Traditional marketing is considered to be the type of offline marketing. It includes print publications, broadcast, direct mail, telephone and outdoor advertising such as billboards, promotions, look books, magazines. From journalism to radio, this marketing method helps reach the target audience in the long time.

Fashion marketing is not the same as business marketing, due to the characteristics of the fashion industry, the trend is changing rapidly, each season has a new collection with different colors, designs, themes. So doing fashion marketing requires a sensitive sense of catching up with trends and anticipating the new fashion trends. Because the fashion marketing is changing fast and short-lived, the tools for fashion marketing must also be constantly updated.

Today, using social networks to promote brands is considered the most effective distribution channel. Brands can through Facebook – fan-page, Instagram,Twitter, Pinterest , YouTube to get closer to consumers, bringing friendly images due to the simple interaction between customers and brands through comments, messages, inbox. And all information about campaigns and events is also captured and shared quickly and conveniently. No more time constraints as advertised in magazines and newspapers in the traditional way then wait for the publish date.

However, any marketing tool has its strengths and weaknesses. Today, besides the official website, brands also have accounts on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, as we know now consumers can interact with the brand by raising any opinions, thinking or even complaining, using negative words anytime and from anywhere in the world through comments or messages. And so creating and preserving brand image is also more difficult. Negative comments or just an image that causes a lot of controversy can create any wave of indignation or create a marketing strategy.

The most recent example is the participation of brands on the topic #blacklivesmatter, Versace, Celine, Saint Laurent and Gucci, which posted anti-racist messages on their social platforms. Gucci reposted a poem by writter Cleo Wade on Instagram about how to end racism and bigotry. And they received a lot of positive replies.

However, some brands that choose to stay silent, not participating in this campaign #blacklivesmatter, have received countless wraths and negative comments on their Instagram page. Consumers think that they are emotionless and silent synonymous with compromise, so they use a lot of bad words, affecting the brand image in the future.

In my opinion, we can use some traditional marketing methods, or a combination of tradition and contemporary to create an effective marketing strategy. A good fashion marketing campaign will be able to balance both short-term gain and long-term goals.

After researching plastic materials, I realized that it has many advantages and is applied a lot in daily life, a durable material, low cost, can make many types of products. However, the sustainability of plastic materials is its disadvantage, because it is so durable that plastic is difficult to decompose in nature, a normal plastic bag takes 10 to 1000 years to decompose, and a water bottle takes 450 years to decompose completely. With the current number of plastic bags, bottles, and straws, we can see that the future of the earth is taking a heavy responsibility for our use today, and if we use modern technology to decompose that cost is very expensive, using manual methods causes many harmful substances to the health of the living environment. Currently there are many opinions on replacing plastic with another material but my opinion is different:

1. Can’t live without plastic.
2. Do not want to damage the environment.
3. Plastic is durable material, lasting more than 10 years, why do we just use it single time and throw it away?

Yes. The problem is not about plastic, it’s about how we use them effectively.

Stage 1: DISCOVER

5 key findings I discovered during this phase:

1. How to change the way people think about plastic materials? Under the influence of media, radio, magazine, plastic materials from a material with many advantages, it has become scary, dangerous materials and should be excluded in daily life.
2. How can people change the way they use plastic, using plastic more than once and more effectively?
3. Green lifestyle is a new way of life, attracting many people to follow, whether this is just a temporary trend or can last forever.
4. Raising the awareness of environmental protection in a positive and proactive manner.
5. We need to reduce single-use-plastic, reuse it and think about it responsibly.
6. Sorting household waste is a simple and useful thing, but sometimes we still forget this.

I made a survey about plastic recycling to gain information about what do people think about recycling.

The survey has 10 questions as

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/J6ZCK56?fbclid=IwAR2IxlaJ-36V6kqvS-kUtW0lIVhROrSFFCvBtE45MK2HO3BiSclx0vhh-C0

So far I have received 22 responses from those people around me.

