Author: tahliadavid

Three years have completely flown by. ‘Exposure’ was my final module, to showcase myself as a professional designer and my work as cohesive pattern collections suitable for the market I’ve chosen. Research was a huge part of my work, not just at the start, but all the way through when needed. I used a number of sources for research, including first hand interviews, product research online, and techniques research to further my own making, even trying my own bird seed ‘tags’ to support my customers gardens. I think research is a strength of mine, I enjoy it and know how to use it to further my work and myself, I spent a lot of time on Skillshare and Careercake teaching myself how to do things and improve my employability too.

I am happy with the final collection, I made some key decisions along the way that I think improved it. Firstly I developed my style of drawing on Procreate, by practicing my drawing style and colour palettes by completing pattern contests each week with Spoonflower. My first decision was to stick to my green, pink, yellow scheme, or add in a blue that means each mini-collection would have its unique combination of three of the green, pink, yellow and blue colour scheme. I decided to implement this to set each mini-collection apart from each other a little but as a whole then you can see the colours throughout, this was a good decision but I found it harder to work with the colour combinations that I personally did not like as much as the others, meaning there were slightly less patterns because I did not feel as inspired.

I know my patterns are busy, I have tried layering before which gives it even more of a busy look, so I decided to avoid this and just fill my spaces with motifs of plenty of different sizes. As my designs are for quite small scale products, filling up those little fabric pieces is important and makes it stand out, this is what I wanted to go for. I justify this decision by looking at the final results, this is what I wanted to create and I think they suit the product market well. I also love tossed designs personally, and a lot of my patterns come from this, but I did branch out into linear designs, and stripes, half dropped designs, more variety than just the tossed designs. My heroes are tossed, but I do have the animals facing up the one way, I did not want the animals to be thrown in upside down so the heroes do have a right way to them, which suits something like a notebook, or a fabric bag, as it shows more of the animals in this style and I think shows off their detail.

I wish I had the resources to learn more about Illustrator, I watched a lot of Skillshare videos about creating patterns on there but it would run very slowly on my laptop, so my patterns were completed in Photoshop, which has now become second nature to me. A goal for the future will be to use Illustrator more, I made use of it in University and before I had Procreate to draw digitally, I would Live Trace my physical drawings into digital. I do recognize my achievement in pattern making throughout this year, I wish I had managed to get a grasp on it sooner but I think from Consultancy to now I have developed a lot, and the Spoonflower weekly contests help me a lot, I found myself critically looking at those patterns and exploring colour palettes and colour balance in patterns more, even creating coordinating designs to go along with the design I would create, which has expanded my online portfolio.

I think I handle re-doing things and improving things better now, I looked at my pattern boards critically and changed them, sometimes a small colour tweak, sometimes a whole new pattern, and learning to edit my collection down was important, because I created a large number of patterns and I knew it was important to pick the best ones that show my versatility and skills.

I started creating placement designs for each animal, they were simple middle placements that worked well, and I was going to put one of these on each pattern board, but I went back to this and also created top and bottom corner and header designs, so put one of each type of design on my pattern boards, and in my lookbook treated the other three animals as variations, so instead of four placements looking similar, one in each mini collection, I instead have sixteen placements, four different placement styles, showing one of each animal.

I hit a problem when it came to creating my lookbook, illustrator struggled and Acrobat, for editing PDFs, crashes when I try to open. I view PDFs using the internet, but I cannot edit them, so whenever I need to add or remove a page, I have to create it all over again using the Automate function on Photoshop. So I thought I could create the lookbook on Photoshop, but I did want the pages to show as a double page spread, I used A4 pages portrait for front and back covers, and A3 landscape for the double spreads, which I think was a good solution as I know how to use Photoshop and I think the end result is to a professional standard.

A lot of things I have discovered can be trial and error, patterns can be created with a number of colours, scales and motifs, it does not have to be perfect the first time. I think overall I have developed into a productive designer, I cannot wait to learn more about patterns and graphic design on my own in the future, but through experience I am refining my style independently, which I think is the ultimate goal for myself.

I knew vaguely what embossing was when I started this year, but actually I have found a lot of fun in creating samples of it. This looked a lot like foiling on flat images and I ordered some bright gold powder to use for this to add these extra bits to my designs. Like the foiling, it was something I wanted to experiment with on my designs once they were complete and I put this into my self-set brief.

