See in store for details...

This is the poster we have created to advertise our modern stair carpet clips.

We came up with the slogan 'Clip It! Don't Trip It!' which works brilliantly and is an effective, enticing title. We feel there is a good contrast between the vintage and modern style carpet clips which take inspiration from our research into style and fashions from the two time periods. We all contributed to the modern carpet clip designs using different media including Adobe Illustrator and sketching.
The background is completely inspired by Art Deco, a Vogue magazine cover to be specific and we all feel it works really well against the clips and the Barbie.
We decided to use a Barbie to represent our 'Trophy Wife' customer as she illustrates the stereotypical, glamorous woman/house wife perfectly and is more fun and eye catching than using a real person.
At the bottom of the poster we have included some cliche advertisement phrases to bring the poster to life.

Plastic Inspirations.

Upon receiving the random plastic object from MoDIP, the group elected me to search for other random, decorative objects.

I began looking at more contemporary household items and then moved on to researching other plastic products made with Bakelite that represent the 1920's era.

Most of the images I found have contained patterns that were inspirational for our own contemporary stair clip designs. We have also used this board as a source of inspiration for colours.

Art Deco Lifestyle Moodboard.

This moodboard represents the lifestyle of the Art Deco era, particularly looking at the new inventions of this time. As you can see the telephone, typewriter and vacum cleaner were brought to life within this decade, especially the vacum cleaner which was a key essential item to the typical housewife of the time. As well as household pride, sport became popular to women especially which previously was not heard of, as well as music..Jazz being a huge influence as well as Hollywood films which inspired image and style to many women.

The Modern Must Have Customer...

This is my completed mood board for the modern 'must have' customer.

I have included all sorts of objects and accessories for both the customer and her home. Many of the items are electrical gadgets, a sign of the times. These include the popular and sought after Apple Ipad and mp3's, the new Microsoft Kinect, an accessory for Microsoft's Xbox, as well as the latest form of home entertainment, 3D televsion. I have included both a brand new Range Rover and the Fiat 500 Air, both very popular cars and definit must have's! There are also must have objects for the home including a Dyson hoover and swish coffee maker as well as a photo of a trophy home that could belong to our modern must have customer. Finally I have also included more cosmetic must have's for the customer herself including a smart Rolex watch, fake eye-lashes and nails and botox.

I feel this board well represents the Modern 'must have' customer and illustrates the kind of customer who would be interested in the modern stair carpet clip designs.

Latest Must Have's Research...

I have been looking in more detail at the latest 'must have's' which I can include in my mood board. My board needs to clearly illustrate the 'trophy home'/'must have' customer who would be inclined to buy our modern stair carpet clips if and when they become THE latest thing for a household.

In the mood board I posted below I included a picture of the Fiat 500, a very popular car at the moment however it has been recently pointed out that the new Fiat 500 TwinAir is the actual must have!! Making it a must have is it's fuel efficient engine which makes it exempt from both road tax and the congestion charge! I have swapped the old picture to this one.

I am also going to include this picture of what I consider to be a 'trophy home' on the mood board. I took the picture while in London and feel the pillars and grand driveway and front door are the particular features that makes it appear a 'trophy home'.

Update from Maxine.

As Lauren has mentioned below, for reasons I cannot control my priorities have changed slightly meaning uni work has had to take a bit of a back seat. Unfortunately this has effected the group project and shows a disadvantage of working as a group! Thankfully, both the group and our course leader have been very understanding of the situation and we are continuing to work together where possible to produce work for this project.

Before this slight 'hiccup' I had already began my 'trophy home, 'must have customer' mood board which I posted a few weeks ago. I have recently had some time to add to and finish this board and begin work on our planned advert for the modern carpet clips.

We are also taking advantage of my being in Bournemouth for a couple of days and meeting as a group to bring our work together and make any final additions/adjustments for tomorrow's hand in.

Quick Update!!

