“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” ~Franz Kafka
Surface-Pattern Design
Creating My Quiet Blooms Pattern
This is another design I created for Make it in Design’s Winter School 2021. The trend brief was Quiet Shadows. This trend balances strength & endurance with delicacy and elegance.
This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on the link and buy certain items, I will receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) to help keep the lights on in the studio.
I was inspired by my own photos of shadows, silhouettes of natural forms, and the Japanese art of flower arranging, Ikebana, to create this mood board.
I chose a simple flower shape and several different widths of wavy lines as my motifs for this design. My color palette has warm oranges combined with desaturated blues and greens.
I created the pattern in Adobe Illustrator. I placed the wavy lines in the background and the flowers in the foreground, keeping in mind Ikebana’s principles. I added transparency to the flowers to blend them into the background a bit.
I added Quiet Blooms to my Redbubble shop on clothing, art prints, home decor, and phone cases.
Creating My Bohemian Patchwork Pattern
I created my Bohemian Patchwork pattern for the Kinfolk brief in Winter School 2021 by Make it in Design. This trend combines bohemian quirkiness with folk style to create colorful, maximalist designs.
This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you click on the link and buy certain items, I will receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) to help keep the lights on in the studio.
Instead of creating a mood board, I used this art journal spread as the inspiration for my pattern.
I used the color palette provided in the brief. I drew the motifs by hand, scanned them, and traced them in Adobe Illustrator.
I added color to the motifs and arranged them in a repeating pattern.
I uploaded the pattern to my Redbubble shop and added it to clothing, home decor, and lifestyle products.
Creating My Floral Still Life Design
This is the second pattern that I created for Winter School 2021 by Make it in Design. The brief was Country Set, a nostalgic, countryside inspired trend.
I was inspired by antique vases and flowers and created this mood board with vase shapes I liked plus colorful flowers.
I used the color palette that was included with the brief. I hand drew the motifs, scanned them, and traced them in Adobe Illustrator.
I added color to the motifs and started arranging them. At first no layout I tried seemed right, it felt impossible to create a pleasing design and I got very frustrated. I decided to take a break, have some dinner, and do some mindless chores. When I came back to the design the motifs seemed to magically fall into place. It’s like my subconscious was working on the layout while I was doing other things. I rather like the final design.
And here it is on some products in my Redbubble shop.
Creating my River Rocks Design
This is my first year taking Make it in Design’s Winter School 2021. I might regret it, but I signed up for all 3 tracks, Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. I’ll just keep plugging away on all the designs and get done as much as I can.
The first brief in the Beginner track is Contour. This trend is inspired by natural and organic shapes. I found these photos of river rocks to inspire my design.
I chose a color palette of earthy shades of purple, green, yellow, and orange from one of my inspiration photos. I hand drew several stone shapes, scanned them, and then traced them in Illustrator.
I wanted to make the design an abstract representation of the river rocks so I made the shapes large and then added the colors.
I also added the design to my Redbubble shop. It’s available on clothing, home decor, phone cases, plus lots more.