“Rebelle” is a project which was born from the Experimental Type class at ArtCenter College of Design. “Rebelle” can be understood as exploring and practicing typography through fashion and clothing. From a more macro standpoint in the fashion industry, “Rebelle” is a graphic designer’s response to the wide-spread notion of breaking the boundary between high fashion and streetwear. It is essentially luxury streetwear created by a generation Y designer, revealing the will to be part of other existing luxury streetwear brand explorers.
The project contains clothing designs, fashion photography, a promotional video, stationery, the brand catalogue with a line-sheet, a brand manual, a packaging design set, and collateral.
The core design philosophy of Rebelle is using typography as the primary approach to deliver direct and indirect communication. One major design approach is to use words, sentences, and paragraphs along with powerful imagery to directly present Rebelle’s audience with seasonal themes. The logo is based on SangBleu Empire Black. Using the thick-and-thin characteristic from SangBleu Empire to bring the qualities of Rebelle, as a Millennial’s rebellious fashion brand. The modification on few letters on the logotype is mimicking the silhouettes of urban cities as well. For all other typography, a selection of two other type collections from Swiss Typefaces is used: NewParis from the NewParis collection, and Suisse Int’l, Suisse Int’l Condensed and Suisse Works from the Suisse collection. The combination of the serif and san-serif intents to reveal a sense of duality, being classic and contemporary.
Using imagery is the secondary approach for Rebelle to communicate with its audience. For Rebelle’s first season (“Rebelle Collection” and “Ré•volution” Collection), it is applying paintings and visual elements from the Romanticism period to imply that rebellions have occurred throughout human history. Each period has its own type of rebellion.
By placing the word “Re•volution” up-side down shows a parallel with many Renaissance paintings used, indicating information could only be seen by God.
Rebelle also inspires, presenting its own attitude and raising specific social topics through indirect communication like using subtexts conveyed by paralanguage. This can be largely found in Rebelle’s “Ré•volution” campaign posters, such as “This Is Not a Rebellion” and “This Is Not an Execution”.
