Vlog

my vlog is right below these words

https://vimeo.com/122076557

Week 3

This week was spent mostly contacting potential manufacturers and finalizing designs.

Designs

We have run into some unexpected obstacles as we were going about designing our shirts on Adobe Illustrator. We have gotten most of our designs down on paper, you can view them on Mohammed's blog (aseattire.blogspot.com). However it is much harder than I expected transferring them into Adobe Illustrator so that we have a professional design. I have spent most of my time watching videos teaching me how to use illustrator, specifically with clothing design. There is definitely a steep learning curve but everything is slowly becoming much easier for me to use and maneuver. We have found a friend who also used this program to design clothes and is therefore very skilled with this program and are going to begin meeting with him so that he can help me out with whatever I need. Even though this has been much harder than expected I am glad that by the end of this I will be much more skilled with using this program. Here are some of the preliminary designs that have come about on Adobe Illustrator. We will be editing these and perhaps creating new ones and then choosing one of them to materialize into actual t shirts. These are obviously all based on traditional Chinese patterns.

Manufacturing

From my previous weeks blog post you may already know that I have found many potential suppliers mostly in China or Pakistan. This week was spent contacting them and letting them know about what requirements we have and what exactly we want done and seeing if they were capable of it. This helped me narrow it down to just a few suppliers based on price and what they were able to do. For example we are hoping to be able to have some sleeve tags but not every supplier was able to do that for us so that helped us narrow it down. I will be able to narrow it down even further once I receive exact quotations from the suppliers after sending them our finalized design. 

Website

We are getting close to being able to take pre orders for our shirt designs. After a design is finalized by the end of this week we will be able to take pre orders on our website aseattire.com. I have also created a big cartel site for our clothes because then big cartel is able to process your payments safely. Our website will link to the big cartel site soon.

Revised logo

The logo has been revised and likely will be a few more times.

Ase, Meaning and Reasoning behind the name

ASE (AH-shay)

Yoruba for the life force that flows through our bodies; a greeting, and a feeling of belonging and embracement of diversity.

A website to check out if you are interested in learning more is http://www.aseire.com/meaning.php

Check out our website aseattire.com

Early Logo Design

Mohammed sketched out some early designs for the logo and we picked one of them and I just finished creating it in Adobe Illustrator. I've only used Adobe Illustrator a few times so this isn't gonna be my best work and I will be updating it and making improvements.
Some videos that helped me out were.

Week 2

I spent this week doing whatever we needed to get our clothing company started. Which included

• Downloading Adobe Illustrator from a questionable source (free is free)
• Getting in contact with a few manufacturers overseas
• Sketching logos and designs
• Buying our domain (aseattire.com)
• Found someone to make our website and help me out with Adobe Illustrator
• Learned the basics about starting a clothing company by reading about a clothing company's business plan (http://www.bplans.com/clothing_retail_business_plan/company_summary_fc.php)

Adobe Illustrator

Although Mohammed will be handling more of the creative part of the company such as designs and the logo, I'll be finalizing them on the computer so that they look professional and presentable to a manufacturer. I started looking around youtube for different videos about Adobe Illustrator. Particularly the ones that talked about creating logos and clothing designs. I found a few short videos teaching about how to learn the basic tools needed to create logos and designs. Obviously as we progress through the project I will become much better with this program and will be able to produce higher quality work. 

One of the videos I found very helpful was the one above. It helped explain the basic things you could do to create a logo that looked as if it was made by a professional. This way we could create our own logo and dodge the prices that expensive logo designers charge. I also think that doing everything by ourself will help us to be independent and not depend on others to come through for us. But I do think it is important to network and know people who can help you out when you need it. 

Manufacturing

I found that there are many different manufacturers that I can get in touch with and each has their own benefits. I have gotten in touch with a few that I think are a good fit for us but I would like to keep my options open until we absolutely need to make a commitment which will likely be in the coming weeks.

Designs

Mohammed is primarily in charge of the creative side of the business because my artistic and creative ability is limited to stick figures. However, I will pass along some other news and information related to our designs. We are looking to make new and interesting designs based on many different cultures of the world. Here are some of the early designs that Mohammed has come up with if you have not already seen them on his blog.

Domain

This week I had also purchased our domain for a very good price thanks to a friend. Now that the website aseattire.com is in our sole possession for the next 364 days we will be able to set up our online store on the website. We have also thought about putting up an area on the website for news such as new designs coming and other things of that nature.

Finances

I will be keeping track of the finances and managing the finances of the business, I have read a few business plans and articles on doing this so that I will be careful with our money and not lose it all because that would slow things down immensely. I'm going to be using programs such as Excel to keep track of money, figure out margins and other business stuff like that. I'm also going to read some more books and articles on this subject because I want to learn as much as I can.

Pre Project Blog (Goals and Motivations)

Motivations

For my genius project I decided to work with Mohammed to pursue the idea of creating a t-shirt brand. We thought that this would be a good idea because we both have a big interest in creating our own shirts and getting our visions out there. I’ve actually been thinking about doing something like this since 7^th grade so I’m excited to finally pursue it. I know that it will not be easy but that is one of the reasons why I want to do it. I want to be challenged and still do something that peaks my interest and in the end I’m going to learn about a lot of different things. 

Things we'll learn

At the end of this genius project we’ll have to overcome many different obstacles, some that we can anticipate and some that we can’t. But with each obstacle we will learn something different. For example, we’ll have to learn about finding a manufacturing and how to transfer our ideas perfectly to them; we might also have to learn how to use computer software to create high quality computer images of my designs. All of these bumps in the road will teach us lessons about how to approach obstacles later on in our lives after school.

Timeline 

We have laid out a plan with steps and timeline so that we can see where are going and what we have to do next. In the initial weeks we want to have established contact with a manufacturer and also have a logo made. After that we’d like to have a design (or a few) finalized on the computer and ready to be sent to the manufacturer. While we are finalizing designs we will find someone who can help us out and create a website for us where the goods can be sold. After we receive the shirts in the mail from the manufacturer we’ll begin selling them both in person and online. After we get off the ground with a few designs, we’ll begin to create better quality goods and improve each aspect of the business.

Goals

We hope to sell out of the quantity that we have ordered and are determined to do that in any way possible. We also want to have received the shirts before the end of the genius project so that we have something tangible to show as result of all our hard work and perseverance.