Responsive - Republic Internship - Week One - Work Diary

Recently I started an internship working on the design team of leading UK fashion retailer's, Republic. I will be helping out on fridays working 9-5 on various different live briefs and ideas for them.

___Interview

I had to come in for an interview which was a lot more laid back than I first expected. I took in samples of some of my work as well as well as my online portfolio to give them a good feel about my work.

I talked through a couple of projects and they was particularly interested in my sketchbooks where I had lots of little initial ideas and collages that I had created from bringing different materials together. They seemed quite interested in some of my ideas and working on bringing them into their brand somehow. Eventually they asked for my availability which was Fridays and said I could come in and help out for as long as I wanted and they would pay me minimum wage which will cover all my expenses and everything so thats all good!

___Week One

Last Friday I was briefed on the project that I will be working on for now. It is their newest brand called 'Crafted' and is aimed at 16-24 year old males primarily. I was talked through the mood boards which was all about juxtaposing images that shouldn't work together and placing them with symbols and type to create bold graphics that represent the youth of today.

The mood boards consisted of street style and common themes were:-

- Dip Dye
- Studs
- A 'Fuck The World' attitude
- Youth Related Slogans
- Large Type
- Photographic Imagery
- Greek Gods
- Roman Numerals
- Skulls
- Roses
- Crucifix & 'X' Symbols
- The City / Lights
- Space / Nebular Themes
- Silhouettes

Originally I come up with some contemporary designs that I thought might look good on t-shirts but got told that these wasn't commercial enough so I had to rethink the way I was looking at the brand and where I wanted to go with it. There was rules I needed to stick to....

Here are a few current designs being sold under the in-house brand already which I can use as reference and a starting point. This is not my favoured style of design but it will make for some really good experience of the industry and hopefully give me chance to get some designs on sale in store.

Here are some of the designs that I come up with on the first day. They seemed to like the more 'commercial' look more than my initial contemporary look. At first it was hard to get into the mindset of designing for the public. It is understandable that an average male who shops at republic isn't going to be into contemporary graphic design so as soon as I got my head around that then it was easy for me to churn out a few designs for head of menswear Simon to have a look at. Here's a few selected concepts I was working on:-