Anna Baker Blog
Introduction
This blog consists of practices and other relevant experience I have achieved to reach my continuous improvement within the fashion design industry. It allows me to combine my academic skill with the practical skills I have acquired.
Practitioners
I contacted practitioners within the industry to propose questions to them to enable me to recognise my strengths and weakness within the industry I would like to work.
Many Practitioners advise to gain as much experience as possible and also to be resourceful to become more efficient with my working methods. Planning concisely and budgeting is also the key to success.
Research into Practitioners
Emily Bolter – Freelance Designer
Emily is a full-time freelancer who is always on the lookout for creative new projects and unique opportunities within design.
She primarily remains industry experienced and educated freelance childrenswear and babywear designer, with experience also in womenswear design, graphic design, packaging and logo design as well as skills in other design areas. She offers many services such as – Branding, customer research, mood boards, market competitor research, design research, garment shape, colour, print and pattern and embellishment design
garment construction details, technical specifications, pattern cutting and pattern grading.
Emily can also advise on finding the precise factory utilizing her experience in manufacturing childrenswear and womenswear in various countries.
Emily also has experience in Lap dip and strike off factory approvals.
Assessing the quality and weight of sample fabrics submitted by a factory.
She checks the precise fit of garments.
Advises factories on health and safety regulations required for children wear and babywear and checks these requirements are followed during sampling processes.
Her design work is undertaken on a per hour basis of £20/hr. in very rare circumstances she may consider fixed price projects or hourlies available to buy at a fixed price.
Emily is a connection of mine on my linkedin account.
Lisa Stewart – Freelance Designer
Lisa is a designer based in Cornwall, UK. She has experience across a broad spectrum of disciplines including graphic design, illustration, garment design, children’s clothing, interior design and printed textiles. She offer the following services –
Logo Design & Branding
Illustration
Character Design
All over print design/Surface Pattern Design
Childrenswear Design
Fashion Design
Range Building
Packaging Design
Editorial Design
Interior Design
She willingly spent 5 and 1/2 years working for Frugi, I was initially hired as a graphic designer working on look books, catalogues, packaging, e-newsletters and exhibition stand designs. After about a year she moved to the product design team to focus on packaging and to create exciting prints and characters for the clothing. She progressed to design garments and build the ranges, during her time there she worked on 11 collections using a range of products including organic jersey, interlock and knitwear, recycled polyester outerwear and swimwear, as well as organic cotton bedding and toys.
Lisa is also one of my connections on Linkedin.
Emily Kiddy – Freelance Designer
Emily worked for a small supplier in north London designing product and print and graphics for a variety of brands. She has gained experience in working for a variety of suppliers and has sold a few of her prints and graphics to brands and retailers all over the world.
She decided to go freelance as she had gained a good client base from her prints that were selling and a few contacts from years of working in the industry. Emily offers the following services –
Trend Forecasting
Range plan building
Print, Pattern, Graphics
Product Development
Tech Packs and Specs
Branding
Liaising with factories
Advanced Adobe skills
Illustration
Licensing
In 2014 she started [K.I.D.S] LTD as she found the work she was getting was aimed towards helping clients launch new brands and there was much need for creative support and has found this to be elements of which her business has grown today.
Emily is also a contact of mine on Linkedin
Emma Hayles – Freelance Designer – West Midlands – Website – Facebook – Instagram
Emma has worked both in-house and for suppliers. She has worked with George, Next, M&S, Sainsburys, Tesco, Debenhams, Poundland, Express Gifts, Dunnes, Nutmeg, M&Co, Pepkor and Target.
She has experience working collaboratively with buyers, factories and garment technologists and takes regular factory trips overseas to learn about the garment manufacturing processes and costings.
She has experience carefully designing for licensed brands including Mattel (Barbie), HIT (Thomas and Bob The Builder), Disney, Fisher Price and the BBC (In The Night Garden). Emma offers the following services –
Graphic design for apparel (baby/kids)
Surface pattern design (baby/kids)
Illustration
Graphic design
Trend prediction
Garment specs
Emma is a connection of mine on Linkedin, I have also met Emma during a Watercolour and Photoshop Course with another creative artist Jess. Emma explained that working freelance was much better as she is able to be more creative with her designs.
Jess Priest – Printed Textile Designer
Jess is a printed Textile Designer and Artist, she graduated from Winchester School of Art in 2000 and began working in a top Print Design Studio in London.
