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| Team MIF |
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| 1. Sculptural statement piece 2. Smaller printed and laser cut pieces with tassels |
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| The MIF board: This has been a useful visual reference for collaboration, keeping us organised |
A quick animation we made for the presentation articulating the playful nature of the collection.
This project has been a fantastic opportunity. I have learnt so much, being pushed well outside my comfort zone on many occassions. It has also been a great experience, collaborating with my friends and drawing together our skills and working methods to answer the brief. The brief is to design a collection of seat covers to dress the modular seating on the roof terrace of the Benzie Building. These seats will be heading over to Alberts Square for the duration of Manchester International Festival and the organisers wanted to add a bit of comfort to them.
This project has demanded a technical and thorough approach, particularly in the designing, cutting out and construction of the pieces. My skills have developed in this area and I have realised it is one of my strong points. The project has also required excellent communication skills between the three of us which I think has been key to the success of the project so far. We have ensured that all three of our individual identities have come through in the work, as well as creating a strong visual aesthetic for the collection. I have also developed my finishing skills as the project has required finished products in contrast to the rough samples from the Practice unit.
The collection combines all of our practices, making printed, embossed, folded and laser cut surfaces to create interesting surfaces which are then constructed and stuffed to make soft, tactile covers. We suggested that pink is added to the colour pallet which Gemma from MIF loved, so we have used this to add fun, bright accents to the pieces. We decided to keep the construction simple, utilising the eyelet machine, developing on from my samples in the Practice unit. We also developed the tassels from my initial sampling into more refined fringing, cut out on the laser cutter, to add even more tactility to a selection of the covers.
Pitching to the panel at M.I.F head quarters was one of the scariest things I have ever done, but it felt amazing afterwards from all the positive feedback we received for our prototypes, making all our hard work well worth it. I worked out the costings for the presentation and made sure they were accurate. This has been an important skill to develop and I feel confident to do it in the future. Over the next few weeks we will be producing 50 covers ready for the festival at the start of July. It is a huge task but we are prepared and organised and it will all be worth it when we see our designs used and enjoyed by the public.
