At first on searching Jonathan's work `i hadn't found it overly appealing but from searching deeper and looking at his work for Bowie and the amazing AdBuster work he's done I got really into it. I even have started to do a pop-out page in the start of my sketchbook. I feel his work can relate strongly to my interest in Dada type font work and my love for Kraftwerk's album artwork. His techniques include crossing out words, using odd fonts overlapping imagery, and taking a very strong political message to his work. He has Collaborated with Damien Hirst and other artists, interestingly he identified problems with collaboration which I didn't expect, he highlights how designers struggle to work with graphic designers like himself, as they want everything done sometimes in way it can't be or isn't a realistic process to creating the best work. 

Until I started researching Mesh in depth in the Library on Monday I didn't properly understand how broad it's definition was, mesh is actually a huge array of matter which ties in well with my research on Knit. I looked at Factory booklets with the help of a Librarian on it's properties and learnt how wide and tight patterns can change it greatly. It's uses can be for security doors to insulation. 

I enjoyed researching Knit the most, as I have started to do three pages of sketchbook on some favourite designs I found from Margiela and Koji Tatsuno. 

This is only being uploaded now at this time 3:46 am on Tuesday as my Mac decided to suddenly break after me leaving our Library session later on Monday with all my scans/pictures. I have only properly moved back to London this weekend after staying in a hotel for enrolment and the start of the course. However I have been reflecting a lot on how research and group work can benefit me and have uploaded pictures of some physical work I started when I was without my computer highlighting words and opinions that mean something to me.

Before this exercise I had never looked at Mesh or Knit, it made me explore techniques and materials that at first didn't interest me when thinking about designing or an art piece. I went and bought Garden Wire and Mesh to explore further my research that touched on how Margiela used knit to sew plastic clothes together. 

I started to attempt to knit the Mesh together to build a skyscraper type sculpture after cutting the mesh into pieces. It was very difficult and I caught my hands a lot on the garden wire, however it was fun to make and I worked my way up the pieces knitting them together which gave it a look of Barbed Wire. 

I really love Jonathan BarnBrook's work now and understand it, I have downloaded some of his fonts to my mac for personal use. I went about arranging some slogans to put into my Therapy building that would reflect on his Ad Buster piece, however mine were very different and correlated to a theme about life improvement, for example 'Have it your way' from Burger King, Have a break, have a' by Kit Kat, and 'Open Happiness' by Coca Cola collaged together to create a banner that would draw people in by the brands they are already brainwashed by with advertising ironically. In future, I plan to incorporate what I have learnt from Jonathan by implanting strange text and playing around with the angle and rotation of font. It has made me question a lot deeper how font can be manipulated and how graphic design can be 'Political'; I know regard it as a higher skill that is important as the design of clothing which I hadn't previously.  

When looking at Knit in my research I looked at different techniques of Knitting in books in the Library; I started to discover how objects and pieces of clothing that would normally be made of different pieces could be knitted and used as art pieces. This developed into my developing the idea of having my Cocoon inside the mesh metal building knitted out of material. I then used a huge chain I found to explore this further by taking pictures of in in different types of Form wound up. I drew quick sketches of this to explore different forms of structure and think further about how a person could sit or feel if they were inside this VR Headset Simulation I was looking to create. Structure and form of the knitted Cocoon could be changed if I was to make this to make the person go through an array of Emotions; which is what I reflected on after doing this process of sketching different shapes. 

What Skills are you Learning? How are they Useful?

I am learning about Mark Making, how I can move Fabric on and pin it move it onto Material and draw from it. I am learning that Collaging and experimenting with differenr drawing techniques and pinning onto Mannequins, onto the jacket can develop the thoughts already in my head or inital approach. It is useful to look at everything on a garment before approaching it I have learnt today. We looked at Vents, the Ease of Movement, Length of the Blazer, fastenings, cuffs etc. I learnt today about Pockets, Flaps, and what Full Lining and Half lining is and what Darts on a Jacket are. My answer to this question on a Reflection would be I learnt the skill of how to Observe a Garment properly and how to Explore with mark making, realising how many different design processes I can use to produce different outcomes. 