Stage 2: DEFINE

I have some ideas for this:
1. Create a campaign to spread the word about plastic recycling: plastic is not just disposable
2. Using social platform, creating a trend of taking photos of DIY products from plastic, attaching hashtags like non-disposable plastic, reusing plastic, and plastic for 10 years.
3. Create decorative items, artwork from plastic to inspire, add ideas for people to recycle plastic.
4. Fundraising from plastic recycling. Create decorative items from plastic, auction and raise money to help wildlife and marine animals.
5. Create an app like a tree planting game, every time we reuse plastic, we will take photos, collect points, plant more trees as a forest in the game.

From the above ideas, I took a survey of people around me, almost is young people from 20 to 38 year-old and received the following suggestions:

After considering, I decided to put the ideas together:

Step 1:
  Making decorative projects from recycled plastic materials collected in my daily life.

At the first time, I wanted to make a rose tree from plastic, but after cutting and painting the petals, I suddenly wanted to change into decoration on the dress, because I studied fashion design, so I wanted an inter-topic, more fashionable and style.

The flowers seemed a bit too big when decorating on the dress so I cut them a bit smaller.

Step 2:
Post photos of the handmade product on social networking like Facebook and Instagram with the hashtag #nondisposableplastic #reusingplastic #nosingleuseplastic #reusereducerecycle #greenlifestyle

Stage 4: DELIVER

After receiving positive comments from people around me, I think I will edit the video and upload it soon for everyone to do it.

CONCLUSION

This is the first time I used the double diamond method to solve the problem of using less plastic materials. Actually, I was a bit confused and found it difficult to use this method. However, after applying, receiving suggestions from teachers, friends around me, I got used to this method.

This approach helps me to expand the problem, try out many ideas to solve the situation and come up with the most appropriate solution. As I researched the use of plastic materials, I used the survey to understand people around to divide their waste at home, they were very supportive of this but there were still many ideas. Some opinions as it is not really convenient for them, most people realize the problem, they support but not seriously apply to everyday life.

So I want to try making products made from recycled plastic, creating beautiful little decorations to help people get more ideas with the number of plastic bottles they have at home, if everyone of us is interested in using recycled plastic materials, it is possible to take full advantage of the durability of plastic materials, turn plastic bottles from garbage into a useful item and increase their usage time. Instead of using plastic bags and plastic bottles one single time and disposing of them, we can recycle to create more value for them.

After making the final product, uploading it to Instagram and receiving positive feedback for this idea, I was really happy. As a designer, I hope to help change the perspective of people in using single plastic. After this product, I will edit the video and post it on youtube as soon as possible. If I can get more good feedback from these small ideas, I think in the future I can build a campaign to promote the reuse of plastic, to protect the environment. Or maybe I will just stop at this project and see this is a very good experience for my design process in the future. I learned how to expand the problem, get the opinions of people, change the plan to suit everyone’s needs. In general, I think the role of a designer is to create products that are suitable for the market you want to target, attracting the attention of customers, and that product will be successful. However, there is no guarantee that all our ideas will succeed, when applied in practice and in specific markets, we will need to adjust and change to capture customer tastes. This is also a very rewarding experience. So I think if you have any ideas, don’t be afraid to implement it.

Stay positive!

My video clip for instruction DIY decoration ❤

DISCOVER

According the report in 2017, 1 million plastic bottles are sold every minute, which is equivalent to 20,000 bottles per second.

In addition to water bottles, plastic materials also appear in our daily life such as bags, phone covers, cards, boxes, headphone, shoes, bicycles, plant pots, tables, chairs … to help make our life better and more convenient.

Benefits of plastic products:
. Plastics help building designs more sustainability, long-lasting in use.
. Plastic packaging helps protect and preserve goods while reducing weight in shipping, saving fuel and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
.From computers and mobile phones to televisions and microwaves, durable, lightweight and affordable plastic has helped revolutionize the electronic devices we use every day.

