A life-long love of fashion led me to the Condé Nast College of Fashion & Design in London on January 2019.
I made an appointment to tour the college. Everyone was chipper and friendly. I was even invited to join a class by Lisa Mann (Director of Postgraduate, Professional and Online Programmes, Condé Nast College of Fashion & Design)herself. During this visit, I learned about what projects the students were doing, where they came from and what they envisioned these studies would lead to. Everyone was so friendly, fresh and dynamic.
Most of all, I went home excited to learn that CNC was working on online course offerings sometime in the future, but these were early days still.
Then Covid hit and it seemed CNC’s online program went into overdrive. I started receiving emails offering various online courses. I had difficulty deciding which but finally settled on the summer Digital Content Creation course.
I learned so much these 8 weeks. Inadvertently some of my projects turned into epic forays into branding and strategy. I found all the challenges interesting and different and took to the tasks earnestly. Now, what could I do for the final Master Project? This took some thought.
I chose to create a ‘digital story’ style feature that could be in Sophie’s words “something even more imaginative” . I decided to built a brand new MARI HLMR website to house all the digital content I had made during the course. I didn’t want to leave everything I worked on filed away in my computer. The goal is to keep myself going by being able to see and share my work. Now, I only had barely a week left to complete it.
With my love for magazines, I decide that the portfolio of my work should be integrated into an online magazine, MARI HLMR. This might be more interesting than the usual digital folio or CV website.
Today, I submit for your review, the MARI HLMR website. This website is new. It forms a series of storyboards, mood boards and content. Most of the past submissions or articles have been revised, edited or tweaked.
Other works are original; namely “A Message For The Class: My Imagination video, the MARI HLMR Instagram and MARI HLMR Pinterest pages, the Fashion Manifesto Pinterest page, the Sophie Cullen portion is a sample quote, the sample banners for CNC, Vogue Club and the Vogue Club Podcast link to actual sites. What’s more wherein, past submission were mostly flat PDF files, through this website, I am able to add live links to the articles.
While I learned a lot about digital content creation. I learned even more about myself. At heart I am a branding and strategy person and I see everything from that viewpoint first.
This was my first course at the Condé Nast College of Fashion & Design. I certainly hope, it won’t be my last.
I found it to be a robust course. The lectures and readings were plentiful and always worthwhile. The speakers were the best in the business. Everyone was open and approachable. And while there was more work than I had originally expected.
Truth be told, I loved all of it.
Mari
This is seriously impressive. It’s incredibly detailed and very digitally lead – it’s engaging, new and I really like it. Well done!
Sophie Cullen, Condé Nast College of Fashion & Design Course Leader
