Summary

My Journey of Analysis and Application

Process

I have been trying to apply the learnt color theories since starting up this blog. (Split complementary is used for Title, menu and post heading) Then my skills are enhanced by analyzing Diesel. It's nice to have a brand stick to, but the process is not easy because of the personality of the brand. Diesel was chosen because we were attracted to its style - not only about clothing, but also it's attitude to living. Renzo Rosso said he sells lifestyle rather than clothes. So starting from the beginning, we research the ads of every season, their marketing in the 3 era and their spirit. Colors usage and arrangement in ads were analyzed and concluded. However, our assignment is about the clothing collection but there is no obvious connection between their product color and their ads! (Anyway I am still happy for having looked into its relationship with Hollywood and Italiano style because it is the brand's spirit! The more we researched about the brand, the more we love it because Renzo’s attitude is so cool! His team design for themselves, they create events to tell people how to enjoy lives… their actions and inspirations are so contemporary.)

After surfing for a whole day in the Internet, the clothing collections were retrieved and analyzed finally. The results were quite disappointing because the clothes on runway were not much colorful as their naughty and controversial ads. The clothes were casual wear to sell finally. Normally only 3 colors were used in each outfit on the runway, including 2 neutral tones. The way of color matching were not hard to learn - use neutral tone to intensify/highlight the only color! I thought the whole coloring of our collection had to follow the chosen brand. So after deciding my theme by following Diesel’s marketing direction, I colored each outfit with 3 colors only. Honestly in the beginning I didn't do any 'acceptable' job even with only 3 colors. During tutoring, it was frightening to find that Robert wanted colorful outfit, instead of imitating the brand. (OMG!) Then I kept on trying different position and proportion of the colors. I had changed colors during trial period because I couldn't create the sparkle with the original colors. I had also changed some styles because I found some styles were easy to have harmonized color combination but some never have. So I have to improve the problematic styles. After numerous trials, I used the first few pages of trials to carry the color pencil sharpener ashes – these pages were so shameful!

Trying to make my collection integrated, some scenarios were used to present the collection. I like this idea but it is a risky decision to my assignment. My drawings were not that good and it may affect the presentation of the collection. I had thought about cropping images from some resources and change the colors. In this way the composition of the computer-aid images could be easier to control but the clothes would not be my designs. So I just followed my ‘trial and error’ attitude to make the 4 pages.

Self-Evaluation

I should try to research more about Italiano culture and how it affect the brand. There aren't many International street fashion brand in Italy. Most of the Italian brand tends to be elegant, but Diesel goes to different targets. I should learn more about how Diesel differentiate itself from normal elegant Italian brand.

I should try to use more different colors (may be seven to ten) in the collection. Now nearly all the 6 selected colors are used in every outfit. However, during the lesson, some designer collection using variety of colors were shown to us and it's found that it's not necessary to have same color in each outfit in a collection. They use the same color order in each outfit.

I should try to use computer graphics in those "advertisement".

I should analyse how designers manage the color position and proportions in advertisement. My drawings are not "space" enough, not "focus point" enough and the color proportion are not good enough. Even the press journal got more attractive color than I have.

This is my journey of learning color from Diesel and self-evaluation. I hope you enjoy my blog.

Thanks.

Agnes