What Causes Blocks, How do you overcome hurdles and Problems in your work? What are my new Stratergies?

What causes Blocks for me is a lack or slowing of Confidence or Concept. I realised I need to stop worrying abut the end result or what the final idea will be and fully allow myself to investiagte and explore the process of creating ideas and taking them further so I get there naturally. This was a learning curve for me with the Ideas Factory Project and 3 day project. My new stratergies are to fully open my ears to others peoples ideas and what their opinion on my work is, taking it constructively. 

How is your Project changing and how are you recording this? 

My Project is changing as I've explored with Collage today and mark making on the Jacket, we have just started deconstructing. My project is changing as I want to base the jacket around a Person which I'm thinking should be Arca, he's very confident with his body, which is something I'd like to explore on my Jacket as my body confidence has changed alot over the summer, it could open me to looking at the male form, eroticism and other practioners that explore it if I want to take it further so this is where I think I'm going to take it.

I got my favourite music on, took most of my clothes off and started to see how I could manipluate the Fabric on myself to highlight what I felt on my Body looked stronger or made me most secure. It was liberating to do Primary Research o myself as it opened my mind to how I would want to look or dress if I only had a certain amount of Fabric to cover my body. I have so much content to look at now in my sketchbook and could rework a Jacket or the same project with 8 different types of forms I'd created on my body. As I had started working out 2 months ago from being really out of shape, Arca the artist appealed to me as he is both masculine and feminine in his style, I feel he is the perfect type of person I would want to wear my Clothing, he is very much in shape without it being too much. I wanted to replicate with this exercise qualities I feel he has with my Primary Research of Confidence and self expression, it was all very Liberating and has changed my attitude to how I want to design Menswear.

I wanted to show erotiscm with the Jacket and How a Man could look strong and sexual without it being ridiculously on purpose 'Womenswear for Men', that wasn't my goal with deconstructing the Jacket. I wanted to explore what somebody with muscle down their back and arms would look like tied up or on show, I started to appreciate the Male Form like never before as a Straight Male; admiring qualities in gay men or male models and how they carry themselves that I hadn't previously. 

One Idea I had experimented with previously was this idea of exploring what the Ulitimate Male Form was and what it meant ot me, I had used the Jacket Project and the technques and research od Deconstruction to explore Sensual and Masculine Areas of the Male Body which I found appealing or having a strong design element from them being revealed. I was thinking about how I could experiment with Empty Space on the body and negative spaces, Sexuality and the idea of a Man at his most confident with the highest form of a brave mental attitude, something I guess I would like to find in myself.

While I was experimenting with this Idea I was thinking about being trapped in Ones own body and the opposite of that which is Freedom. I wanted to look into and open myself to ideas and designs mainly by Gay artists and how they expressed themselves to the Public. I looked at myself and saw two ideas from how I was feeling when exploring the Jacket Project, Self Improvement and Physical Insecurity which are keywords for them that I took on to move on from it. 

I had made myself Vunerable and put it on Workflow publically so anybody could see and uploaded one or two shots on Instagram, I wanted to see how I would use the Fabric to make myself feel more Outright, and Confident which was a very liberating moment for me to use my body progress as a tool to create different ideas and see how I felt more confident; pushing those ideas first. While I was experimenting I eliminated Fabric I didn't think was needed as I wanted to feel like an expression of my own Emotions whilst listening to emotive music I had previously trained to, tying it all into one fluid concept it was a brief journey of my own character. 

While I was experimenting the future possibility of doing an installation with someone inside the Clothes trapped or them breaking out or removing layers of clothing gradually interested me. Maybe the whole project could be redone completely but as a live performance, this is something that would be good as a performance piece if the model was tied up and the process was repeated. On a last note, I could redo the What's the Point project how I did tying it to walls and keep cutting off the Rope and retying it to give the Jacket material a whole new process, destroying it, wearing it down then tying it to a new jacket completely. 

