I decided that since some time has passed now since I finished my patterns, I would like to go back over them with fresh eyes and try and see any problems with them. I remember in Consultancy, I would create the pattern board, show it to Helen, and she would make comments to improve it, and this process continued which I think was a massive help for me understand exactly what I had to do to improve my work and meet criteria.
So with scale and colour in mind, I went back over my pattern boards, I know some things I already wanted to change, such as changing the placement on each pattern board to a different one, so I was able to show more diversity in my collection. I also considered this with my blenders, I have blenders using dots for every little collection but only showing that on the one board with a range of colourways allows room on the other collection boards for a different style of simple blender, the dormouse for example using squiggles from the mushrooms, the hedgehog using small sycamore leaves etc.
So as shown here, I decided I was happy with the hero design and the half drop style hedgehog secondary, although I think I need to reposition it, and with this one I need to put the top corner placement of the hedgehog on this board instead of the header placement, as the header placement will be displayed on the squirrel board instead.
I was happy with two of the middle secondaries, I have been using these throughout the mockups I have started creating too, the bottom one however does seem a step down, but not quite a blender, I might discuss leaving this in but adding another secondary design as I think they all represent leaves, instead of the berries and other things.
I think the blenders, the top one is very unique within the collection but I think there is too much pink in the backgrounds here so I think reversing the pink and the green in the top blender will help that. I think the last blender may need to be a little bit of a smaller scale to it, so I think this will be useful to make it look more like a blender too.
The next one is the red squirrel collection, I said again here I was happy with the hero design but the placement design needed to be changed to the header placement design and actually change it to a yellow and blue design, to differ it more from the hedgehog patterns, I was happy with the secondaries as they differ in scale and colour, I was just unsure whether it matter that they were all tossed, maybe the middle and bottom one could have been the same pattern just coloured different and slightly scaled up, so maybe I could look into a different secondary design for this one here, as I do not like the blue and yellow one anyway.
The blenders I said I was happy with the dots, I have colourways for this one that covers the whole collection too. The top two I said could use a smaller scale I think, and the third one down I think maybe needs less colours, or to switch to a blender I created using the nuts designs.
The dormouse collection was the first I created, and the mushrooms were made first out of all of the patterns. The placement design is right here but I discussed earlier that I need to alter the size of the dots a little. I am happy with the hero again but the secondary designs do all contain mushrooms, although I do like the variety of background colours. I do have a nice berry design that I could use instead I think, so maybe use that as a pink background, and then the bottom secondary just with a green background instead.
My notes for the blenders were to try a slightly smaller scale for the three of them as I think it would be more effective.
The placement design is the corner one here and I think this is quite effective and interesting, I am happy with the hero design, but the secondaries I think the top one could be altered to a different background colour and a slightly smaller scale to show a few more of the hares within it. I think I am happy with the other two and one of the blenders, however I think a smaller scale on the mushroom will show it as a more textured appearance. The middle one was originally green leaves, and I just think it looked a little too much like a cannabis leaf at a quick glance, so I changed the colour of this, but I just do not think it goes very well with the collection as a whole. I thought about a tossed design but then it could just look more like the secondary, so maybe trying blue leaves on a white background or something on a smaller scale.
So the next step will be to make these changes, and I think then I would be in a good place to put them together and see how they all look as a collection, and maybe ask around for some opinions on further improvements.
Tahlia Paige 