WCAT HOODIE: JIJO’S FIRST DESIGN STORY
From the time Jijo taught me to see the world differently, I began to dream and infected him with that dream which he dares to see. I advocate this story to inspire all you Moms out there to understand that if you can dream and believe in it then your child will dream even bigger!
Jijo dreams to be an illustrator in Disney and Pixar someday! His favourite pastime is to watch Disney Films and research on the making of the film. And he announced this to us while the family was spending time together learning about each other’s goals in life. That set the ball rolling.
In the year 2020, he was the designer of the graphics on the official #LotsofSocks 2020 for World Down Syndrome Day and he remains the same for the year 2021 too. And then this -
Jijo was asked to design the hoodies for Wouldn’t Change a Thing in the UK at their request, as his first commissioned work!
Also known as #WCAT, the charity run by a team of inspiring moms intends to help in creating a world where negative perceptions of Down Syndrome are a thing of the past. This memorable video by them, back in 2018, was really touching.
The ways they go about changing outdated perceptions of Down Syndrome are as follows:
Attitude changing media projects
Positive stories for new parents
Learning disability inclusion talks for organisations
Blogs and articles for print and online media
As his mother, I couldn’t be more proud than him creating such an impact with his work, thanks to a wonderful organisation like this one!
From the moment the assignment began I have seen him working towards it. Prompt came out modules to help Jijo out to discipline him for the assignment. We revamped the timetable structure discussing with him, gave him a deadline and made him feel like a professional designer on a project, much like the ones he always dreamt of being. And then, the storytelling began!
We simplified the design process based on how he understood things and here is a brief overview of how we split this phases of the project based on the tight timeline of a month with weekly client reviews.
Round 1
Theme exploration (Week 1 & 2)
Jijo was asked to research various kinds of sweatshirt graphics and create a library of his favourite ones. He then identified two types. With this, he was asked to make quick rough explorations of design elements that can make the sweatshirt look good. He was also asked to not clean up anything too much and spend more time in developing new ideas with different graphic languages. This would help in choosing a theme or a design direction that would be developed as we move to the next round of explorations. Be advised that this set of explorations have nothing to do with the final colour or details, but are just to give the client clues of the potentially good directions they can opt for, which he would refine and show variations of in the next round of explorations.
I was awed to see how my young designer began with researching the various hoodies from different companies and showed me the ones he likes. We spoke about design and colours – sessions with his big brother was a learning. Dinner table conversations were always geared towards the process. He was made to feel in the zone always to never stop conceptualising and he loved being in there, pushing his limits while learning new tools in Adobe Photoshop from his brother.
He presented 15 concepts that had a wide variety of styles and we saw how WCAT intently heard and were so mesmerised by his ideas and thought process! To our surprise, he nailed it with his impromptu explanations of his variety of concepts that were highly appreciated by WCAT. We thought he would be asked to refine one or two but they liked 6 of the 15 he had presented. That meant he had a week to refine 6 concepts before presenting to them again.
Round 2
Theme development (Week 3)
Having a clear hierarchy of important concepts as he had 6 of them chosen, he began cleaning them up and refining them carefully. This was accompanied by a few additional lessons in Photoshop that help him generate more ideas with his selected concepts. He had no time to rely on memory and practice these tools separately so he had to do what a lot of us do in our first jobs - OJT (On the Job Training). We experimented with simple notes that helped as a ready reckoner to fulfill his intentions while focusing his brain on the idea and not on getting used to the new tools. It was a beautiful journey that helped him grasp his digital painting skills to a new level!
There were some specific hoodie colours available from the vendor on which Jijo had to work on and use colours accordingly. I saw him choose colours, get frustrated when the effect was not the way he wanted and repeat the entire process all over again, without ever giving up! I saw him happy after the completion of a design and I saw him euphoric after he experimented with some, showing the true signs of a designer.
He completed exploring all the 6 in a week and gave another mind-blowing presentation for the 17 concepts this time, stemming from the 6 directions they had chosen! At this point, they loved the concepts and the colours so much that they took a week to decide on which would be the one that would be produced! Maybe it was a much needed break for the young designer but he couldn’t wait to know which would go ahead. They finally got back to us with a surprise. Their team decided on producing two of his work than one!
THE BUTTERFLY
“I saw the #WCAT logo. It has a baby butterfly. I make a mother butterfly to take the baby in her wings. Butterflies are beautiful and cute and colourful. The baby butterfly loves to fly with her mother.”
BURSTING HAPPINESS
“I love graphics and I see the movie Dr. Strange. There I see a mirror breaking and breaking. I got this idea in mind and use this in WCAT Hoodie. I love Marvel universe colours and I use all colours there in digital photoshop to show bursting happiness!”
Round 3
Production detailing (Week 5)
At this point, which needed his brother to set up the graphic sizes for each of the hoodie sizes, Jijo was more on the design manager role overlooking whether his brother is doing a good job or not with proportions! After all, like he says, he is the “director” of Art of My Optimus and I think he played the role very well in this stage. In between all this, we had to document all the stages well for all of you to see how the magic unfolded in images and videos. I guess with someone as driven as Jijo in the house, we all never fail to push ourselves looking at him and realise our true potential.
As his mom, I was in-charge of two important things in the process
Document everything that he does.
Share stories non-stop and listen to his reasoning behind the amazing designs.
Jijo is an individual with Down Syndrome and it has definitely affected him. But without it he would never be the person he is and as a family we would not have been the way we are. There were moments of despair in learning and brilliant euphoric moments when we saw him create such unique designs while applying his new skills. I was in love with each of them till he wanted to change them. We ran into arguments about the choice of colours and I saw Jijo confidently speaking about his choice. That, after all, was the intent behind me questioning his choices to know how he defends them.
I cannot thank WCAT enough for this commissioned work as it opened my eyes for many things that I had not known about Jijo:
His dedication.
His listening skills.
His desire to experiment fearlessly.
His nature of exploring ideas.
His love for a design student regime.
All these and more and I feel that I have finally overcome my fear of what he will do when he grows up!
In Jijo’s words –
“I am an artist, illustrator, drummer and photographer”
Need I say more?
- Moushumi Das (Jijo’s mother)
Get a piece of his energy for yourself and discover your abilities beyond barriers.