I'm a Fashion Student get me out of here!! I really hate the Textiles Projects in conclusion today.  I am a Fashion student, I don't enjoy using materials in this way and using repetition or thinking about something relating to it being Print or Knit. 

I turned down my Ba Menswear offer at LCF and regret it when being tutored in relation to Textiles, in comparison to the Public Art project I THRIVED and was INSPIRED/EXCITED when looking at Donna Huanca's sculpture work and thinking about how I could translate her work to the body with mark making and developing my drawings and collages to the body.

I Struggled with learning how to properly do research and set my workflow over the last two days and from having a Crit with Chris have realised I need to separate all the ideas I'm getting and explore them more separately and bring them together or pull from each area different design ideas and then merge them towards the end of the project. At the start of my Time Lab sketchbook I was over collaging my research with very little development and was scared to draw and experiment with the research I had in front of me as I was so excited by the chance to delve into Dadaism I lost out on valuable time this first week and have now really progressed from being able to separate my ideas in my book.

I have taken from my Crit with Chris that I should make a strong start immediately when starting a project on Workflow so I can flesh out a project and make more decisive decisions on what research will be relevant and useful to my design development and what is going to hold back me creating a more functional and reasonable design that isn't too complicated to look at and explore with. 

I revisited my research on Dadaism from the front of the book by centring my research and idea development on Hugo Ball's flight out of time costume for the artistic speech he did back in Zurich at the time of Cabaret Voltaire. This then enabled me to focus on the imagery that really excited me and not phased by having too much imagery that only slightly appealed to me. From the first week of Time Lab I had a big learning curve with my design process as I learnt about myself that I need to hone in soon on from my research on what really interests and inspires my project.

I started to try to progress quickly over the weekend with solving the Practical problems of my ideas, I was getting excited by my ideas of men being tied to machines or prosthetics to explore the DARK HUMOUR shown in Dadaist's artwork. I then solved this by quickly experimenting on the body and RATIONALISING my idea by eliminating the initial and unnecessary installation features from my research.

I played around with my friend Steven in the library using my Research on VICTORIAN Medical back braces and Medical Device for Scoliosis to quickly mark make on the body with huge surgical tubing. I then printed this PRIMARY Research into my sketchbook to use for design development and used this as a basis for my designs MERGING TWO IDEAS instead of around 10, the Hugo Ball Flight Out of Time Silhouette and how I could use this in suiting with the mark making and placement, embedding of the tubing.

I went home for Christmas and started to Integrate research from West World, a programme I was watching at the time, on a World that only exists within a theme park setting. The people in the world are made by a Creator and used to facilitate the rich guests that want to come into the park and do what they chose.

The inspiration I got from west World was that of the surgeons within the programme and their outfits. I looked at medical advancements and how I could make designs looking at old blood transfusions and new technology with artificial humans and the type of clothes I saw the surgeons wearing within the programme and what prosthetics would be involved if I was to create my own characters or surgical garments in todays age.

I learnt today new ways of collaging and drawing with my aunty and she enxouraged me to start drawing and 'making mistakes' so I could improve my drawing skills, I spent a whole day today just looking at faces and drawing from observation , mixing materials in I thought were suitable like metal wiring, surgical gloves and red paint to add energy and character to my illustrations in my work.  

It was good to be home to have time to relax and refocus, I was reflecting on how I can make my work better and being hard on myself with the effort I was actually putting into my work, realising my workload wasn't enough to deliver a strong project outcome. I realised I could make a more mature and less 1 dimensional idea if I started to intergrate my research together I'd explored separately towards the end and use collaging to create new shape development which is something I hadn't previously done before. 

How did you pull the project together and revisiting it again before UP?

I pulled the Project together by focusing on what colour I was using in the project and seperating the concepts I was looking at through my sketchbook, I added more content and research inot what I was genuinely interested in with the chosen subject, which gave more of an explanation for why I was using the red of Switzerlands flag and a dark blood tone to hint at the use of blood or medical practice within WW1. 

