As of now, the second semester is almost over in terms of lessons and assignments, and looking back at what has happened since Christmas, I think the quality of the teaching has been extremely high, and with that comes a marked increase in the difficulty of the projects. I can clearly feel that my typing skills and my ability to summarise have improved after working on the whole project.
Progress is no doubt a welcome thing, but of course I had some challenging experiences during the process, such as when I made 10 products by hand, which was when I was most inspired and yet full of uncertainty. Firstly, both brands are my favourite brands and I was happy to spend more time on this. When I was designing the products, I had done my research and I knew them very well, but I couldn’t be sure that they would end up as final products. When I finished drawing the last bottom shirt I knew I should be successful and visually they looked OK. At that moment I felt that the effort and time I had put in had paid off.
During this semester, I have learnt a lot of helpful business analytics such as Swot, pestel and stp, which help me to quickly analyse a brand in depth from different perspectives. I think these analytics will stay with me throughout my studies and work life and all I need to do now is to use them repeatedly to improve my proficiency and especially my sensitivity to data analysis. I think I still have a problem with the written word and I can’t summarise the results in precise business terms. I hope that I will be able to learn more about business-related professional culture when I enter the next term or BA course.
The BA in fashion management and marketing requires, firstly, strong business analysis skills, followed by proficiency in the use of various data analysis methods, as well as a good understanding of consumers and consumer markets, marketing strategies and so on. My plan for developing these skills is to improve my business analysis skills by reading and writing more, which means reading more articles or browsing data about business analysis and thinking about the business message behind it. After this semester’s assignments, I have started to develop my business analysis skills in depth. This is the skill I want to improve the most, I want to be able to subconsciously do a thorough analysis of a brand when I see it. This is what I aspire to, but I understand that what is holding me back at this stage is still a lack of professional and cultural knowledge. I hope to learn more next semester.
I think the proudest part of the whole portfolio process was when I was working on the branding and advertising pages. I put my own logo on the packaging, which I really liked, and then I put my product on two avatars through PS, which looked like they were actually wearing clothes, which was great. That was the most exciting moment for me during the whole assignment phase, for a moment I could feel a great sense of achievement.
Overall, I ask myself to produce higher quality work at each stage than I did before, and I have the same goal for next term, that I will keep making progress!