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I printed out some of my designs onto paper to try out the embossing, the first sample was created on a lined piece of paper just to see the powder, although this did not turn out as bold as I wanted, so after that I used the harder end of the embossing pen and went for a few layers of it. I also found that once I had initially tapped the powder off, covering it again in another layer could sometimes work to add more bulk to the line of the design.

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I thought creatively about my designs and how the embossing could best be used on them. Starting simple with adding it to some dots in the red squirrel hero and some squiggles in the dormouse hero, then trying out some outlines on the hare placement and adding to the dormouse placement with more leaves. I think my favourite one has to be the red squirrel placement, firstly using it to add the notes word at the bottom is nice because it helps me to visualise the design on a notebook, and then by using the gold to highlight parts of the squirrel I think worked well to achieve quite an interesting effect. I think this would also be lovely in some flower designs or something like that, as it would add a perfect bit of detail to it beyond what I can do with a pencil or a paintbrush.

I think my lettering does need work, the pressure of getting it right in one go is hard but I think I could work smart with this by using a lightbox to trace some more fancy lettering which I think could make it look better and more modern too in keeping with trendy fonts, I would love to try this out actually tomorrow and do an updated post.

Here I tried out a red squirrel with the embossing placement design on a mockup of a notebook, I think the idea works but I think the lettering that I just freehanded quickly just does not have the effect that I wanted. I need a font thats more modern and loopy in line with trends.

I was going to wait until tomorrow to try out the embossing lettering since its quite late now, but I still have a full cup of tea and time to do it, so I just went ahead and found a font I liked on Pinterest, then using it as my reference, sketched out a design in fineliner on a piece of paper, then embossing over this so I got the embossing pen fairly close to the design.

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The notes one turned out good but I could still see some of the pen, so on the to-do one I really tried to cover more of it and I think they have both turned out much better than my freehand lettering I tried, I wanted to now try this out on mockups to see what this looked like, as I did not have any more print outs of my work so I thought a way around this was to do it digitally.

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It is quite difficult to photograph embossing, I have been using little video clips on my Instagram to show the effects properly, but I think this was quite a successful attempt and showing it with the rest of the notebooks and coordinating patterns shows that the design would work, and I think it would be flexible on other designs as well. I really enjoyed embossing and I look forward to using it more in the future as well whether its on my products or for fun.

Something on my self-set brief I still wanted to do now I had some finished designs, was foiling. In uni, we use screens to pull glue through to the shape that we want, which can then be used to create foiling samples, and also flocking which produces a lovely velvety finish. I thought foiling would look good on my work in a gold because of the yellow throughout most of the mini-collections. I thought about the use of the foiling for the front of the notebook, to add some interest to it and make it look like a more high end product.

I researched foiling and how to do it yourself, like what an independent designer would do with their own designs. A lot of people said they used a laminator, which heats up a high temperature to heat up and melt the plastic around the paper, which would bond the foil to the glued part of the design and act as though it had just been under the heat press. I did not have a laminator unfortunately, so I continued looking for other methods and whether it could be done simply using heat from an iron to bond it together.

I decided to just go for it, using a PVA glue, and a more industrial glue too for the tests. If I had more time I would have liked to have got in contact with someone in the print room and see whether I could order the type of glue for a further experiment, although I had hopes with the glues I had.

I painted some very simple designs, lines, stipples, something that would be simple to replicate and do again for further experiments if I needed to.

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I used thin paper thinking it might work better so the foiling did not have to really bond to something more complex than fabrics. I ironed them both for around 20 minutes each and no difference at all was made unfortunately. This is something I am missing with Covid-19, the resources in Uni were really useful, I also really miss the photographic darkroom, I love cyanotypes and photograms, and I really wanted to play with these combined with digital work. Like using the cyanotypes to create motifs, then digitialising them into a pattern, or creating a digital pattern, then printing it onto acetate and making it into a cyanotype or photogram which can be repeated and continued.

I then thought about some sample packs I ordered from some websites to look into presspacks and paper qualities, I ordered a foiling sample pack when I was looking at my designs for consultancy.