However, after using all the utensils for the main purpose, we often throw those plastic products into the waste sorting and think we have accomplished our task. Wait a second, there may be another long story behind them. According to an estimate, we use about 1.6 million barrels of oil just to produce plastic bottled water every year. Plastic waste is one of many things that takes too long to decompose. Typically, plastic items take up to 1,000 years to decompose in landfills. But plastic bags we use in daily life take 10-20 years to decompose, while plastic bottles take 450 years. There are many ideas that we should reduce the frequency of using plastic and gradually move to life without plastic. Is that really possible?

Plastic products bring many practical benefits to life today, making daily life more convenient. However, after using them, they are very difficult to decompose, how do we reuse them or in other way, extend the using time. For example, plastic bags take 10-20 years to decompose so can we use a plastic bag for 10 years? Why do we only use a plastic bag a few times, about a week and we throw it in the trash. Are we wasting our own profits from plastic and then we have to spend a lot of money, energy and time on handling them effectively?

I made a survey about plastic recycling to gain information about what do people think about recycling.

The survey has 10 questions as

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/J6ZCK56?fbclid=IwAR2IxlaJ-36V6kqvS-kUtW0lIVhROrSFFCvBtE45MK2HO3BiSclx0vhh-C0

So far I have received 22 responses from those people around me.

Question 1

Question 2

With 90% people absolutely agree to recycle plastics. Still someone does not think like that = 5%

Question 3

Plastics are made from raw materials like natural gas, oil or plants, which are refined into ethane and propane. I think we use plastic products every day but sometimes still don’t know their origin.

Question 4

40% regularly use plastic products and rarely use takes 9%. We can see the plastic products are really a part of our life today, 0% said that they never use plastic. So how can we live without plastic products?

Question 5

40% of people say that they often recycle plastic, compared to 40% of people who regularly use this number is quite positive thing.

Question 6

Everything is made up of many different materials such as plastic, cardboard, paper, aluminum, fabric, … perhaps under the influence and warnings of the media, people who think of recycling will think immediately to plastic recycling.

Question 7

Question 8

I realized most people want to recycle, but they have so many personal reasons make they postpone it. How to help them feel this is a very important thing and fun activity, simple things to do. I really thought about this issue.

Question 9

Question 10

After that, I made an empathy mapping to analyze the data.

After completing the survey with 22 responses, I feel very happy because everyone has enthusiastically made this survey for me. People also ask for their friends to help me get it done faster. I also received a lot of comments on this survey as: simple, easy to do, should add more questions, some people are confused in questions 7 and 8, and many people are interested in plastic recycling . We have shared more ideas about recycling, how to help the environment change better. This was a very good experience for me.

DEFINE

Through the survey I found that everyone is interested in using plastic and plastic recycling. However, there are many reasons given as they want to recycle waste but not enough time, too much work, not convenient, want to do but difficult to practice. So that our recycling waste is based on people’s self-awareness, if they really care about the environment, if they know that these little things they do every day can contribute to a big change in the future. I think they will try to do it no matter how hard or busy.

So our problem today is how to make people more interested in plastic recycling and do it voluntarily and responsibly?

I have some ideas for this:
. Create a campaign to spread the word about plastic recycling: plastic is not just disposable
. Using social platform, creating a trend of taking photos of DIY products from plastic, attaching hashtags like non-disposable plastic, reusing plastic, and plastic for 10 years.
. Create decorative items, artwork from plastic to inspire, add ideas for people to recycle plastic.
. Fundraising from plastic recycling. Create decorative items from plastic, auction and raise money to help wildlife and marine animals.
. Create an app like a tree planting game, every time we reuse plastic, we will take photos, collect points, plant more trees as a forest in the game.

