Hi, I’m Amelia, a student from the college nearby studying Graphic Design. I’ve been doing my placement with Solesmith since October last year, and I’ll be here until the Summer.
I chose to design some skate socks as this is something I have wanted to do for a long time, and also because I have been looking for some roller skating socks to skate in when I’m on the roller rink.
I love to roller skate on Sundays with my Dad, who taught me to roller skate when I was younger at the age of around 7-8. My Dad can do lots of cool tricks, like going backwards and jumps, and he’s now teaching me to do the same tricks, but they take me a while to pick up and I have to go quite slow because they’re hard! But at the end, it’s wholesome fun and it gives me and my Dad time to hang out.
The Design Process...
The design process behind the skate socks started with looking at various colours, fonts and magazines to see what was trending and also a lot of market research to understand the features and designs of current skate socks. I also made some mood boards, where a lot of my inspiration was imagery from the 80’s, Urban skating and lots of pinks, blues and greens.
Then, I looked at how we would make the socks and what materials and processes we would use. First, I tried making the socks using the embroidery machines, and then again using the DTF machine. From this experimentation, we decided that it would be best to use the DTF printer to make my socks, as I could add more colour to the design, whereas on the embroidery machines I could only use 2-3 colours.
I want my socks to not only be worn by people who love roller skating, but also by people who like to have fun.
Where I see Graphic Design taking me...
In the future, I want to own my business as a freelance graphic designer. I also want to set up a YouTube Channel to support my business, as people like me don’t really get a chance to show what we can do with a hidden disability. With some encouragement, I can achieve amazing things and get opportunities like this, so that’s why I want to own my own business.
In the long term after college, I want to go on to be a graphic design apprentice. I believe this will help me to understand how to work with clients and then I can go on to work on my own with a business that I have made.
What I love about graphic design is that I had a taste in digital art when I was doing my Art and Design Level 2 course, and I wanted to learn more about it, so I went onto the Graphic Design course that I’m doing now so I could learn more about graphic design and how to use it in the real world.
I hope you are going to love our new skate socks as much as I had fun making them!
You can shop Amelia's Skate Socks HERE!