Further Unit 12 Thinking

To discover what I want to do for my FMP, I created a mindmap to visually display the potential routes I could go through. I first started out creating a slightly simple mind map of the ideas I had to truly consider if they were strong options for me; Here you can see the routes I could go down and if you notice much like I did they all take a similar style of me designing or modifying designs for new or existing audiences, I feel like this stems from the fact that these have been my most enjoyable projects over the two years of our course and therefore as it is our last project together, I wanted to do something that I enjoyed. I also wanted to do a project similar to this to what we have done before as I know that I can work hard to get a reasonable grade to see me out for my finishing year. Creating a marketing campaign is something I would have liked to do as it is very relevant to what I would like to do once our college course is over, as you can see I wanted to create mock clothing to give an idea of what my brand could look like followed by how would I would promote the brand etc, this is heavily used throughout most of my ideas. The concept of branding a certain item seemed very appealing to me and so in knowing this, I could see it being more and more used in my ideas until I came up with the concept of creating the concept of an app, disregarding my other ideas due to the fact that marketing an app has yet to be done within the duration of this course. I am not the technological genius and so actually creating the app including the coding seemed a little bit above my skill set, however creating mockups for the app's layout as well as the overall branding of it as if this was a new app to start in the market seems like a strong project for me to pursue. In conclusion to this, I have decided to market an online shopping app called 'Snapthat' (a loose name until I research further into it) in which once taking pictures for clothing, the app will analyse the image to find clothing garments that are similar, specific to those wanting vintage garments.

Once confirming the idea that I will be branding and marketing an app, I wanted to expand upon this to visualise just what would be needed from my FMP to achieve a good level of work. Within the mindmap, I have pretty much labelled all of our assignment headlines to start to get an idea of how I will fill each of them with concent. Research is such a key aspect of our FMPs, probably the most important aspect of showing just how much knowledge you have learnt or discovered in your process of making. After learning of new research techniques throughout the year such as book reviews I really want to incorporate this into my work to show the level of work I am putting in, realising this I started to look at books I could potentially read and work with, I stumbled upon 'X saves the day' an in-depth look in to generation X, which I think is a great piece of work to have as it focuses on the consumer markets of my target audience. Another key aspect that I needed to look into and also throughout on this mind map is the use of programs, I knew that this would be a very program heavy piece of work and so after talking it out with Steve it has become apparent that I will need to invest my own time and money into new software such as Adobe XD which is specifically for app design and perfect for me, I do not mind purchasing the software myself but I am unsteady about the idea of using a new software, the plus to this is that I will realively know from the first go as it is an Adobe software and they tend to be the same to an extent. Looking at the work I need to produce seems like a lot, however, if I manage my time correctly I know I can get it done to a strong level.

After piecing together I need to do, I went on to analyse some current shopping apps on the market just to get my research started. To begin, I looked at apps which had a variety of different layouts and colour themes to distinguish what makes them different. As you can see, I picked upon on certain details such as the layout of how the app is set out such as Lush's which has the best layout because it strong shows visuals and photography and the essence of what Lush is as a brand, another detail I picked up on was the fact that that in the middle app the key image is the main focus point, this is due to the first image encapsulating the main focal point of the brand. An important detail to consider when creating my app's potential layout, something I will need to heavily think about during my research and experimentation process. Continuing on from this process, I went onto Instagram as it is my main inspiration for 'Snapthats' concept, doing this I could express certain details which make Instagram unique such as hashtags used and certain users that 'dupe' outfits for cheaper alternatives.

It's good to see my fmp starting to take shape from confirming what I would like to create for my finale project to planning out how far I will take my work in terms of research and experimentation. I would like to hope that my work plans out and that I can create a piece of work to be proud of, I believe there will be a struggle I will experience such as new software experimentation to just how my branding will work.