So far, I have worked on a lot of projects which includes product photography for the company’s website, product photography for outside vendors such as JCPenny, Khols’,  Bloomingdales and TJMaxx, social media posts and blog photography and designs, and Mail Chimp designs and photography.

These are some examples of collaborative work:

However, recently I worked on a bigger project that was more inclusive. Every month the companies’ Design Team prints a 6 – 8 page trend book for new or existing clients that are distributed in meetings and showcased in the company’s showroom.  Along with creating and designing the trend book, we also redesign the showroom with cohesive images and designs relative to the trend book, such as picture frames and cubbies where the jewelry is displayed.

A trend book is basically a book dedicated to fashion and design professionals in order to help them in developing their products and collections or to think about their development strategies. This project had a very short deadline; 1 week to be exact. In this time, we had to conduct research, shoot the jewelry, retouch the images, layout the book and send to the print shop.

The jewelry at Lydell NYC are influenced by Fashion Designers and Runway styles. Each month there is theme and name chosen for the trend book by the marketing team. The theme for the month of November is “Color Changes Everything”. We’re given the list of contents along with the corresponding jewelry that will be featured in the book, the designer’s runway looks in which they were influenced by and the specs of the book.   Basically the closest thing to a brief, the rest was up to us.

For this project, I collaborated with the Art Director, Russell, where we both worked on individual tasks to get the book together and on time. We conducted research for a day, pulling the different influences from Runway designers listed.  The following day, the agenda was for me to to shoot all the jewelry creatively that will be featured in the book, and also create a range of cover page designs for the book. First, we took a look at the previous trend book.  The book is 9×6 in, which is always laid horizontally.

The trend book has been always done on a horizontal layout. We decided to do a vertical layout for this month to change the format of the jewelry and create a different look for the theme “color changes everything”.

     

We chose the best designs for the Cover and had a meeting with the owner; Michelle, where she decided on the best one.

Winner!

There were 20 pieces of jewelry, some in which did not make the cut. This took an entire day of arranging the jewelry in creative styles. During this time, Russell worked on the layout of the book, coming up with different variations for us to edit down and chose the final layout.

A few Chosen Images:

We then went through each shot, closing the best ones for the book, and did the same for the layouts. My job was then to retouch  these images after. This was now the easy part, placing the images in the book. Because this is a trend book, it is based on the images and very limited text. Sometimes they are made with no text at all. For this trend book, we added text, but very minimal which was basically the categorizing name for each sub section. The fonts chosen were based on the company’s design guidelines.

Contents Page:

This project involved a lot of tweaking and changing, whether it was arranging the text or images differently or changing the page layouts. When you think you’re done, your not.  After all the changes, the book was then send to print.

Final Trend Book:

The showroom is where all the jewelry are displayed for clients. This is also where the meetings are held. There are cubbies where some jewelry are placed where images are sometimes placed in to correspond with the jewelry. My job was to chose images from the trend book and print them to size to place in these cubbies.

There are also a few pic frames in the showroom which images are also placed in.

 

The success of this project was definitely getting it done within the timeframe given. It took a lot of over time but it got done with all the chaos. Also, creating an entirely different layout and design aesthetic for the trend book.

The takeaway from this collaborative project was putting the collection of every chapter of my journey into the real world to use for one project. It involved a lot teamwork, time management, failure and organization.