This was a foiling sample by printed.com, which I think comes out a lot brighter and more professional than homemade anyway, I think this could be an option for when I actually make the products, and see how these look with some sampling. I was thinking of the words ‘notes’ or ‘to-do’ across the cover of a notebook for example, and I think overall the experimentation was fun and taught me about what is and isnt possible to do at home too.

I decided to get on and create the lookbook, and thought about some key decisions throughout which I will demonstrate below.

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So I worked on the first few pages of my lookbook which I think was vital to get my branding into it, which is why I put my logo and my brand colours and pattern on the front cover. The green and pink foliage design is one that I use for headers on my professional websites, and on my business cards and other promotional material too. I also wanted to start adding some of my theme into it, so the dormouse header I think works well here, still keeping with the branding colours. I chose a blender design behind the collection statement, as it is a subtle way to introduce the collection as it begins.

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The above is an example of a page each from the dormouse, hare and red squirrel collection, I used some coloured boxes on the pages to separate the collections from each other a little using one of their key colours. This helps to identify the secondary and blenders with their hero page I think. I considered whether to lay it out with the heros all together, then all the secondaries, then blenders, but I think the way I decided, showing each animal collection one after each other works well and I think it better shows the relationship between the heroes and the coordinating patterns, but still allows me to show some colourways that work across the whole collection, such as the dots blenders.

I like the use of the boxes, I think the plain white may have been too plain, so I think they do add something extra to the page without crowding it too much, and frames the patterns better too.

Overall, I am pleased with how my lookbook is going, once completed I plan to send it out to a few of my textiles friends, and some friends and family outside of the industry to get some feedback and opinions about it which I think is important for readability and professionalism, as well as meeting the marking criteria.

I went back over the briefs and what I could find as well when I was looking for some guidance on the lookbook, I was worried initially because of my Illustrator and Adobe Acrobat problems, however I decided this could be solved by completing my lookbook on Photoshop and automating a PDF document. I decided to use A4 pages for the covers front and back, and then an A3 sheet on landscape to create my double page spreads for the actual content of the book.

I knew I wanted my lookbook to show me as a developed designer, and also my conscious thinking towards the conservation and awareness aspect of my collection. I looked at some checklists and put together my own checklist of what I wanted to put into my lookbook.

– Introduction

– Index

– About Me

– Collection Statement

-My Unique Selling Point

– Each Collection

– Mockups

– Linesheets

– Contact Details

So with this in mind, I looked at my patterns and the colourways etc, and started thinking about how many things I could get onto each page. With my research in mind, I saw how the layouts can make a good difference, and while I would love to just have whole page images, I do not think this is possible with the amount of patterns I would be showing.

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I made a plan of pages and what would be on each one in accordance to my new pattern boards I had created, I thought this would help me keep on track with colourways and everything too.

I also drew out some layouts for the type of pages I wanted to try, for example the main placement design has to be bigger, then the variations of the different animals for that style of placement will be a little smaller to show off the largest one as the main one in the collection.

I thought next I just needed to get into it and adapt it as I am going, some things look good in my head or on paper and I think until you actually do it, it can clash in weird ways and make things too busy or jarring.

I started hearing about lookbooks in second year, when first year students in textiles were doing them, I knew vaguely what it was but never really thought about making my own. It seems like quite a daunting task, a large book showcasing all my patterns and mockups, but also something that could be interesting to keep and put on my website to show others how my graduate collection came together.

I decided I wanted my lookbook to show me as a designer, and sell the unique aspect of my collection, being about the declining UK species. I decided to explore a couple of lookbooks in terms of layouts too to see what kind of thing I need to do.

Unfortunately the lookbooks that I have found online will not embed here, I tried surface pattern lookbooks as I thought fashion ones were a little different. The first one I came across was quite an attractive collection of print designs for fashion I believe it was, the layout I would say was very simple, but effective, usually one or two images to a double page, and mostly full of mockups that really showed the patterns, although for my lookbook, I do not think this will work. The pattern collection is large and including some variations on the placements and colourways on the secondary and blenders to show, there is a large number of patterns in the collection to fit into a book, and I would not want this to be so large that it would be boring to flick through. I want to come up with layouts that are interesting enough with two, three, even four designs to a page. I think the flat patterns will work well showing the collections grouped together, and also the mockups grouped together afterwards, as some could contain patterns from a mix of collections.

