Independant project

The project we have been given is slightly different from the rest as we have been tasked with setting our own brief. I have broken down the key points from the starting brief we have been given.

• Test of your ability to work independently 
• Duration of 8 weeks
• Goal is to achieve a personal balance of all of the separate corse elements
• Create a personal visual language to compliment the brief set
• Take responsibility 

For this project my main goals are to create something that both challenges me to learn something new and playing on my strengths to creating a finished piece that I can use in my portfolio.  

After a visit to a craft fair earlier this year, my mum and I found that we are struggling to get cross stitch patterns that suit our tastes as most of them are old fashioned. There was one stool at the fair in particular that focused solely on cross stitch patterns, they had some lovely packs that included a pattern, the correct coloured thread and a frame to show it off in, however these packs were very expensive and still rather old fashioned. The other good place to get patterns from is out of cross stitch magazines, however they are also not cheap, and sometimes you find you do not like any of the patterns that week and have to then wait for the next one to come out.

Because of all the issues I have been having I can clearly see there is a gap in the market for fresh, inexpensive cross stitch designs that you don't have to wait for. This lead to to decide on making an online shop for my own designs that will be young and downloadable straight to your printer at home. 

In this project I will be setting up an online business that creates and sells cross stitch templates. Throughout the project I will be building this business from bottom up, starting with creating the name and logo, creating the products it will sell and then building the online shop. The start of this project will be based around creating branding for the business, this will include a logo, font choices, colour selections and an official name for the company, having made these decisions, I will make sure that the overall look and feel of the business will be coherent and recognizable through business cards, website and the possibility of a magazine advert. The second section of this project which will be ongoing past the deadline, will be creating the cross stitch templates which the company will sell, these templates will all need to be exciting, young and current to compete with the templates already available, ranging from quick simple designs that customers can add together on the from of cards, up to very complex designs that will be a project for the customer. 

The online shop, however, will be the main bulk of this project as I will use Joomla to create it and I aim to have the entire site in working order with the ability to “add to cart”, pay for the products and then make the product downloadable for the customer. Along with the website working I am aiming to make it very attractive making customers want to stop and look around at the other pages and products. This project has a wide target audience ranging from beginners to cross stitch experts who are all looking for something more modern and upbeat to stitch.