offline fashion shows, while meta-universe fashion weeks and digital clothing designers bring more opportunities and money, as well as increased sales channels.

But it also has many shortcomings. Firstly, it has a long lead time and is not stable, and it can take longer to create special customised styles. Secondly, the production of high quality virtual clothing requires both hardware and software support, one of which is indispensable, and it takes a lot of time for designers to learn, design and develop new digital clothing. The third is that the consumer base is small, and the current virtual garments are not understood and supported by most people, who see no point in having the practicality of physical garments.

Overall, personally, I'm bullish on virtual clothing. The digital fashion industry is still in its infancy and the concept of virtual fashion is still vague to consumers today, so virtual clothing brands should find a way to communicate and connect with consumers.

Angela Fusco,

BALMAIN

Angela is the designer responsible for all denim and casual woven products at Balmain Paris. She leads her team in their efforts to expand and refresh the product category offering with new fabrics, fits and signature finishing details. I sense intriguing designs in her work, they look effortless, but can be savoured.

Denim was the material I wanted to use for my postgraduate project because its properties and texture fit the theme of my project, but denim is an environmentally unfriendly fabric, something I only learned about through a documentary.

So I wanted to make use of old clothes and collect some discarded denim fabrics or second-hand market denim for upcycling.

Pip Jenkins，
JOHN SMEDLEY

This lecture mentioned that the sustainability in the apparel industry and I have always been amazed and impressed by the UK's universal commitment to sustainability and its implementation, not just in apparel but in all sectors. Clothing is the second most polluting industry in the world, after petrochemicals, and as designers we have an obligation to reduce the waste and waste generated by clothing. There is an old Chinese saying that clothing, food, housing and transport are all essential and clothing is at the top of the list and people are demanding more and more of it. To develop the concept of sustainable clothing, we need the cooperation of the government, and we also need to provide people with Popularise the concept of sustainability and make people environmentally aware.

For consumers, reducing over-buying and buying clothes in second-hand vintage markets are ways to help sustainability, while for designers Zero-waste Fashion can be used to produce garments with little or no textile waste in the production process. The second is post-consumer zero-waste fashion - where garments are produced from second-hand and medium-consumer garments, eliminating waste at the end of the life of a garment, usually at the end of the product. So for my postgraduate project I also want to use the second approach of Zero-waste Fashion to transform old clothes and create new clothing styles.

NTU Employability

This lecture was given by Greg Chisholm from the employability team at NTU. The teacher gave us lots of valuable advice and also gave us some examples of his previous students' experiences and told us about the support that the employability team can provide during and after our studies at NTU. The teacher was very patient and also told us not to feel afraid to approach anyone in the team, the teachers in the team were there to help us, which also made us feel at ease.

The school has online tools and information that we can check at any time, and during the lecture the teacher also told us some information about visas for international students wishing to stay and work in the UK:.

1. You can only apply after you have successfully completed your course

2. You can stay in the UK for 2 years if your application is successful

3. You can do most jobs such as entrepreneurship and volunteering

You cannot apply for most benefits

It is very important to leave more time for ourselves to think, to explore and discover what we can do, first to set a goal, to be creative, then to achieve it, and then to start to deal with the results of these processes, and our teachers also advise us to keep a lot of what happens in the process, whether it is a success or a failure, and also to make timely reflections.

Katie Greenyer,

PENTLAND BRANDS

The lecture will be given by Katie from the Pentland family, a very talented individual who started out in design roles at Red or Dead, particularly in print, colour and graphics, as well as running her own successful business. 1996 saw the acquisition of the Red or Dead brand by the Pentland Group and Katie became part of the Pentland family. She continues to provide direction for print, graphics and packaging.

The topic of this lecture was around our job search and the teacher explained cv and the dos and don'ts needed on the job search path, which benefited me a lot. The following points were all very helpful to me in this lecture.