She has been producing hand painted designs for the fashion industry using digital media to translate her paintings into print. Her work has sold to names such as Anthropologie, Vera Wang, Toast, Calvin Klein as well as a number of high street stores.
I believe in sharing and learning techniques to improve the artists tools. As such I began using social media to share some examples of techniques that I use. Over the years this has led to a growing number of keen artists, universities and students as well as professional designers requesting workshops to teach or collaborate.
This is the work i produced at the workshop. It was interesting in how easy it actually was to make a repeat pattern of a watercolour and a fantastic skill to have learnt.
University and Career
Masters
Business Management in the creative industry MA
I am interested in this course as I feel I would like to develop my professional potential, whilst gaining valuable industry contacts, executive work placements, and the professional skill sets required to excel within the creative industries. This course consists of local creative workers and companies who co-teach on the programme and offer creative industry mentoring and executive placements which I feel will boost my employability.
Fashion and Textiles MA
This course is of considerable interest to me as I feel it will help to build my creative, technical and intellectual knowledge, alongside a critical and contextual understanding of wider issues. I genuinely feel this academic course would build on my existing fashion and textile design disciplines and assist my development to the next level of creative innovation.
Jobs within the design industry
A technical product developer is a career I am interested in. I enjoy developing products for initial creative thoughts to developing and experimenting to produce a finished product. I feel I have the necessary skills to provide a successful critical path to produce the desired outcome on time. I feel my valuable experience regarding direct communication with potential clients and other entrepreneurs is something I feel comfortable with and with this in mind I feel confident that I can willingly share my specific skills within an independent company as well as grow as an employee within an environment I wish to excel in.
Work Placement
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Sally and Sid
I have developed my own webpage to display my portfolio and other services I have experience in. I developed my own branding as well as those for collections I have designed such as ‘The Lauren Elizabeth Collection’ and ‘Ad@pt’. This enabled me to build on my skills within Adobe Illustrator.
https://sallyandsidhandmad.wixsite.com/designs
Portfolio
Networking and Contacts
I have gained a network of other practitioners through other contacts in the creative industry. I am in contact with many of these via my Linkedin account. These vary from creative practitioners through to various clothing manufacturers all over the world. Once I start working at Fazane Fox again I am hoping to develop my relations with other creative entrepreneurs and businesses within the fashion industry.
The close contacts I currenlty have are –
Fazane Fox – Director of Fazane Fox Production Lab
Erica Horne – Fashion Designer and CAD for fashion tutor
Chloe Ryan – Fashion Designer
Sinead Inchley – Pattern Cutter
Cathryn Jordan – Garment Technologist
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-baker-602a8511b/
Reflection
I have gained many opportunities to explore and understand the creative industry of fashion design through a work placement with Fazane and projects I have developed, this has enabled me to understand how fast-paced the industry is.
My ultimate goal was to strengthen my skills within entrepreneurship by working independently to pursue a career within design and product development of children’s clothing.
Exploring and interacting with clients and factories through Fazane Fox production lab has enabled me to gain an insight into business responsibilities for example costings fabric sourcing and critical paths.
Researching into social and cultural interest such as child fashion icons leading to global issues has provided me with an important focus on dialogue and debate to build on confidence and personal awareness.
My aspirations for design have been supported by an interest in solving problems. Building on my skills of CAD through tutoring from Erica at CAD for fashion studio has given me the confidence to aspire to achieve success.
The Final major project was something that gave me a great awareness of how the organisation is the key. I was extremely meticulous when I was developing my critical path taking into account any problems that could occur along the way. Due to personal illness and a world-wide pandemic, I was able to complete the project on time due to my organisational skills. The organisational skills I learnt within my workplace enabled me to become flexible with my project.
Looking forward and embracing the skills and strengths I have developed I have decided that I will continue with my work placement at Fazane Fox to enable me to work on my portfolio by gaining more experience from working with others in the industry to develop a career in the fashion design and development.
My decision for not enrolling in a Masters is because I would like a break in education to gain more experience via a work placement, this way I can build and develop the skills I have, working in the fashion industry to enable me to aspire and achieve a greater work ethic. Feedback from other creative practitioners has made me aware that experience is what employers look for, this is why I have chosen this route to give me the confidence in my work to be able to seek employment in the future.
Professional Practice 