An educational project about fashion communication and styling turned to an exhibition including nine multisensorial installations. Working with young & creative students is a challenge, so here is a story about how to plan, monitor and finalize a project blending arts and technology in the same magic box.

Self in Nothingness – Costina Iordache & Galina Logushkova

When masters in Fashion Styling and Fashion Communication at Polimoda started on January 2014, one of the biggest objectives was to offer students a chance to work on a complete project of communication for fashion, starting from the ideation of a concept (an image created by students of styling) to its communication campaign (a strategic plan by students of communication) and then to a presentation in form of public exhibition. [I]solution was the name given for this final project, built around the concept of the evolution of the personal identity as the unique solution to the issues of life.

This article reports the work made during the final stage of the project, where a team of young talents in fashion designed and developed nine multi-sensorial installations in conjunction with Polimoda director Linda Loppa, me and Tassos Sofroniou as coordinators, Silvia Tolaro as tutor, and Marina Baumgartner and Ruggero Mengoni as supporting teachers. In addition we were supported by the internal team of Polimoda: Eva Karhanova as event coordinator and Simone Fiorucci and Tessa Pisani as digital team.

Project management for creative people

I worked for many installations in the last years, but the most of them were developed for museums and companies where teams were composed of developers and interaction designers. [i]Solution was one of the first projects where I had to work with people more focused on creativity than technology, so my job was located in a extended area, going from project management to technical supervision and then creative coordination.

I had the chance to collaborate with an intentional team of people, from students to teachers. Everyone with different cultures and skills. This could be the worst scenario at all, so you need to plan exactly what to do and be sure that also all the teams have a clear picture of what is going to happen. Thus I wrote a document including an executive summary of the project, all the people involved and their roles, and finally a timeline of activities to accomplish, which consisted of the following steps:

  1. project start
  2. development of the concept
  3. definition of the communication strategy and installation
  4. review meeting
  5. installations setup
  6. final presentation

This list of activities was described in details in only one page, with readable fonts and proper formatting, so each member can print and/or read this part of the document in the most efficient way.

You don’t have to waste time with too many documents with creative people. They won’t read them, so you need to summarise and use correct visual elements as much as you can. It’s a communication design issue.

Installations anti-mayhem guidelines

There are some things to remember when you are going to make an installation for an exhibition which is mostly based on the use of technology. These are some tips coming from my experience which I adopted during this project more than ever.

1. Create a prototype as fast as you can

You have something in your mind: yeah it’s cool, but the result will be different. You need to build a prototype as soon as possible. In our case I invited students to show a small prototype of the installation during the reviewing meetings, using composed images, physical paper boxes, props. That’s to say: anything useful to explain in a visual way the idea of the installation. This kind of strategy was successful especially during the last reviews, because analysing the spaces, the team was able to apply improvements and changes to the installation.

A prototype in form of paper box of installation Injected Intelligence

2. Make a lot of intermediate meetings

We were working with different teams with different ideas. Creating a calendar of regular meetings (one per week) allowed us to have things under control on a weekly basis.

3. Work with someone who really knows the place

Under the guidance of Eva we decided the best locations for each installation in Villa Favard, which is an historical building in Florence, that’s to say: the worst place where you can make an installation, because you have many limits related to structure, which cannot be changed in any way.

isolution-mount2

4. Before the exhibition you need two different stages: setup and optimisation

These are two different phases of the work and this comes from my experience working in websites. A first stage is to build the final product in a conventional way, so to be ready and validate your work. But you need a further stage for improvements. So your mind can refresh, see the product and judge in a correct and unbiased way. This is super important because it can make the difference. In our case we changed the day of the setup and decided to do this one day before. In this way we had more time to see if the installation were really effective and work another day to fix technical issues and improve the message in each installation.

isolution-mount

5. The day of the exhibition you have to plan time for two important tasks

Many times we forget two critical activities, that’s to say:

  1. starting stage: when you turn on devices (projectors, speakers, etc.), adjust lighting, wear models, etc;
  2. disassembling stage: when you have to turno off all the devices in the correct way, don’t lose anything, pack all your stuff in the correct. For the most of times this is one of the most dangerous stage, because the team of work is going to relax and you risk to break something, lose something or whatever. This is the case in which you can have some problems with the company renting devices, garments, and so on. Do you want to have a good and curated relationship with your providers. Focus yourself in this final stage. Don’t break anything.

6. Be part of the exhibit, explain & love your audience

At the entrance of each installation the whole team of students were present to explain the installation before attendances can live the experience. This was another important point of success, because people were definitely glad of having a direct connection with the author of the work who is there for you, with a sexy smile explaining.

Students Kalina and Maria Luisa in front of their installation Utopia while welcoming attendees

Installations

The works and their authors are the following ones and can be seen in the video below:

  • The Warrior – Ana Lucia Ordonez Baquero, Akshata Hiranandani & Tarini Sud
  • Hope – Ebony Nengimote Tochi Nwuke & Palak Kabra
  • Isolated Reality – Viera Okanikova & Astha Sekhawat
  • Self in Nothingness – Costina Iordache & Galina Logushkova
  • The Sleep Paralysis – Enji Yue Wang & Maartje Van Hooij
  • Utopia – Kalina Teller & Maria Luisa Guerra
  • Injected Intelligence – Yun He & Olga Kurochkina
  • Fragments of the Imaginari – Xiaoyang Sunny Liu & Danielle Shannon
  • Li Dia – Lidia Kasprzak & Akshita Garud

Digital Communication

Polimoda social media team (Simone and Tessa) worked together with teacher Marina Baumgartner in order to create contents with the aim to promote the event and share exclusive stories (images, videos) to share on all the channels of Polimoda, from Tumblr, to Flickr and then Twitter and Facebook. These actions were performed in 3 different stages: before the event (to promote), during the event (to engage) and then after (to offer documentation about what happened).

Conclusions

[I]Solution was a perfect environment to prove that project management for creative people is a real thing, because it consisted of a team work of diverse people dealing with some of the most interesting but critical elements for an exhibition: art (concept), fashion (style) and technology (function).

Any process coming from a creative mind should be enhanced and monitored at the same time. There is no reason to underestimate the need of organization when you are working in a vast sea of ideas. There is a special moment when you have to say to stop ideating and start making things.

And finally you need a plan, where you steal solutions from the strongest techniques of project management and adapt them with people who are not used to follow them. And that is itself a creative task to achieve too.