PE Week 9: Project Progress

Week 9: 3/24/17

Timeline goals

Continue laying out brand book in InDesign
Tighten logo
Tighten illustrations & type for tee shirts
choose typography for brand

Actualized goals

Got feedback from target audience
Got feedback from Bosler
Continue laying out brand book in InDesign
Finalize logo - for both names
Sketches for illustration & type for tee shirts
Work on patterns
choose typography for brand (lookbook: Jumpbuck, Fontbox Loveluck, Avenir Next; tees: Garden Grown and handlettered)
Confirmed with Biz Link that they can print my tee shirts

I worked a lot this week on the details of this project. It's a hefty set of goals that require a lot of preliminary design work for the pieces. To be honest, I could easily see this growing into my thesis. I would love to fully develop a children's clothing line and do it in more detail for thesis. For this project I need Bosler's help and everyone in deciding how to simplify the project so I can focus on the lookbook and not get caught up in the excitement of designing patterns and clothing. It has already grown so much, and I'm really really excited about this project becoming the gateway to my thesis. My intuition says focus on simple screened tee shirts for now and expand on the patterns for thesis.

**I have to update this evening with my sketches, will bring to class**

Illustrations, patterns & type for clothing line

*themes & sayings*

nature:

flower crowns

nature girl

nature boy

nature kids

kinder

kinder kids

wild child

love child

animal friends:

lets be friends (animal)

woodland friends

garden friends

rabbits

bunny pie

cuddle bug

groundhogs

moles

worms

beetles

bees knees

hunter bee

birds

fireflies

butterflies

ladybugs

dragonfly

garden:

I grew this

eat what you grow

mud pie

busy hands, happy heart

dirty hands, happy heart

my happy place (garden)

fairy garden

rabbit food please

adventure:

want to play?

get your bike, lets go!

every day is the best day ever!

use every scrap

stay wild

be wild

bloom kindness

grow kindness

every day is an adventure

my playground (back yard)

additional ideas from target audience:

(Character based)
Oh, deer! (deer)
flower power (bees & wildflowers/ faces as flowers smiling at bees)
queen (bee)
my lady (ladybug)
fortitude (branch tree fort)
bee bold (littles standing proud in bumblebee outfit, or having painted themself with bee stripes {my hunter, lol})
sow kindness
dirty knees, if you please

Friend's feedback:

I have many friends who fall into my target audience. One friend gave me some really helpful and honest feedback. She and I have similar tastes and interests however she knows the market better than I do {I really stick to Target} and gave me great market insights. Through talking it out with her, she also helped me whittle down to a very specific theme and look for the line. I am now considering details that I may have skipped without this feedback. It's very useful to consider this feedback before I really get into the grit of illustrating, so I can keep my target audience in mind.

My responses are in blue italic.

overall vibe

I’m getting that the vibe is: playful, nature, wild (wildflowers, wild hair)

YES! That’s exactly what I’m going for! I want it to be a line for kids like mine and yours. Kids that are encouraged to live a “throw back” , "hands-free" style childhood: outdoors, free, adventure! I wanted to focus on garden animals and woodland animals because these are animals that they would likely have already seen and experienced.

logo

To me the logo is: playful, wild (letters not all horizontally aligned). But not just earthy - hard to explain but I’m thinking of modern kids and not the boy in Jungle Book, a font for him would look maybe like roots and would have no corners like you have on the ends of the ampersand and “k”. Like maybe kids who go to a Waldorf school - they’re outside all the time but it is school and maybe they play with modern materials, like a lamp outside (like in the one catalog). BTW, this is my first time seeing your logo and I agree with the ampersand change.

