The time has finally come for me to tell you about my final DFI project - Design in practice. It's self directed - so we write our own briefs, and mine came to be called The Garden of your Heart. I've started to think about final module before we started to work on it, so I had basic concept already - I was pretty much set on it, because I liked it so much. 
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While trying to decide on the concept, I kept on remembering great talk we had from Fabulous - they are independent retailers, and Jo Stroud - owner and founder of Fabulous talked a lot about importance of designing on commercial scale. She shown us Cherish collection from Dower & Hall - which features a glass locket where you can put tiny charms symbolising different things, and talked about significance of Pandora's bracelets. I also knew that I had do design some rings, so I thought that they could be based on the same theme as my main piece. I've looked at what's already on the market in terms of personalising products and engagement. 

I've been trying to come up with similar, but different at the same time concept to Cherish Collection. I didn't have that much of a luck. By coincidence I've started to draw characters from Game of Thrones, and I used Victorian Flower Language to tell a bit more about them, through subtle means. And that's when I realised - why not use the same concept for the project? Different floral charms, with different significance behind them? Given to someone as a gift for birthday,or Valentines? What huge marketing opportunities it gave me! I could spin entire story based on that! And thus The Garden of your heart was born (although working title was Language of the flowers).  

​I made target market mood board, to get better understanding of why and who could buy my collection...


And finally started to do some designs...

 Out of all designs I made (which I felt were quite obvious) I liked garden gate inspired pendant the best, so I went with that idea...




I've looked at the method of attaching my pieces - I though of magnet or some sort of pin at the start. What I ultimately thought was the best option was slotting in place mechanism. At the back of each charm there will be a piece of wire ending up with a heart shape. Heart shape will slot into corresponding, pierced-out heart pattern on the pendant, slide through it and go out of the back. Then the thinner piece of wire joining heart and charm will slide down, with heart keeping charm from falling out. 

I've also started to develop some engagement ring ideas:



But haven't really decided on final 3 designs that I want to design in CAD. 

Below is my working mood board - condensed work sheet with major influences and drawings.