ASHLEY GAIL DEAN
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SELF PROMOTION
How to promote and brand myself? I started by thinking about how I saw myself as a Fashion Communicator and how I would like to have myself represented. Exercises such as Myers Briggs and the Johari Window helped me realize and discover parts of my personality that previously I hadn’t been aware of. I noted down these elements that I thought were essential to making me “me�. I came to realize I have many different sides to my personality. I am reserved, tenacious, outgoing and determined. All of these things combined make me a tolerant and calm person. These things helped me discover how I wanted to brand myself to best represent me. 5
ABOUT ME
We started the self-promotion process by looking at 10 things that visually represented “what we are like”. I found my objects/things/activities are quite an eclectic mix, making me realize further how multi-layered I am. My 10 objects and what they represent: Artwork by Picasso –my love of the creative My Camera- my enthusiasm for photography Competitive Swimming- a commitment that has made me who I am today Chocolate- who doesn’t love chocolate? Cup of Tea- Home comfort Shoes- they are my obsession Cyprus- reminds me of family Jewellery- collector Book Shelf- holding magazines that have molded my love for fashion My Room- somewhere I feel completely safe I decided to sketch all of my objects and make them into a complicated layered tessellating pattern. The presentation of my objects mimics many features of my personality.
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me 1 o iN
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PERSONAL BRANDING
When designing my logos in illustrator I wanted to use my initials AD. I wanted a simple clean logo, that I could use anywhere that would be immediately recognizable and readable. I tried a few options and designs: 1. This logo uses my three initial AGD, they are all interlinked and I like the use of the ridged lines 2. This logo is much more organic and flowing, I love its simplicity 3. This logo has my two initials inside I circle, I like the use of a circle as its balanced, never ending and symbolizes unity, wholeness and protection 4. This logo is a little to angular for me but it does clearly show my initials in a simple format 5. The disjointed circle edge of this design I like, but parts of it look a little art deco 6. This logo is similar to the previous with a few alterations
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ASHLEY
GAIL
DEAN
This is my final logo. It’s simple, minimal, modern and clear. I decided to write my full name under the logo as well to make it more personal and unique to me. I have used a thick black line for the circle stroke and font in this example. For my letterhead I have chosen to keep it simple by using a plain white creased texture for the background and placing my circle logo in the top right hand corner.
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LOGO AND LETTERHEAD
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DEVELOPMENT
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A a
B b
C c
D d
E F G F I J K L M N O e f g h i j k l m n o
P Q R S p q r s
T t
U u
V v
W w
X x
Y y
Z z
After finalizing my logo I wanted to see what it would look like placed in different contexts. Firstly I experimented with different forms of business cards. I looked at the logo being central with paintings, textures or colours as backgrounds. I also tested the logo being small and positioned off central. Looking at these examples I found that the textures and colours didn’t represent me as a person. Due to this I trialed placing a picture of me as the background with my logo large and central layered over the image. I also looked into how I could adapt my logo to use on other mediums. I pared down the overall design transforming it into a clean circle with a line underneath. I tested and tried a variation of different colours but found myself gravitating toward the unfussy, effortless nature of black white and grey tones. The fonts I used also have to reflect this ethos. I have shown an example of TW Cen MT in both lower and uppercase. This is the font I will be using for my personal branding.
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BUSINESS CARDS
These are my business cards. After affirming that I wanted my logo to be large, clear and central, and that I wanted the background image to represent me by including a facsimile of my person, I found that one image didn’t portray all sides of my layered personality. I decided to make a series of 15 business cards all with different varying images of myself. Each one is unique and shows a different side to Ashley Dean. These cards are also useful, as I will need to brand myself differently for each perspective client. I can now choose a card that best represents the ethos of the brand I will be handing it to. Choosing to make the images black white with a film grain makes them all uniform and appear to be part of a series.
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PERSONAL STATIONERY SET
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Confirming my logo and business card ideas I have taken these designs further to complete my self-branding work. Here I have designed my personal stationary set showing how I would incorporate my logo, symbol, fonts and business cards. I have remained with the colour palette of white, blacks and tonal grey’s.
