1. Research

We met in the first week thanks to the post it notes bringing us together and we decided we all would form a group and make products based on the second brief Asda presented us.

Later on after producing some pieces we were able to create our group name ‘Emerge’ that we think represents how all our different practices (Textiles, Fine Art and Interactive Arts) get together and make something different arise or ‘emerge’ but always keeping the essence from each one of us.

Then we created our manifesto, that originally was 'When the man-made and the natural combine and thrive' but thanks to the tutors we could see that it was too long and it wasn't the best word choice so it eventually changed to 'when nature and the synthetic combine and thrive' because all our pieces want to mix the natural world with the synthetic one creating a balanced combination. Also we want pieces that the consumers buy because they have something special that they can’t find anywhere else.

I went to ASDA to see what they were selling at that moment and it gave me some ideas of products for kitchen wear or dining room, which are the spaces in the house we want to produce for. I saw some objects with potential to be part of the brief but they needed a big twist.

Researching on Pinterest really helped me get a lot of ideas to develop. Like macro photography, honeycomb inspired designs and the use of clay to produce coasters.

  *Source left image: mymodernmetselects.com
Source right image: galvanart on Etsy.com

We made a Pinterest Folder for all of us to share inspirational images with the group and always know what we all are getting inspired by.

This really helped me because I could see if they liked images I had shared and this way I could develop these specific ideas without them having to tell me only in our group meetings, which would happen twice of three times a week.

A successful piece of research was finding out when looking into John Lewis’ products (Asda’s main competitor) that they sell wallpapers and Asda doesn’t, so we thought they would like this product to be a part of their product range and we began to develop this idea.

The next thing we agreed to do was choosing a colour palette to work with so all our pieces would look like a same product range when put together. This idea makes even more sense when you think that our target costumers are young couples who just moved to a new house and need a whole new set of accessories that combine with each other.

Having the colour palette also helped our group create pieces in a more successful and effortless way, as we didn’t have to modify the colours of the products later on because of them not matching. We thought this is a more professional way to create a product range that is closer to how a group of professional designers would work.