I am a designer, so I think I will start with creating some artwork to inspire people around me. After that, it is possible to create a trend on social networks, take pictures and attach hashtags about plastic recycling. If I could create a trend, be enthusiastically involved by everyone, I could create a fund from plastic recycling products. However, I will start with the idea of creating art products from plastic around my house.

According the title ” The future of design when you come to a fork in the road, take it” 

on the website: https://jnd.org/the_future_of_design_when_you_come_to_a_fork_in_the_road_take_it/. 

After reading, I have some opinions as well.

1. Which fork in the road would you take – craft or future? Why?

If I had to choose between craft and design, I thought it would be difficult for me to choose which side to go. I love craft so much and I believe this is the basic foundation for current and future visual art. Without the past – craft, we would not have what we called design today. But at the rate of social development, craft needs to be spread to consumers through many different distribution channels. And we need technology to support traditional crafts to do that. And to optimize designs today, I would choose a combination of craft and future.

2. What is the intent of design thinking?

The design originated from crafts so it has been for a long time. So there are many people who think that “design” is merely making a specific object (such as a product, a script, an architecture …) transform them into those things more beautiful, more neat or have more emotions. By the late 2000s the word “Design Thinking” had actually appeared in many industries and became more popular.
First of all, design thinking is a way of thinking, for example as logical thinking, creative thinking, strategic thinking, etc., design thinking is an expression of a philosophy that is used in daily life. Besides that, design thinking is an iterative process to re-frame the problems but bias toward action.
The purpose of design thinking is to reach customers, help them analyze problems, empathize with their situation, and then offer solutions in a more creative and appropriate way.

3. What are the key principles and methods used in this field of practice?

Design thinking helps us expand the problem, explore it in more depth by systematic methods to discover the true needs of people and society. By studying the problem, identify the impact of the problem on people, then propose all possible solutions and test to consider the feasibility of the solution. Thereby people will have practical experiences, considering the suitability of that solution. As we can see, design thinking supports people to apply many different methods to solve the issues, encouraging us to change the perspective to bring the best method for life and demand.

Today many design thinking processes are developed and expanded. In my opinion, I will focus on the five-phase model proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, which is also known as d.school because it is clear and easy to understand. 

The five phases of Design Thinking, according to d.school, are as follows:

• Empathise – with your users
• Define – your users’ needs, their problem, and your insights
• Ideate – by challenging assumptions and creating ideas for innovative solutions
• Prototype – to start creating solutions
• Test – solutions

(https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-is-design-thinking-and-why-is-it-so-popular)

4. How do you foresee design thinking becoming part of your own design practice?

I am currently studying fashion design. In the fashion industry, there are many processes to produce a clothing product. I need to take measurements on the model, design drawings of a garment suit the customer’s demand, from drawing on paper to flat drawing on a computer, giving measurements and structure about the garment. The tailors will use my technical drawings, follow that to make the final product. If I just use the traditional way, I will be a tailor, not a designer. In my opinion, the designer is required to be master all the processes of making a garment, but in order for this model to be mass produced in large quantities, up to thousands of products, I must know how to use technology to convey the original idea on the sketch to technical drawings and factory to help me complete this series production.

To meet the needs of today’s fashion market, I need to research style, trendy colors, customer preferences from which to bring suitable clothing products. Right from the start I need to use design thinking, then give a sample product to consider the reaction of customers, thereby drawing the conclusion that this product should be adjusted accordingly about the price , quality, color. I need design thinking to help me complete these steps. So I believe design thinking will become an integral part of my future design path.

This is my poster about preserving the earth, I want to convey the message that let us join hands to protect a green and peaceful earth. I chose images of trees, globes, flocks of birds and blue sky. Apply the first lesson of contrast, alignment, repetition, proximity to design this poster.

And to further enhance the effect, as well as create a 3D effect for the poster, I cut out some colored paper and pasted it on some parts of the globe to create an appeal.

I hope that you enjoy the idea and share with me how you feel. Thanks !