Unfortunately we have temporarily lost one of our team members. Maxine has been absent through no fault of her own. Our group meetings have continued and so has the work from the remaining group. This in turn increases the work load for us, but we are managing and Maxine is still continuing with her side of the project; she has also given us the moodboard/lifestyle board that she has created.

With this in mind we have set out to complete the project work by the deadline and do the presentation at a later date; with the whole group together. This blog in general explains the problems we have been having and we still work very well together and I believe we have all enjoyed the experience.

Art Deco

As we are partly looking at the Art Deco movement for inspiration I have looked at various buildings inspired by this movement.

The Chrysler Building, New York

A lift door within the Chrysler Building

The Warehouse Market Tower, Tulsa

Oakland Floral Depot

Technology Troubles...

This project has highlighted how differently we all work, in particular with regards to technology. We all use different programs on our individual computers and have at points struggled with combining our work and uploading images to our blog. Working together and using our different skills in different programs we have over come these struggles and produced a well formed blog.

Who Would Own Carpet Clips - Now and Then...

 

As Sophie and I (Maxine) are producing a mood board each on the lifestyle of our 'must have' customer who we see owning the carpet clips  (Sophie the Art Deco customer and Maxine the modern) we have got together to pin point a well known face who relates to our customers, then and now. For our 'then' lady from the Art Deco period we have chosen an image of Rita Hayworth, a well known actress. We feel her image/style in this photo well represents a glamorous, house proud lady and the kind of women we imagine to own carpet clips.

We have also picked out an image of Nigella Lawson, similar to Rita's, she too represents a glamorous, house proud women however form the modern day. We felt Nigella was particularly relevant as she is quite quirky and flamboyant, a lady who would appreciate the sometimes quirky, modern carpet clip designs.

Modern 'Must Have' Lifestyle Board...

This is the moodboard I (Maxine) am producing to show the lifestyle brand and customer profile of the modern lady who has to have the latest thing. It is not yet finished and I plan to add more at our next meetings when I can gather idea's of other things to include on the board from my other group members. I think the board already works well to show the kind of 'trophy home', 'must have' customer but I'll check with the other people in my group and get their feedback.

Carpet Clip Designs...

Lauren:
A start to the design process, I have chosen some images from the internet; images of interiors of various styles and themes. Some of which are modern, Kitsch, and Art Deco e.t.c. I will produce some more designs with Hannah; from which she has taken inspiration from another source. All designs will be compiled onto a board and presented to the group.

Art Deco Vogue Covers..

In addition to our work and research we have also planned to produce an advert to promote the modern carpet clips we design to our modern 'must have' customer. As the Byson carpet clips we have from Modip are from the Art Deco period we'd like to take inspiration from this period and use it in at least one aspect of our work. We feel a good place to do this could be our advert and this book below, 'Vogue Covers', shows the different colours and shapes used in promotion and design during this period. 

Latest Meeting...

Today we all met with the objective to to talk less and do more! Previously we've talked a lot about our different idea's and what we all want to research and how to promote the 'must have the latest thing' lifestyle but not produced all that much work. I'm really glad we set ourselves this objective as together we got a lot more work done and continued to bounce our idea's off one another. We are all happy with our chosen lifestyle brand and now continue to come up with and produce different ways to show our lifestyle brand.

I am creating a board showing the modern 'must have' lady with a trophy home however today I used my new found skills in Illustrator to produce some modern designs of carpet clips. The designs are fairly basic but show a different media and possible design ideas for modern carpet clips which may appeal to the modern customer. The include the stainless steel carpet clip, velvet carpet clips, glittery carpet clips as well as a leopard and polka dot print.

Modern Carpet Clips

These stair carpet clips are a more modern than the ones we have been given from Modip. They look as though they're not made from plastic and are more interesting and nicer than the brown clips from modip. We will be designing clips similar to these but more suited to the modern trophy wife. 