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COVERING LETTER, CV AND CREATIVE CV
Working through my second year of Fashion Communication and Promotion I have come to realize that I would like to be involved within the stylist/ fashion editor roles within the magazine industry. Due to this my dream internship covering letter has been addressed to the fashion Director at I LOVE FAKE magazine. The magazine fits well with my aesthetic and I think I would enjoy gaining experience at this publication. I have worded and put forward key elements about myself that I think will be of note to this magazine. 18
ASHLEY GAIL DEAN 5 Holtye Place East Grinstead West Sussex RH19 3GQ Mob: 07894459855 Email: ashleygaildean@live.co.uk Twitter: @ashleygaildean
BLEND\BUREAUX / ILOVEFAKE MAGAZINE 46 LOWMAN ROAD N76DB ISLINGTON, LONDON UNITED KINGDOM TEL: +44(2) 03 3182806
Dear Jordy Huinder I am contacting you in regards to possible work experience at I Love Fake Magazine within your fashion department. I’d like to tell you a little about what I do, I read Fashion Communication and Promotion at Nottingham Trent.This course allows me to style, photograph, create, innovative and produce aesthetically pleasing ways to style and promote brands, products and services. I have completed live projects with brands such as Unilever and American brand Ann inc (Ann Taylor and Loft) all of which required styling applications. I am a highly creative individual who has a strong aesthetic sense and a true passion for the fashion industry. I have a blog with over 2000 followers. I have previously written guest blog posts for Motel Rocks and other brands and have been interviewed by Disfunction Magazine and I Fashion Magazine. I have won a styling competition for Zalando.com where I received £3600 as a prize. I am able to work flexibly, I am very motivated to do well, and think my asthetic will fit with your magazine. My blog address is: http://wise-rabbit-says.blogspot.co.uk/ and my Online Portfolio can be found at: http://cargocollective.com/ashleygaildean Here you can see examples of my work. Attached is my CV. I believe in working hard and would love to be a part of the team. I hope that you would consider me. Sincerely yours, Ashley Dean
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My CV is also tailored to the position of fashion intern at I LOVE FAKE Magazine. My CV outlines my personal attributes, my accomplishments and my work experience within the fashion industry (with focus on the styling and editorial experience). I have also created a visual CV. I didn’t want it to appear cluttered so the CV uses a white paper textured background with my personal symbol faded under the content. Simple, clean and layered. Similar to my persona and style aesthetic.
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Profile Studying at Nottingham Trent University reading Fashion Communication and Promotion/blogging at Wise Rabbit Says since 2010 Skills Adobe suit Photoshop InDesign Photography, Photo Manipulation, Styling, Writing, PowerPoint, Painting, Research and Illustration. Strengths • A good communicator • Motivated and reliable • Tolerant • Ambitious • Hard working and punctual • Enthusiastic team member also works well independantly, using initiative Hobbies and Interests Regional Level Swimmer and County Champion, Blog with over 2000 followers, Photography, Travel, Biathlon for Sussex, High level Skier Education Lingfield Notre Dame School GCSE’s A Levels School of Art and Design Redhill Art Foundation BTEC Diploma – Distinction 2010-11 Nottingham Trent University Fashion Communication and Promotion 2011- present Work Experience 4 years to date at McIndoe Surgical Centre working on Reception and Administration. • Responsible for meeting and greeting customers, inputting details and assigning rooms • Managing the phone switch board • Sorting, stamping and distributing the post • Responsible for signing for and cataloguing deliveries • Responsible for the taking of payments Work experience at Printmates in Redhill: InDesign Photoshop Styling Assistant for stylist Nicole Freeman for Surface Magazine Duties included : Styling Liasing with PR companies Collections and returns Writer for TheLookHit.com online Magazine duties include: Covering events Writing weekly articles Assisting in organisation of fashion festival Attending and reporting on trade shows and fashion weeks Styling fashion events Copy Write intern at Punkyfish.com duties included: Writing product descriptions Photographing products and models for the website Styling the shoots Managing the Facebook and Twitter pages
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ASHLEY GAIL DEAN/ ashleygaildean@live.co.uk/ 07894459855 Profile Studying at Nottingham Trent University reading Fashion Communication and Promotion/blogging at Wise Rabbit Says since 2010
Skills Adobe suit Photoshop InDesign Photography, Photo Manipulation, Styling, Writing, PowerPoint, Painting, Research and Illustration.