Firstly,

We should do our homework on the brand we want to apply for, and in the face of different brands we should be able to understand the brand before going to the interview, understand the business actions of the brand in the last three months, and what business actions the brand's most concerned competitors have made in the last three months. It is also necessary to carefully study the requirements of the position applied for, you can properly integrate your previous work or works together and learn to highlight your core strengths. Before the interview we can also try to think about the questions that the interviewer will ask back, we think of countermeasures in advance.

Secondly,

We need to tailor our CVs to suit the company and the position, and try to match the project experience required for the position. Each company has its own style brand, for example, Japanese companies like to be simple and structured, so we should not design our CVs too flamboyantly, just be clear and concise.

Thirdly,

manage the time schedule, know the traffic route in advance, try to arrive 10 minutes before, don't step on the spot or be late, arrive early to get familiar with the environment first, leave yourself a buffer time to avoid traffic jams and other unexpected situations on the road.

$}GWT{Y733_PKZD_~CK3H$NP.png$

Sarah Swindell,

WATERMELON CREATIVE

This talk was given by Sarah, the owner of Watermelon Creative, a full service creative and retail solution for licensees and licensees as well as retailers. One of the things I noticed in this talk was that many companies have been focusing on competition with each other, but Sarah was not at all interested in the activities of many companies competing with each other, she was more interested in focusing as well as concentrating on what she creates and doing what a creative person should do, I can't deny that her idea is indeed a good way to adjust her mentality, to focus on improving her own abilities and It's true that focusing too much on confrontation can lead to a lot of negative emotions, but I don't think it's entirely a good thing to completely avoid mental internal conflict, healthy competition in many cases can make each other learn more, for a creative person in the tension and excitement provided by competition, sometimes more burst of new inspiration, in healthy competition In a healthy competition, it is also possible to meet like-minded partners and to have some cooperation in the future work. In short, I think that when facing competition, you should keep a good attitude, do well for yourself and at the same time be humble enough to learn from others and cooperate, fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and improve yourself.

Oil Royce,

FREELANCE

The speaker of this lecture was royce, I think it was quite helpful to me, he mentioned that we should invest our time to build up online media again, I personally agree with this viewpoint, the current development of the internet has reached a stable state, all walks of life spread, market and sell through media, and the first thing we do as a designer, after we get out of school, is to market ourselves and experience our The first thing about self-publishing is that you can improve yourself. If you want to make more sophisticated and valuable content, you have to force yourself to keep improving, which requires people to keep learning to enrich themselves. The second benefit is to gain contacts. As the teacher said in the lecture, 70% of our industry is dealing with other people, and nowadays it is a society of personal contacts, which can bring you many benefits. The third benefit is the opportunity to collaborate. The biggest benefit of self-publishing is that you have the opportunity to get more opportunities to collaborate. You will have an advantage over other competitors.

The stories Royce mentioned in his talk were also something I learnt a lot from. He said that with the current social media, there is a particular emphasis on stories and when going for jobs, we need to tell our stories in a compelling way to sell our skills and very often, when the story moves, they will buy it. Engage others and make yourself interesting, I believe this can really impress others.

Diana Pasek-Atkinson,

NTU ENTERPRISE

This lectured was given by Diana and was about the help that NTU Enterprise provides to people who want to start their own business, and the university offers many support services including this mentoring, workshops and events. I am very grateful for this, but due to my own circumstances, I will not be able to start a business of my own once I graduate. However, I do have some initial ideas for the brand I want to create in the future, which is genderless clothing, compared to the UK, there are few real genderless clothing brands in China, and through my questionnaire, most young people or middle-aged people know very little about genderless clothing, and even those who do know about it think there is a problem of few brands to choose from and a single style of brand, so I think there is a lot of room for genderless clothing in China. So I think there is a lot of room for genderless clothing to develop in China. So I think there is a lot of room for genderless clothing to grow in China. And I would choose to sell online first before considering offline physical shops.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)