Artificial Paradise

description

 For the undergraduate project thesis, I wanted to do a project that is related to fashion. I’ve always been fascinated by the chemistry between graphic design and fashion since most of these projects are more flexible and creative compared to many design situations.

Through researching the current fashion industry, I noticed that the main purpose seemed to be providing de­signs that followed changing trends. However, it is difficult to have similar designs and target consumers to compete with the bigger brands.

For the research part of the design process, I interviewed people with design background who were passionate about working in the fashion industry and one of the interviewees encouraged using Tumblr to target it's bloggers. Since Tumblr is a social media platform used to express users’ cultural interests, it wasn’t difficult to identify common cultural interests. The research further progressed to studying famous Tumblr blogs and images they post. Commonly black & white photographs, art and illustrations were many of the most popular posts among these blogs.

Based on the study, I set up the project blog and posted vintage illustrations (creative commons) & personal designs. As the blog gained followers, the idea devel­oped to leverage social media to create a user-centered and co-creative marketing strategy. The system involved Tumblr users participating by doing re-blogs and "likes" to posted images. As a result, the graphics with the most attention were printed on garments.

Link: http://tumblr.artificialparadise.ca/