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Design

Murray Uniforms – Coventry University Insight Award

By November 24, 2020No Comments

Insight Awards

Murray Uniforms & Coventry University Award

Earlier this year, Murray Uniforms launched their annual ‘Murray Insight Award’. This was launched with Coventry University students, who took part in different activities and workshops.

This year’s theme was ‘How do you approach a Design project?’. Murray was interested in the individuality of each designer’s approach to the design process. We wanted to hear their stories, and they have definitely been heard. Therefore, we would like to announce and congratulate the three winners of the award:

  • 1st place: Olivia Battson
  • 2nd place: Ecaterina Lefter
  • 3rd place: Hannah Bexson

1st Place

Olivia Battson

For my project for the fashion insight award I chose to go for a more editorial approach researching into other varieties of articles to get the perfect fonts and layouts. From there it was key to pinpoint every important step of the design process and then add my own touch about how I approach it. The art is my name with flowers around it as it is my personal design process and I like to work based on nature. So it added an arty element whilst still keeping the sleek magazine look.

This was a fun project to explore a different side of fashion and really evaluate how I work. Receiving this award is an honour as my hard work paid off and a big thank you to the Murray team for the award and prize.

2nd place

Ecaterina Lefter

The Murray Fashion Insights Award offered me the opportunity to talk about myself and to accept a part of my creative process that I always viewed as an issue. Since I remember, my colleagues were very good at hand drawing, or had strong illustrative digital skills, meanwhile I was never enthusiastic about drawing my ideas. When I was 14 I even gave up the idea of building a fashion career because I noticed the lack of progress in my drawing skills during a course, if compared to the results of my classmates.

However, I always enjoyed creating things with my hands, and in the end that guided me in the right direction. I always felt insecure about my different approach, about the fact that I created on mannequins, in the process, and not on paper. My teachers always insisted on drawing the final version before using the fabric, which to me meant no creative input or experimentation.

Thanks to the Murray Fashion Insight Award, I was pushed into analysing my design process, and it led me to realise that it actually has no issues. In fact, it’s a perfect one because it works for me. As long as I have passion for my work and clear goals, there can’t be a real problem.

3rd Place

Hannah Bexson

As a sportswear designer, my approach to design is very much focused on the performance of the garment and wearer experience. What they can gain from the product rather than the main focus being purely aesthetic. My personality is very much reflected in my ideation in the design process, through forward thinking and focus on the future (how technology can be interpreted into garments). Research and development are key factors in my approach to design, as they enable me to understand how a garment influences the performance of the wearer.

I prefer to take a 5-stage design approach. The 5 stages to my design approach are: stage 1: primary research into the consumer market, stage 2: primary research into garment technology and consumer activity, stage 3:textile selection, stage4: design development and stage 5: presentation. I like to research in two stages because I like to make sure I have covered both research into aesthetics and functionality. I believe both factors are vital in sportswear design. I also believed that textile selection is key in sportswear as it needs to suit the function and improve the wearers performance (when designing technical sportswear). To me having a process to what I do and taking it step by step is very important. The final stage is presentation, making sure my designs are presented in a clear and neat format as this is also very important to me. Without clear and neat presentation design aesthetic and features can be lost. Therefore being able to understand a garment’s functionality in sportswear through its design presentation is also key.

Having stages to my design process enable me to focus on each stage individually and collectively to make sure a design is really thought through and that is my reasoning behind a staged approach.

A big thank you

We would also like to thank all of the participants and ensure that there will be another chance to participate this coming year to a new competition.