Week 3 going into 4, mission: make everything.

Week 3 was all about making, testing and evaluating. With the initial Batik design for Singapore that I printed on a piece of fabric, I tested it first as the bindle idea. However, the bindle was too loose and was unorganised and messy. It was just too simple. I wanted something sturdier and rigid. For this project, I wanted to stay away from the idea of a 'care-package' as the traditional box. But for testing and trying sake, I decided to make a box for the kit to see how it fares within my 3 planned kits. However, before I did that, I had to redesign my Batik design. To be honest, the first batik I designed was messy and did not have enough research to back it up. Hence, this week, I decided to redesign something that was more accurate to the Singapore identity. For that, I had to research and find out what represents Singapore the best.

The Singapore girl, Batik and the Singaporean Pride. Singapore airlines (SIA), prestigious and recognised by almost anyone around the world for the first class airlines service, the Singapore airport terminals but non of that matters at the moment. The uniform is the most significant. Singapore airlines' ladies come dressed in a sarong kebaya that is elegantly printed with the traditional Batik design. This batik pattern has become the staple of SIA. For a foreigner this design reminds them of Singapore airlines, but for a Singaporean, this design is significant of their travels in/out of Singapore. It reminds them of home. And having a project themed around delivering the feeling of home to my consumer/audience, Batik was the perfect pattern for me to incorporate into my design for my Singaporean kit. This Batik was the inspiration for my first design, however, it was created with minimal research hence the design was wrong or felt very simple. For the redesign, because I wanted something more accurate, I did some research and found out that the National flower of Singapore is the Orchid. And the orchid is recognised by any Singaporean, hence I redesigned Batik true, a design with a more accurate Batik design, with more dots, more details something more true to the Batik nature and used the Orchid as the main flower in the pattern. Giving each flower its own shade, I made the Batik more colourful to represent the multi-cultural diversity of Singapore's society.

I wanted the designs to be designed by/for people and their countries to feel like home. But, it's nearly impossible to design something different for each person. To tackle this issue, I came up with the solution to have the base design on the research and feedback I received from the people of that country and created various colour palettes for the design that can later be chosen by people from that said design's country. For the Singapore's Batik true, I made 5 colour palette variations and out of the 5, red was the most common and favoured colour. Hence, I made red the chosen design palette for the Batik True, Singapore kit. This design was later printed and stuck on the sample box kit. Now, time to sample the bag?