As planned, most of the early part of my summer was taken up by preparing the release and debut of the clothing project of mine - Fraktion. I don't know where the name came about, I just like how it sounds. A quick google reveals it's a German term for a political faction, fair enough then. The main issues before release was getting hold of t shirts that were of a suitable quality and fit, and then for a fair price and also finding somewhere to print the t-shirts to a professional standard as college was shut.
For the current part of the brands lifecycle I'm going with "Fraktion Streetwear" a lot to make it easier for people that are new to it to quickly pick up what Fraktion is and what it's about, hopefully later on I can drop the 'Streetwear'.
I released 6 t-shirts which I designed, It was tough to try and create a brand image for Fraktion and how I wanted to come across through my designs, my main focus was on emphasising the Summer aspect and try and get my own character through the designs. The collection was called 'SS12' (SpringSummer2012)
Digital artwork
'Chill'
'Chill - simple'
Fraktion x Overkrook - Script
Fraktion x Overkrooks - motif
Jokes and Tokes
Persevere
Initial Mock ups
I made some mock ups just to send around the internet and get people talking and taking notice of the very soon release. In hindsight, I did this too early as I was nowhere near ready with the actual t-shirts so it could have made the time between the initial interest and the actual release mean a huge burst of interest I couldn't capitalise on.
As you can see there's a consistent colour palette throughout..
Printed and ready shirts
Wanted everything to be locally prepared by graphic designers to the highest quality. So I got it printed at Dots Printhaus in Leeds which I have to say were very helpful, friendly and got the prints absolutely spot on. Even though they mixed the colours by eye, human pantone swatches.
Tumblr is huge at the moment and ripe for the kind of target market I'm looking for which are people into art/music/street culture/hip hop culture/skate culture/independent goods etc. So I set up a Tumblr which acts as a central hub and will be posting news, reviews and updates when it comes to the clothing scene, music scene etc and also updates on Fraktion itself. This is to get subscribers who regularly check back to catch up with what's new in certain scenes.
Online store - Http://fraktionstreetwear.bigcartel.com
Set up an online store through Bigcartel which works really well and looks pretty professional. In the future I'd like to have my own hosted website but my web developing skills are non existent at the moment so that'll have to wait
Also have Facebook/Twitter and Instagram (@Fraktionstreetwear) with links at the top of the page!
Photoshoots/Lookbooks
Future
Moving forward for the next drop I want a more simplistic/minimal but hard edged aesthetic. As this is more where I want the brand to head. I'll hopefully also bring in jumpers and sweatshirts and beanies/caps for the Autumn/Winter season as they're always popular and I'm confident they'll look great.
Here are some of the planned designs. I also worked on an alternate badge/logo that I'll use and see how it pans out. I'm really happy with it and I think it captures the Fraktion brand as I see it perfectly and it's much more recognisable and easily identifiable amongst the wealth of other independent clothing brands out there.
Also been working on some photoshoots too which really adds to the legitimacy of the brand and has led to a positive upturn in the project in terms of exposure and interest.
Onwards and upwards! Next thing is to try and get the stuff stocked in stores around the UK. One thing I didn't expect was just how busy and time consuming it is to set up a label, buy stock, print stock, then promote and deal with emails, orders etc. It's pretty much consumed the first half of summer but it's been a lot of fun. I now think I need to give it a backseat for a bit and let it take care of itself while I concentrate on being a LCA student again(!)