That’s a great observation about the logo, I will play with the letters more. I also am going to do a handlettered version since that style is more illustrative. My prof and I decided to develop hunter bee as a name as well. So I am working on that this week.

tagline

busy hands, happy heart - agree that this doesn’t sound like clothing but rather toys or learning resources, keep happy heart.

of the other three tag lines: definitely prefer the “littles” one - more playful

JUST BRAINSTORMING - maybe something will help...

clothes for busy bodies and happy hearts
budding naturalists
more playful word for “clothing”? duds (may sound masculine to me)

Wearables for wild littles
Wearables for little wilds
happy heart wearables for littles

themes and sayings for the clothing

Love “wild child” - how about an illustration (or some other suggestion) of something wild in nature OR a baby wild animal (e.g., a fawn) - an actual wild child. What I like about it is “wild child” is something people already say and this is a nature-themed take on it. So it’s not just nature, like not just an illustration of a tree or something, but is also clever/fun. Related ideas: “Oh, deer!” with an illustration of a deer, “Flower Power” with an illustration of wild flowers with bees (or some other power/use that flowers have), “Queen” with an illustration of a queen bee (possibly with a flower crown or normal crown), “Lady” with an illustration of a lady bug (maybe too much of a stretch), “FORTitude” with kid in tree fort made of branches, “Buzz Off” with kid watching bee, “Bug Off” with kid holding bug, “sticks and stones” with kid on big rock holding stick sword, “Buried Treasure” with kid finding earthworms OR a groundhog’s burrow, “Like Butter” with butterfly, “The Beetles” with different kinds of beetles, “Bee Bold” with a girl in a bumblebee striped outfit, “Bee ???” with a boy, "Boy Toy" Stumped (sitting on a tree stump), Totally nuts

Other nature rhymes: “Rock Jock” with an illustration of a boy climbing rocks, “Climb Time” with kid climbing tree, “Muddy Buddy” with a kid in the mud with a frog (really like but not sure you can use because Muddy Buddies are kids rainsuits), “Rain on the Brain” with kids playing in the rain.

“kinder”: “kindergarten” with kids in their mini kid garden? May be too hard to get the connection. Is there a German word "waldenfreude" or similar, meaning pleasure/joy found in the woods? Could be neat if you have the word and the definition and an illustration, like an entry in a vintage kids dictionary.

Actually, entries in a vintage kids dictionary could be really great, like you'd (re)define words like "joy" (butterfly landing on your hand), "friend" (kid hugging a tree), etc. with childhood nature scenes.

Morals in nature: "go upstream" (kid wading upstream), conquer (girl at the top of a tall rock or tree she climbed), face your fears (kid and bee), bee kind (planting wildflowers for bees). Get your feet wet. Stand tall (kid standing on tree stump).

Like “Let's be friends.". Picturing kid offering animal food or help or vice versa. May prefer kid hugging a tree with a big smile.

Garden

My favorites are “Rabbit food, please!” (kid and rabbit munching on leafy carrots from garden?) and some variation on dirty hands, happy heart. Think I prefer the imagery of a dirty body to dirty hands but “dirty body” sounds not quite right. “Dirty knees, if you please.” with kid kneeling down (in shorts or skirt) in woods inspecting something? “Dirty bodies, happy hearts.” with two or more kids playing together in nature.

Definitely prefer “I grew this” to “eat what you grow” and “grow your own food”, which both sound kind of preachy to me (prob because people have teased me about owning 12 acres and not having a garden!).

Love the mud pie imagery. Not sure what the text should be. Do people call their kids “baby cakes” or is that just me? I call my daughter that. A toddler making a mud pie with the words “baby cakes”? Think it's too far of a stretch.

Adventure

Favorites are “Every day is the best day ever!”, “Stay wild,” and “Want to play?” (or “Wanna play?”).

“Bloom kindness” could be “sow kindness” but that may be an actual quote (so IDK if you can print it/use it for profit) - there are things about planting kindness and harvesting love or similar. Also like “every day is an adventure.” “Choose your own adventure” (or is that name trademarked?) with illustration of kid facing wild, fun woods on one side and something less desirable (house with a large TV airing something?)? Idea is choosing to have a real adventure outside.

