Research and Trend

Research and understanding trend is the most important and in my opinion one of the most interesting parts of design.  It’s the very starting place for any collection you will create.  At this stage in design the worlds your oyster!

Its important to keep the brand you’re designing for in mind.  Where abouts do they fit into the market?  Are they more commercial or conceptual?  Do you need to offer something completely new and conceptual or do you also need to bear in mind what their competitors are doing and offer more commercial look?

Once you have decided on a story or concept you will then create a mood board outlining all your thoughts and ideas ready to present to a client.

It is essential to keep you trend/moodboard tight and to the point.  If there are things on there that the client may not understand, or if it isn’t completely relevant, you can easily end up confusing them.  Remember your client may not be from a design background, your board will have to inspire them in a way so that they can understand what direction you intend to take the collection in.

The colour palette should be tight too.  Keep to a few main colours and then a few highlights too perhaps if needed.  Once you start designing the range it is important that you stick to ideas and colours that you presented in you initial moodboards and don’t start adding in new colours or shapes and graphics that were not put across on the initial boards.

Here is an example of two trend boards for a mens loungewear brand and two mini collections that were designed from these stories.

I often design both shapes and prints for lots of client’s I work for.  I therefore find a nice way of laying out my moodboards is by creating a section dedicated to key shapes and another section to prints and graphics.  Although I do like to annotate my boards so my key points are clear, I do prefer my board to be mainly visual.

See how the colours in my ranges directly relate to those that were presented on my initial mood boards.

Again see how the colours in my ranges directly relate to those that were presented on my initial mood boards.

For more trend and research examples click 

here.