Strengths • • • • • •
A good communicator Motivated and reliable Tolerant Ambitious Hard working and punctual Enthusiastic team member also works well independantly, using initiative
Hobbies and Interests Regional Level Swimmer and County Champion, Blog with over 2000 followers, Photography, Travel, Biathlon for Sussex, High level Skier
Education Lingfield Notre Dame School GCSE’s A Levels School of Art and Design Redhill Art Foundation BTEC Diploma – Distinction 2010-11 Nottingham Trent University 22 Fashion Communication and Promotion 2011- present
Work Experience
4 years to date at McIndoe Surgical Centre working on Reception and Administration. • Responsible for meeting and greeting customers, inputting details and assigning rooms • Managing the phone switch board • Sorting, stamping and distributing the post • Responsible for signing for and cataloguing deliveries • Responsible for the taking of payments Work experience at Printmates in Redhill: InDesign Photoshop Styling Assistant for stylist Nicole Freeman for Surface Magazine Duties included : Styling Liasing with PR companies Collections and returns Writer for TheLookHit.com online Magazine duties include: Covering events Writing weekly articles Assisting in organisation of fashion festival Attending and reporting on trade shows and fashion weeks Copy Write intern at Punkyfish.com duties included: Writing product descriptions Photographing products and models for the website Styling the shoots Managing the Facebook and Twitter pages
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My online portfolio is a work in progress. I have chosen Cargo Collective as a platform as it is designed for creative applicatons. I have kept it minimal by making it white with my logo and name placed clearly along the top. This portfolio will be an online platform to present and share my best work. .
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ONLINE PORTFOLIO
PERSONAL BLOG
Below is a screen shot of my blog Wise Rabbit Says. I have been blogging since 2010. The layout is consistent with my personal branding. I have kept colours tonal and the font and design uncomplicated. My blog has allowed possible employers to get more of a sense of me personally as I document my day to day life and style. .
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WORK EXPERIENCE
During the summer months I wanted to broaden my knowledge and experience within the fashion industry by gaining work placements. I had the privilege of being chosen to work for online magazine LookHit. I work as a freelance writer, events coordinator, street style photographer, Fashion week reporter and stylist. I also gained experience at PunkyFish, one of my favored childhood brands. Here I was able to style models, photograph products for their website, alter their social media and write the product descriptions for their online store. Working as a styling assistant for Nicole Freeman and Surface Magazine was inspiring. I oversaw photo shoots, conversed with PR agencies, completed returns and collections and helped with stylistic choices. Finally I was asked my Republic to take over their blog for a month. They allowed me to pick items from their store, style them to fit my personal taste and inform people how they could achieve the look from the Republic catalogue. This was a lot of fun and allowed me to see the fashion industry from a 27 high street level.
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PERSONAL MANIFESTO
MULTI-LAYERED MANIFESTO This seminar task required us to work in groups of two. In preparation we had to collect 5 personal fashion items and think of 3 words that represented us. My three words are : tolerant, determined and creative. The aim was to combine our personal items with our partners to creative a multilayered visual manifesto that captured the essence of us as fashion creatives. We had to consider the mixtures of colours, textures and how the items interacted with one and other. We chose to arrange our items at a window to provide a display area. This worked well due to the natural light that fills the picture. The items alone say a lot about my personality. The suit jacket is smart, the necklace is bohemian and eclectic, the camera shows my love of photography, the fashion book shows my enthusiasm for my subject, the jumper is warm and cozy, the shoes show a hit of high fashion and the sunflowers are happy and bright.