Vintage Stair Carpet Clips for the 'Eclectic Home'!

Brass, Bronze, Brown and Boring.....So lets jazz them up a little! The clips we are studying are brown and plastic. We will design a 'new age' version of the original stair carpet clips; with diamanté s, colours and current shapes and patterns.

  

Kooky object from The Range

Hannah and Lauren found this kooky object at The Range. It is used to hold shopping bags so that someone's hand does not hurt from holding too many heavy bags.

Other kooky items that we found on the internet include, Draught excluder, Toast stamp and Spider catcher!

When I began to research Art Deco fashion, as had been decided in our first meeting, I found myself a little confused on exactly how the subject related and accomplished the brief we have been given. Even though to research fashion had made sense in our first meeting and seemed to link on from the other angles we are researching, I felt unsure it would answer the brief to 'promote a lifestyle brand'.

We had our second meeting yesterday where I brought up my query with the rest of the group who  empathised with my concerns. As a result of our concerns we went back to the brief and highlighted the key words, 'Identify a Market', 'Promote/Advertise' and 'Create a unique lifestyle brand'. This way we can ensure the work and research we do is relevant to the brief.

During the meeting we made choices on which area's are most relevant and what to research the most. We are happy that our lifestyle brand will be based on people who need to have the latest thing and who have 'trophy homes' etc, as we discussed in our first meeting. We are going to look at this type of customer from the Art Deco period (the lady who had the carpet clips) and consider who that customer is now and what is in place of the carpet clips (what today's 'must have' customer must have!).

We are also going to bring the carpet clips up to date by creating different designs/styles of carpet clips for the modern day and make them fit into the lifestyle of today's 'must have' lady.

Finally, we also plan to look into other 'kooky', superfluous objects that people have but don't necessarily need.

First Meeting - Brainstorm.

During our first meeting we produced this brainstorm shown above. After reading through the brief we brainstormed our idea's in relation to the product and the lifestyle we're going to promote. We each gave our initial idea's in response to the brief and the carpet clip's themselves. We began to research the Art Deco period (the time in which the our carpet clips come from) as well as the lifestyle of someone who would have carpet clips. 

In relation to the lifestyle brand evolved from the carpet clips, our initial idea's include people with 'trophy homes', 'The Stepford Wife', the 'want it have it' manner however unnecessary the object is and people who just 'have' to have the latest thing. These initial idea's come from the fact that we can't see the carpet clips as being a vital part to the home, they seem to be a more superfluous item. We may take the direction that carpet clips were once the thing to have in a home for those who just have to have the latest thing, be it necessary or not.

We have designated each person some thing different to go away and research and have agreed the best way to keep the project going is to meet regularly. I'm going to be researching how our product and lifestyle brand influence or are influenced by fashion. This way we can relate the project back to our passion!

 
 

Stair Carpet Clips by Byson.

To help us with this project we feel it is important to learn more about the carpet clips and their uses. Below shows some information about our particular carpet clips from www.vads.com.
Byson carpet clips were in ciculation from the1920's to around 1959. The Modip museum has a collection of 18 compression moulded phenol formaldehyde stair carpet clips by Byson. Each clip comprises of two parts: one section is for fixing to the stair riser and is drilled to accommodate a screw, whilst the second larger part slots into it trapping the carpet in place.
The moulding for the Byson carpet clips is in an Art Deco style and was probably in use in the home during the first half of the twentieth century. As a result of this we will direct some of our research at the Art Deco period and take inspiration from the Art Deco style.

Modip Object....

This is the object we've been given from Modip to base our group project on. When given the objects we really struggled to know what they were and their purpose. After our lesson we went to the Modip museum and researched the objects online only to find out they are carpet clips......

Below is the website we found which informed us what the object's were. vads.ac.uk is 'an online resource for visual arts' which had a description of the objects as well as their materials, dimensions, date they were in circulation and the manufacturer.