Galleries and things I saw that influenced my final design decisions?

The Imperial War Museum gave me a bigger insight into the mental effects on soldiers and how they felt about their amputations, learning about the treatment of soldiers and new learnings that came directly from the war concerning treating injuries and blood transfusions gave me a different impression of the countries responsible for sending their men to war. 

What new techniques and skills have I learnt or tried but then changed?

I looked at the use of Latex in Fetish and sexual clothing, the use of wrapping skin and amputating soldiers and how blood was stored, mixed with how medical war aprons would be bloodstained from treating patients. I learnt about cutting Latex and how to manipulate it as it was very difficult to start with and cut and use to start with without previous experience. 

I tried to incorporate Liquid Latex in my final design development and 3D Outcome however it wasn't practical or successful s it wasn't possible in the time frame I had to use for the designs I had drawn; this made me think in greater detail about the materials I should be buying for my projects and whether they are too time consuming to experiment with in terms of delivering a successful outcome before the end of hand in.

How will you evaluate if this has been a successful progression? Chris feedback before UP and changing the garment?

I feel it has been an extremely successful progression, I would mark TIME LAB as the most important project I have done so far as although it was a struggle for me, being specialised into fashion and having to brave using more experimental drawing techniques by the end of the project, I had progressed a lot further.

Before the project and throughout the first week and a half of the project I was really struggling with organising my research and establishing strong design development, after a few crits with Chris on how my work was going I moved closer to the right direction I should be taking with my sketchbook and how to organise my ideas. 

Today I met my partner for Culture swap to which we both introduced our research on our Culture to each other. I started off doing initial research in my sketchbook and collaging with the materials and research my partner had given me. I was particularly interested by the Red and Gold tones which were symbolic colours especially used on lanterns and at festivals like Chinese New Year. 

I have decided that bI want to change my project to look at Chinese lanterns and their structures and how I can use their paper manipulation technique to create forms on the body. I find that the lanterns remind me of Hot air balloons and the structure of the balloons that go vertically up and bend into a point, the binding or wiring almost like folding along the segments of the balloon can be used as a texture or a way to manipulate or create a similar texture on the print design or garment I produce. 

I developed my idea further today by looking at the breathable types of garment used in Chinese martial arts and healing suits. The cuffs on the garment were very open with big open sleeves and long draping pants that enabled easy movement.

I want to mix this ideas with the hot air balloon and Chinese lantern research and look at the idea of fire or light being placed on a garment to make a breathe or unbreathable type of clothing in certain areas.  It sounds like a strange idea, however I plan to communicate this be having big silhouettes inspired by the positions in ti chi in contrast to thin rigid repeated structure taken from the lantern. This means I will be able to experiment and use a paper manipulation technique that is required from this project. 

I had a conversation with a Chinese man who lives on my road, and was smoking Chinese cigarettes with him last night, this intrigued and made me look at the designs of Chinese cigarette packets. We had a discussion about the difference in China to England and I learnt about the speed of China and how everything in the new world is becoming solely about product. he talked to me about the engravings and colours used in cigarette advertising.

In reflection I would like to incorporate this in my design as it can relate to the idea of this breathable and unbreathable garment, I want to have a think how I can incorporate a smoke like effect within my studied of Chinese tree formations for my final print design. I LOVE the gold lettering and red white and striped patterns on the Chinese cigarettes and want to use these types of packets as an aesthetic to this project.  

REFLECTING ON 1 WEEK PROJECT

Culture Swap has been my least favourite project so far on Foundation as I think it was a very confused project for most people. I don't feel I had enough time to understand what we were actually meant to be doing as various tutors wanted a 2d print and some tutors were saying think of the body, make a garment  

 I have loved how I revisited this project on workflow but was confused by how it was executed to us in Class. If I could change one thing about my project it would be to have more time in class to experiment with tracing paper and copper wiring on the mannequin or surrounding a trouser leg to start gaining my ideas and inspiration for design development.

