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Day: April 14, 2020

Expanding the Ladybird Pattern Family

After a feedback tutorial with Helen where I felt good about my patterns, the critique was that if I had a present wrapped in the dragonfly wrap, the beetle roll and the inside the ladybird gift bag, they would be too busy and clashing, because essentially the three designs are all hero designs. While I want to include all these, it would be more sensible to start with one and build the secondary and blender patterns off of that, for the three different heroes, creating three different families of patterns from the three main designs. I think this would be better in terms of submitting to Mat at Design Group if I still get the chance to do this, but for submitting for my module, it would be nice to show that I have improved my patterns and I can build an interesting family of them, which is also practice for the final module too.

Collection Shown in Tutorial

So the ladybird pattern at the top here shows the front of the bag, I previously tried to do a happy birthday placement and I just did not like it, but I liked the ladybird pattern that I did on the gusset of the bag, so why waste my best bit just on the gusset? Not all bags for birthdays have to have a greeting on the front, the pattern works better I think because it is eye catching, and would have a card and envelope to go with it nicely as well as wrapping paper. The pink pattern next to it would then be the gusset, with the ladybird as the tag, although this needs to be trimmed to not have the legs too.

So I started with the ladybird pattern, the dragonfly and beetle will be next to create the families from it, I think the colour palette change was definitely smart, it is simpler but it is easier for me to understand it and balance it out better. White is definitely a key element to it too, I think I have such a bad idea of it as a background but it has been helpful in some cases where a lot of colour has been used in the pattern.

Secondary Designs

As shown here I did experiment a lot when I was creating the secondaries, the colours of the backgrounds especially because it shows totally different designs, especially in the stripes, the darker colours just make it far too dense, whereas the white keeps it quite airy and flowing. The green leafy pattern with a few backgrounds is interesting, I think it works well for the colours used on the backgrounds too and goes well with the hero, I attempted a stripe because it is not really something I have managed to do before but instead of just rectangle blocks I wanted to make the most of the motifs to create this stripe idea.

Blender Designs

Blender creation for me is quite difficult because I like doing busy hero patterns and linear patterns, it is the simple ones that I tend to struggle with. I do like most of these, I think they do all go well again with the hero and using the motifs in a different way can make them look totally different. The leaf linear is interesting because while bold, it is simple and the repeat is less obvious than the rest because of the couple of range of leaves with it. I imagine these would look quite attractive as wraps and rolls along with the ladybird bag, so I am pleased with how this worked out.

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Being the Best You: Self Improvement Modelling

This was my final workshop on CareerCake that I required to complete my Cardiff Met Award, although I know it will not be my last video on there as I have found the resources to be very useful for my career planning and skills.

This video covered the core components of being Unstoppable and how to find your flow, it also talks about how being in flow can bring out the best in you.

Firstly what does being unstoppable mean to me and what would be possible if I was unstoppable?

In terms of my work right now, I feel like unstoppable would be getting the right designs right the first time, having ideas constantly to flow off of this and continuing to develop without hitting bumps or moments where I lose the motivation. I always write myself to-do lists in the mindset that I would be working almost constantly throughout the day, setting aside hour by hour timetables of what I would like to get done. I feel like this is helpful because I know what I need to do, but I do not feel too down heartened when I do not achieve it all, because sometimes I may set aside an hour for a pattern, then complete more and more and spend more time, but I am still accomplishing things. I think if I was unstoppable then all the things that I would want to get done would be done how I planned them, no matter what I write down in what order, it always differs because I prefer certain things over others, or it depends on what equipment I still have set up and easy to access.

She also discussed about how what if questions can stop us from making a change, I feel like that relates a lot in my work too, when it gets to the end point and there are a lot of little points in the feedback that would improve my work drastically, I am often too scared to start over and do something better which is something I have definitely worked on now. I would think ‘What if it looks worse than the first design?’ ‘What if they do not look any better after all that work?’, and instead of drawing some new motifs to make better, colourful patterns, I would just make the current patterns more busy, or change them to a slightly different colour on photoshop. It was only this year on my module that I decided to really go for it for the improvements, and letting go of the detailed designs I had done that were just not working and opting for something more simple was definitely something I enjoyed doing in the end because it allowed me to have more fun with the deigns and the process of it.

She spoke about being in the flow and how flow writing where you literally just continously write about something and every little thought that pops into your head is written down until something good comes out. I would consider this something I would be good at, I am going to try and do this on paper and I have done this in the past with essays, then editing them down or changing words to suit the style of writing. I find I can get in the flow with writing as well as other activities in my work, and when she mentioned the environment, it does have a big impact on being able to be in the flow.

Currently, I am on a table in my dining room at my parent’s house, it is a very open house so I can hear the tv in the living room metres away and all the conversations. I think my best time of day is the afternoon where everyone else is outside and busy in the sunlight, I can just be alone on the table and get things done over the course of a couple of hours. In terms of flowing over days or longer, I am finding this hard here because it is not a massive table, ideally in my own house I have different workstations set up for my sewing machine, my drawing and painting, my laptop, and when I have to constantly move things and squish things in here I find it to be something that I put off then. So I could spend a few days on the laptop and not do anything else, which could be good for when I am creating patterns but could be a problem if I need to also be getting other things done.

I think I take my flow skills for granted, this was a question that was posed. I can get a lot done when I get into this flow, especially with writing or drawing. I think this could be transferred also to my work ethic when I have a job, I do work hard when I have a job but thinking back there could be ways that I could streamline some activities and get more of an uninterrupted flow going.

Overall this workshop was helpful in the idea of the flow and how this is a recognisable skill, I thought this was interesting and makes a step towards being unstoppable. If I can figure out how best to get into my flow, I think I could work even more effectively to get more and more done each day and stop procrastinating certain things that I try to avoid.