About a year ago I saw a video on TikTok of a girl wearing an oversized t-shirt with a Taylor Swift design that I really liked. I looked in the comments and found a small business that designed a small range of t-shirts, sweatshirts, tote bags, and prints. I ordered 3 t-shirts I liked and they are still some of my favourite items of clothing I own. This is the sort of brand I would like to have myself, a small business of apparel, accessories and prints designed by me.
The designs are fairly simple but appealed to me as a Taylor Swift fan. I remember thinking as well that the site itself looked slightly basic, but it was user friendly, easy to navigate and uncomplicated to complete my purchases. I think this gives me some insight into what is important to users, and shows that if the designs themselves are good enough it won't matter too much what the website looks like. However, as a perfectionist and a design student, I do want to create a professional looking site that would encourage sales. I think the things that make this site look simple would be the colour scheme and fonts chosen. I feel as though it is important to use a crisp and clear font and complimentary, neutral colours.
I like that this creator has included real life pictures of people wearing her products to show what they look like on, and also to show that they really look as advertised.
A lot of the designs from this creator follow a 70s theme, which confirms the pattern I have seen with this being an extremely popular trend at the moment. I think this is something I will take into consideration when designing my own products. However, I am also aware of the fact that trends are constantly changing so I think it would be good to focus on also designing products that are more classic and timeless.
I think it is useful to look at existing brands that inspire me as a designer to guide me. I really like a lot of this creators products, and I think discovering brands like this are part of what inspired my final major project. I will continue to look at small businesses that inspire me throughout this project.
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