In reflection of today I made more textile work to keep experimenting with my project and printed off half off my workflow with additional research to flesh out my sketchbook quickly on and eliminate the problem of my muddling and over designing from research that I had with TIME LAB. 

I found working with my classmate Faris a really positive experience as we are both applying for Menswear and he's being a good influence on me as I work. My reflection isn constant from changing who I work around as we both are finding it easy to converse and share ideas/advice on how we can improve our ideas and our own critical voice. 

Working in the plaster workshop in Archway was inspiring and productive for my project today. I learnt lots of new techniques, I spoke to the man in charge at the plaster workshop about how I could form a religious type of tablet out of plaster, hair and textile work from my sketchbook development.

I learnt new techniques and how to mix the powder, form a casting and how to manipulate it before it set. I spent the whole day there and initially had to go to the wood workshop to make a square base out of spare wood so that my plaster had something to set into it until it was solid and could be unscrewed. 

I tried to make a test run for the casting tablet i was making, which at first wasn't as successful as I found out I hadn't used enough Scrim.

Reflecting on this I am going to use the plaster tablet as a base to make a final textile experiment on print design on as I don't feel that the material conveys the feeling and look of the garment I want to make from my research best. I have looked at how I can use stretchy material like women's tights and hard leather mixed with soft leather and buckling.

I ended up tonight recreating the tablet and merging hair and bondage with huge eyelets cut off a curtain set to collage my ideas more successfully. I feel like this process I discovered today was successful but learnt that you can always add to or merge ideas into textures to formulate a more appealing developed piece if it's too simplistic or not how I've imaged it to turn out.  

I began to merge two contrasting ideas together which was skill I was starting to progress with from the Time Lab project. i found it interesting that Catholic boys and the popes outfit I could controversially start to experiment with the BDSM and extreme male bondage and sexual exhibitionist theme running alongside it.

My sketchbook work started to become more developed, if I could change or alter anything from the last few days it would be complete an idea I had discussed with Petra on implementing the use of Sweat in my bondage research earlier. I had discussed an idea of mark making by recording me working out in a transparent material to record my won sweat and photographing it however this wasn't realistic as when I conducted the experiment it didn't go as planned. To problem solve and overcome this I carried out a photoshop with two boys in my class in which I projected stills of my sweat on my body that were taken in my flat as primary research onto their bodies and made a shoot out of it for my own primary research.

I then mark made and looked at the placement of sweat with the photocopied hair in my book and experimented where I could use the placements of this to incorporate clasps and bondage buckling. In reflection I feel if I had spent more time on this in my sketchbook it could of taken my work in a different direction and is an idea I want to experiment and revisit again in future work.

After doing another all nighter in the Library with Faris to construct more sketchbook work I had the hand in for the project, to which I handed in my sketchbook to the point it was, ( 2 thirds full and much more fleshed out final project than Time Lab).

I also showed the Pope like structure and the Draping and sewing I'd conducted from the night before on a mannequin in class and decided to seek advice from Petra, who I hadn't spoke with much since being on the foundation course. She informed me on how important my reflection was on this and to have a much more critical voice on where my experiments where going. 

She highlighted that the the strong features in my work where more the concept of it being a fetish garment and my use of braided and elastic on the garment, from this I made four significant changes to where my project was going. 

1. Merging the Pope and Bondage themes in a much more courageous way
2. Developing the Garment with the concept of it being a 'FUNCTIONAL FETISH GARMENT' that somebody may decide to wear or put when engaging in sexual activity or to be appealing to the opposite sex. 
3. The use of the pale blue leather and how I could manipulate this to an even further extent. I realised I could dramatise the dropping 'forward thinking' arms even more and make it a much much dramatic piece with better development of this.
4. TENSION - I picked out that the elastic and braided hair was what was giving me my most interesting and refreshing illustrations to the eye. So I decided to now start researching BDSM and Extreme Male bondage harnesses and hone in more on just specifically this with the pope silhouette for my project.