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MOVING DIGITAL MANIFESTO
This seminar task followed on from our previous undertaking. We had to push our personal visual manifesto into a moving digital image form. In changing our partners we recieved a fresh outlook on the project, we set to work transforming our manifestos into short films. My team chose to do a short stop motion film that combined both our previous visual manifesto images. We decided to use a clothes rail that filled up and depleted, as stacked of magazines grew and shrunk and shoes moved position. We chose to shoot it in black and white with hits of colour that appeared randomly throughout. We had to keep in mind that we would have to present this to two different audiences, one personal and one professional. We decided that a single film would suffice, as our film would manifest itself and come across in different ways to each audience. To a professional audience the film is: ordered, smart, structured, multilayered and shows interest in fashion To a personal audience the film is : quirky, sweet, busy and shows our love for clothes, shoes and everything in between I decided to personalize the film using my personal branding logo and fonts. I also did a word montage at the end of the film displaying words that others use to characterize me, taken from a confidential random questionnaire that I performed.
See the film at : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsid5MuTYQo Title: Personal Manifesto Stop Motion Fashion Film 35
TURNING NUMBERS INTO FASHION 36
This seminar task was to create a piece of advertising or VM to promote re-cycling or eco fashion. We had to find a surprising statistic concerning Eco Fashion and create a piece of work that had a strong typographical element. I chose to create a piece of advertising aiming to promote re-wearing, re-using or re-cycling your clothing as I found that 99% of clothing thrown away can be re-cycled. I chose to use vintage images from different years, the examples show contain images from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, but in the series I would create posters for the 80’s and 90’s also. I selected the colour green to symbolize eco friendly and made the typography the main key element to get the strong message across. .
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WHAT IS BEAUTY?
TEAM PHOTOSHOOT
We carried out this Photoshoot in teams of six. Our theme was based around the All Walks Beyond the Catwalk topic – “What Is Beauty?” We were given 15 minutes in the photo studio and had our images captured by a professional photographer. Our images had to be inspired by an appropriate tastemaker, we chose to base our foundation on the work of Rossetti. He often would change the appearance of his models within his paintings to make them fit with his beauty ideal. We took this notion and started to think how the modern media uses photo manipulation to alter images to create the current beauty ideal. Our Photoshoot was based on this theme. We took self portraits of each member within our group. Then in post production we edited our faces and changed the way we looked to fit the current notions of beauty. We presented out images without “before” copies, as we wanted the impact of the altered images to be revealed when you read that these images, that appear natural, have been heavily edited. This idea mimics what we see in the media, as most images do not go to press without being digitally enhanced. 41
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DIVERSITY NOW
COMPETITION ENTRY All Walk Beyond The Catwalk and the All Walks Center for Diversity have developed their first nation wide student competition. Its aim is to explore and celebrate the power fashion students have to creative positive messages about body image and individual beauty. To enter you could pick many different avenues, I decided to create a Zine. The Zine has to cover the area of individual beauty and body ideals, offering a unique take on the theme of individuality. Today’s beauty ideas, views towards body image and individuality are very narrow, we only see one type of beauty and many are made to feel like they are not good enough due to the fact they don’t look like the girls within the media. To make this change I think we need to be educated from a young age about the importance of being individual and unique. With the theme of education in mind I decided to create my Zine in the style of a children’s book. Although naive this has many meanings and messages: • Diverse beauty is a simple concept that the fashion industry doesn’t seem to grasp, its not a complicated notion, much like the notions found within children’s books • It’s a simple message clearly put, so all ages can understand that individuality is key and has value Designing the graphics I wanted them to be clear and simple. I have added hidden meanings within the story that add to the clear message of individuality, for example - The girls names are all gems – unique, completely individual yet all beautiful - The magazine they are reading is called ME-DIA , conveying that the magazine is the same as all current media - The coat the girls see in the magazine is by the designer Desire, later proving you don’t need to desire things within the magazines you have your own unique beauty I decided to scribble the story to reinforce the simple message of individuality and to reaffirm the hand crafted thrown together nature of a Zine.
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ZINE
-A CLEAR SIMPLE MESSAGE CLEARLY AND SIMPLY PUT49
ASHLEY GAIL DEAN