I found some examples of different types of lookbooks, from photography and products, to fashion in both men and women styles. Above shows quite a quirky fashion example, including words. I really like the idea of the faded coloured boxes, these could be used great for adding text and showing a separation between the four mini collections too, which I think is important. If you were to randomly flick to a page in it, you could notice the background colour, and then easily see the hero page also has that colour on the background.

I think ideally I would like to explore some typography tutorials too as I think this could be helpful to me, surface pattern design is not just pretty textiles, it is a graphic design and sometimes this will include more graphic elements, such as typography, layouts and lookbooks. Skillshare offers a range of tutorials so I will probably have a look on there, my last one I watched told me about contrasting fonts, using a bold, graphic design firstly for headings and titles, then a smaller, plainer font to contrast this which I think is really important to give it that professional look.

Using faded designs and backgrounds I think is great for adding an effective bit of branding and style into it, this is something I have seen on the more quirky lookbooks that are not just plain images and maybe a caption.

I love this lookbook for the dark contrast with the white, I think this is really important to have contrast, and I think I will try and take this away, even if it is using dark text against white or faded backgrounds. I also like how they were able to get a range of images on each page, so this being an A4 lookbook, the pages will actually be quite big and I think this will be good for viewing the patterns and not forcing them to be as big as they could be, making them fit nicer with the pages.

So I think my next step is to start planning out the lookbook on paper, knowing exactly what I want to get on each page in what order especially, then maybe sketch out some layouts that make sense and I think just get into doing it and trying things out to see what they look like.

After my critical look at the pattern boards I created from my designs, I had a chance to evaluate them and realised what I wanted to change, whether it was as simple as a colourway or scale, but also noticing too many similarities sometimes and changing it up with something a little different.

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So the left one is the old board, and the right is the newer version. These actually look very similar because I was quite happy with the designs that I was producing and putting together here, but I did notice a few things. The placement design was correct for this board, but I changed the size of the dots behind the dormouse which is more consistent now with the other animals in this placement style, I think this does look better for the front of a notebook or cushion like I wanted.

The secondaries I thought had a good background colour spread, but they were all showing mushrooms. I changed one of these to a berry design, and then changed the colourway of the bottom pattern to avoid too much pink. I thin the design at the bottom works well for both pink and green so I will put both colourways into my lookbook. Finally I looked closely at scale for the blenders and I think it has made more of a difference, I think it changes it from a busy pattern to more of a texture sometimes, which makes it look much more like a blender.

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Again older board on the left, and newer on the right. I decided to put a different type of placement design on each board, so the hare represents the bottom corner placement. The middle placement from the first board will be shown as a variation of the middle placement, on the dormouse placement page in my lookbook. I looked at scale on my secondaries, showing more of the hares and brought the scale of the ferns up a little. With the blenders, I have brought the mushroom one down in scale, and I just did not like the leaf repeat, so I created a new one, that was more sparse and spread out.

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The old design on the left has a number of designs on it, I think my hedgehog collection was the biggest and had a lot of different designs that I did not use and edited down too. The right shows the updated board, using the top corner placement and the green hero. I swapped the bottom secondary on the old board to a smaller scale and made it a blender instead, which I think works because of its scale and the two colours. I added a berry design as the secondaries were populated by leaves, a similar problem to the Dormouse having all the secondaries as mushrooms. I changed the colourway of the top blender to avoid a majority pink background collection with the blenders. I also adjusted the scales on the linear leaves and the new sycamore blender from the secondary column previously.

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The old board on the left here shows the middle placement which will now be shown with the dormouse placement as that is the board the placement style is represented on, for this one I switched to the header design, which I think is quite dynamic for the squirrel as they symmetrically jump away from each other with their nuts. This allowed me to show a little more of the heroes here. I liked my top two secondaries, the middle one has a lot of variation on colourways and alternatives too. I did not like the bottom secondary design, I just did not love it and noticed all three of the secondary were tossed. So I decided to swap this with this new linear design with the yellow foliage. I adjusted the scales on the top two blenders here and replaced the third one as I just did not like it, I think there were too many colours in it for the blender, so I swapped it with this simple nuts repeat which works well with the theme.

Overall I think these are far better designs now and work well as collections, I am excited to get started on the lookbook and put these together in a more professional context.