Megan Hodge: The Traveling Hoodie

For this brief we where asked to team up in groups of two, me and my partner Justin Channel produced the following hoodie for the Hang ten traveling hoddie brief. The Hang Ten brief was a bit of a mind-bender at first. We were shown some interesting videos that gave us a good indication of what the brief was about, which definitely helped us on our way. We tried to wrap our heads around trying to communicate the concept of a journey in a unique and interesting way and wracked our brains until we began to start thinking productively. One of the more useful ideas that came from our individual brainstorming was to get the consumer or customer to interact with their hoodie and personalise it. We came up with the idea of letting the consumer write on the hoodie with a fabric marker that we would supply with the hoodie, encouraging them to take the hoodie with them wherever they go and fill it with their own stories and memories. We had to try and balance this idea of consumer interaction with the overall design of the hoodie, not letting the consumer have too much influence on the aesthetic appeal of the hoodie itself.

At first, we wanted to use semiotics and symbols as pictorial elements, leaving them to communicate the general feel of what the story was about. We would then have a little area that would be dedicated to the story, which would be typed using formal typography. Some of these areas for type would be left blank, which would allow the consumer to fill in their own story relating to the pictorial element. We realised that it would be important to have the individual elements vary in scale to create more of a visual impact and to relieve the design of a monotonous and boring layout. We also thought it was really important to try and draw interesting elements from our surroundings and decided to use various elements that you would only find in Durban/South Africa. After all, local is lekker! We started brainstorming about the unique people and interactions around Durban and tried to find ways to link them up with our overall concept.