Further develop: (now that the name may be changed to hunter bee, certainly thinking all of the bee centered ideas are perfect for the line)

(Character based)
wild child
Oh, deer! (deer)
flower power (bees & wildflowers/ faces as flowers smiling at bees)
queen (bee)
m' lady (ladybug)
fortitude (branch tree fort)
bee bold (littles standing proud in bumblebee outfit, or having painted themself with bee stripes {my hunter, lol})
sow kindness
eat what you grow
dirty knees, if you please

misc. thoughts about a t-shirt line

I’m only one person but here’s what makes me buy or not buy a t-shirt for my kids:

I only like the super soft, thin, and kind of stretchy t-shirt material. I have a t-shirt from a friend’s company and she said the t-shirts they ordered were from American Apparel. I used to buy screenprinted t-shirts on Etsy and literally kept track of which ones were the t-shirt material I liked and which were thick and stiff and only went back to shops with the t-shirt material I liked.

I agree and find myself buying the same way… fortunately these style of tees are trendy so they are available at Target and Walmart. But I think it’s a great point that I have to decide whether or not to make the quality of the shirt mirror the messages of kindness and softness and almost nude (least restrictive wearables). If I consider the quality of the material I may be moving into a higher end line like Burt’s Bees organic kids clothes and away from cat & jack style. I honestly think that these should be higher end and the materials matter, where they were made matters and how they are sold matters.

Do they have t-shirts that are cut/styled for girls, like scoopnecks and cropped sleeves? I have found that I rarely put my daughter in’ my son's old t-shirts, even if the color and screenprint work for her, because they look like boys t-shirts to me.

I agree as well, rarely do my girls wear the boxy tees. Luckily I have found some lovely options in blank organic, thin tees.

I haven’t bought any t-shirts in a while. I resisted as long as I could (and much longer that other parents, I think) but he is so into characters (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman, etc.) now that I’m not sure I’d buy him anything else because he’d be disappointed (whereas before he didn’t really pay attention). So if you’re trying to design for boys around his age or older, I’d try really hard to make it something cool that they’d actually like. Maybe it’s the same issue with older girls - I wouldn’t know - but I’m thinking they’d still be fine with cutesy sayings and illustrations. What’s particularly hard about this is that I might want to buy a shirt with a message about kindness for my boy and about adventure for my girl, but my boy would probably prefer the one about adventure.

This is a struggle. I want the older kids to want to wear them, that’s why I thought I should design two very distinct characters for the line (a boy and a girl). Give them a strong narrative so the child wants to wear them. Easiest way to do it is to create a book to go along with the line. But simpler would be a tag that is a 4 page graphic novel or something. A little more than normal to hook the kids to caring.

I don’t usually buy white t-shirts because they show stains and don’t look good after a few wears. Even pastels I’d be wary of for my daughter, who still makes a mess when she eats.

Ugg, story of my life, I NEVER wear white. I expanded the colors of the tee shirts, originally I was going with a more pastel palette. This is thoughtful feedback because I definitely do this as a mom when I like a shirt for the kids, and have passed over many wonderful tees because of the light color.

I’m more likely to buy a $15 t-shirt that I like better than a $10 one that I like less. My reasoning is that it might hold up better if it seems higher quality, I’ll dress my kid in it more often if I really love it, and it’s only a few dollars more so it seems like the more expensive one is actually the better deal. But other parents may do the exact opposite.

I do the same when I can. I prefer less clothes but cuter and better quality (long lasting). I agree that some parents won’t feel this way, but this line is catering to parents like us. Thinking of spending more on less pieces, I should make some super versatile so they can be mixed and matched.

I find when a company donates to a charity I support, I’m more likely to buy from them. Like if one t-shirt is $1 more but donates that $1 to The Sierra Club, I’m more likely to buy it. I know this is silly because I could just donate $1 to The Sierra Club myself, but that’s what I do.

I was considering this because of the bees and also noticed in my research that one of the clothing companies donates to a wildlife organization. I think it’s powerful marketing to reach people’s empathy and charitable cores. Plus cutting out that extra step that busy parents sometimes don't have time to complete a donation. I think this is a very cool idea! Especially since I already have a vested interest in bees.

Moonsoon is the clothing line that I noted does this: