Mockups

Work

Not only has it been my job to create clothing designs, but It has been my responsibility to generate mockups of the items. This has involved me selecting relevant models from a website called “Place It” and using them as a way of showcasing our merchandise. Fortunately creating mockups is something that I have previous experience with at University, where I have generated imagery of my work in situ for assessments and my portfolio.

Like with creating the t-shirt designs themselves, the mockups almost always have to be mass produced- doing up to fifty at a time. Again the mass production of designs has been a good lesson to me in how to generate imagery quickly but professionally. As the South London Club we need to hit all areas of South London, the same can be said for Chicken Shop Clothing and with Incredibly British we need to create designs and mockups across a broad range of slogans and styles.

Mockups give the audience and potential customers a clear idea of how the items will look in reality. As I mentioned in a previous blog post I have learnt a number of tips and tricks when it comes to digital marketing, and mocking up merchandise is one of them. An example of this is when I took the South London Prints created by the a previous designer and instead of just having a plain image of the print , I digitally placed the print on a mantlepiece for potential buyers to look at. The mockup I created (see below) far more visually pleasing and attention grabbing than just presenting the print on its own. People will be drawn to an image online and will have a better idea of how the image might like in their home.

Born In The NHS T-Shirt Mockup

Brockley Typography Print Mockup

Greenwich Illustrative Print Mockup

Hometown Clothing

Work

Prior to undertaking this placement I had never properly created designs for clothing. It was never something I chosen to do at Uni and never something I did as part of a freelance project. However since working at the South London Club it has formed a large part of the work that I have done.

I have created slogan t-shirts for The South London Club, where we have taken generic phrases about where one is from and replaced the word “Home” with a place name. For example “Brixton is where the heart is” and “There’s no place like Lewisham”. For these designs it was crucial that I created a template that looked sleek and appealing but that would work with all the different lengths of place names in South London- making the words “Lee” and “Colliers Wood” in the same space is no easy task!

Creating designs for mass production has been a completely new experience for me. Where at Uni i found myself creating one off designs and mockups, here on my placement I have been mass producing each design for every area in South London. This means that once I have a template design approved by my boss, I then need to replicate it around 40 times. I would be lying if I said this hasn’t been tedious at times but it has certainly been a valuable lesson in commercial design and the hard graft it takes to produce a line of clothing when you are the sole designer.

There’s No Place Like Battersea T-Shirt

Deptford orn and Bread T-Shirt

Lewisham Is Where The Heart Is T-Shirt

Link to South London Club Shop: https://shop.southlondonclub.co.uk/

90s Clothing Range

Work

Perhaps my proudest moment here at the South London Club came when I thought up with the idea to create 90s style “homage” t-shirts for all the different areas across South London. All of the other designs that had come before were solid and I was happy with them, but I knew that we needed something different on the website. Most of the other designs were black and white and more or less entirely typography based. When Tom set me the task of creating a new line of clothing I new it should be something bright, colourful and visual. I had seen these 90s style t-shirts cropping up all over social media and even just on people walking down the street. My concept was to take a few landmarks from each area of South London and create a unique design for each place based on the 90s style.

My boss immediately liked the idea and after a few different styles we settled on a template that suited the t-shirts best. At this stage of the process I was applying the skills that I had learnt from the live project brief at the end of Year 2 in that I was presenting ideas to a client and compromising on designs until we had something that we both liked. I was starting to see a concept right the way through to a finished piece in a professional environment. Like I have mentioned in previous blogs the hard graft really started when I was tasked with creating over twenty of these 90s style designs. This involved me taking an area, researching what its most famous landmarks are and finally stitching the individual elements together in a retro style that looked quality. My Photoshop skills were really put to the test as creating the the t-shirts involved photo manipulation, typography styling and compositional balance.

When the t-shirts finally went online I felt proud as my initial idea had been seen all the way through to a product that is still available to buy today. I feel as though I have personally invested part of myself into the making of these designs more so than other designs, as it was me who had the idea to take an on-trend design and apply it to the merchandise that we sell here at the South London Club. We have sold a decent amount of them so far but I am still waiting for the day that I walk down Lewisham High Street and see someone wearing a t-shirt that I have designed…

Crofton Park 90s T-Shirt

Croydon 90s T-Shirt

Crystal Palace 90s T-Shirt

Link to t-shirts: https://shop.southlondonclub.co.uk/search?type=product&q=90s.

Social Media

Work

Social Media has played a huge part in my placement year. Before I started my internship I would have considered myself a casual user of platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, but had no experience in creating content for professional accounts or how digital marketing works. One of my main roles here working for Tom has been to create content for the South London Club, GrowPro Digital and Chicken Shop Clothing social media accounts. Here is an explanation of what I have been producing for each business’ social media platforms:

The South London Club – This business thrives on social media activity. Whether that is through promoting the local discount card, targeting customers to sell merchandise or posting facts about South London, the company operates almost entirely online. One of the first things I was tasked with doing when I joined was to create daily “Quotes”. These included facts about the local areas and what famous people lived in South London, but also reasons why people should be shopping locally. The quotes saw a huge increase in online engagement and likes due to the fact they were personal and weren’t just trying to sell a product. In a similar fashion I was also asked to create short Vlogs that were posted across social media. Sometimes these were factual such as “5 Facts About Battersea Power Station” but also they were informative about local businesses for example “6 Great Places To Grab A Cocktail In Streatham”. More recently I have been creating Instagram Stories for The South London Club, showcasing all the products that can be bought through the store. These are short videos with a pulsing beat and sleek transitions to try and appeal to the online audience. My boss has also asked me to create one off images for social media, for example at Christmas we put out out our “Merry Christmas From the South London Club Post” to engage our online followers during the festive period.

https://www.instagram.com/southlondonclub/

GrowPro Digital – Similarly to the South London Club one of my main tasks for GrowPro Digital has been to create quotes about digital marketing and all the benefits it can bring to a business. I used imagery from an free open source website called Unsplash that I was made aware about through a tutor at University. Unlike the South London Club quotes that were often summery pictures of nice London summers, these needed to have a professional edge to them. I used images that would hopefully motivate viewers to do something about their companies’ online presence. Everything I used was sleek and dynamic, in keeping with the brand that GrowPro Digital aims to put across. I also had the fantastic opportunity to create three infographics for this business, conveying the benefits of advertising through e-mail, Facebook and Instagram. Here I was taking data that I researched online and presenting it in a clear, graphic form.