Tuesday 18th – Friday 21st April 2017

So I have just finished my work experience placement at Ashley Wilde this week. It was really insightful as I have never understood the textile design process. I was at the company for four days and the people there were so friendly and willing to answer my questions.

I got this work experience placement by emailing the design team at Ashley Wilde along with my CV and the link to this website. It just shows what experience you can get if you just ask!

What I did daily:

Day 1-

• Introduction to team
• Gathered images together for inspiration for new designs
• Made a prototype box cushion

Day 2-

• Finished first box cushion and made a second
• Started on some textile designs
  • Brief was to make the designs either geometric or textured
  • Did some in my sketchbook

Day 3-

• Textile designs in sketchbook scanned into Photoshop and manipulated
• Made 12 textile designs

Day 4-

• Had a tour of all the warehouses and offices
• Questions I had were answered
• More textile designs

The design process:

• Brief
  • This usually depends on the company asking for the designs. Some companies would want the designers at Ashley Wilde to create new designs whereas some would send through their artwork and the designers would have to rearrange it.
• Gather images and inspiration
  • So this step is much shorter than I thought it would be. At school, we spend weeks gathering images for our mood boards, whereas the people here have the select the most important images to their brief. There is less investigation than I thought it would be and everything is done through a computer and there is no need for sketchbooks at all.
• Design
  • This is done either in Photoshop or a program called AVA. Their work is done on design tablets which are like massive mouse pads, but you use a pen with it.
• Checking process
  • This is the most tedious step as there are lots of checks by the company, and if they aren’t satisfied, then it sent back to the mill. There is lots of checking of colours and textures and these designers want to make sure that the final outcome is exactly what they designed.

I really loved it at the company and the whole week experience. I have learnt so many things and it really is something I would love to do in the future. Below are a couple of the designs I was able to do throughout the week.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.