This was our first group project since starting at Edinburgh University. I thought it was timed perfectly since we all knew each other really well at this point and had something distinctive and individual to add to this project.

Our project was simple, design a collection of interior textile samples for a commercial purpose. As a group, we decided to bring our own personal backgrounds and cultures into the project and collate them together to make our own identity as a group. We had all grown up in different places from London, Manchester, Cumbria, Arizona and Thailand.

This ended up being our sole idea, a culture clash. I remember previously thinking that culture clashes had been done so many times by designers, but then I realised that they are always changing depending what cultures and places you want to coincide, and we had a lot of variation!

We individually worked on our own section of the project, mainly creating drawings inspired by where we were from. We then all came together and bashed out ideas and a colour palette, which all of us remember taking an age to get right.

My section to work on was London. From growing up near London, I didn’t want the project to be just another stereotype with red buses and telephone boxes. Around the time we were making this project, Brexit talks were occurring and this led me to 70s punk London. I thought it fitted perfectly with this project as the punk movement was a time of nihilism and riots. And, of course, I had to bring in some punk music into this project too.

This led the group to create this statement: “We as individual designers have collaborated to create a rebellious and personal interiors anti-trend. This is in response to the current political climate which has, to an extent, resulted in a lack of community between cultures after the Brexit referendum.”

As said previously, we had to design this interiors collection for a brand that we know. We decided on Desigual in the end. It was the perfect brand to design for as they similarly include culture clash design ideas in their clothes. They also don’t have an interiors collection, so we thought we could hypothetically design their first interiors collection.

Working together as a group was interesting as well. I think we managed to work well together and had minimal arguments. I think that all came down to how we realised that we were creating a group identity and not focusing on our own projects, definitely a different way to work. A collective Google Drive helped us to collaborate on each other’s designs as well as the valuable studio time, where we used to have our own little critiques.

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Below are some of the final context designs done by the lovely Grace. However, Photoshop is still my nemesis.