Category: Additional Submission: Consultancy

Overall I have enjoyed refining my work in this module, being given the time and chance to completely change parts of it was beneficial to my development and skills. With the short time frame at Christmas, I felt like my work was rushed and could have used more tutor input to improve it, which was made difficult due to illness. With the feedback I was given, I worked to improve every element of my work to a professional level.

My patterns were definitely a strong point in this module, I think I really pushed myself and managed to create a strong set of patterns, finally learning how to do a half drop and learning better to co-ordinate my colours and balance the colours throughout the collection. I also learnt more about scale throughout and put this to better use when thinking of my product mock ups.  My mock ups were also a good point, it can be very difficult to find the right images online, so I made my own paper products and fabric ones too so I could get the high quality images and be able to arrange and place them as much as I want, which definitely worked to my advantage, especially in a time where no one will see them as a real prototype.

I always think my markmaking can be more experimental, I try to expand my techniques every time but I struggle sometimes to carry on when I feel like I have created something right. I struggled with letting go of my old designs after the feedback, the motifs took hours to make each one and I was convinced I could make them work. Looking now at my designs before and after feedback, they have been so developed into something I am happy with, but I had to adapt my thinking and style to let that happen, which was hard to do.

My time management is usually something I am proud of, with my illness I did find it harder to keep on time of things, and then coronavirus caused issues in terms of living arrangements and suitable space to work in my house, but due to being stuck in the house, I found I was able to stick to my personal timetable better and got a lot done each day. I do wish I had set more time aside for stitching, as it is a process that I enjoy but did not feel like it was getting me anywhere towards an outcome, so I did not want to dedicate a lot of time to it. Had I had the opportunity, I would have liked to use the digital stitch machines perhaps over my patterns to see what I could have added to the finish of them for the mini fabric collection. Overall, I am happy with my outcomes and my digital skills in particular being built this module, and look forward to building my final module collection too. K�X0tnj�

My moodboards I suppose have been something I have been avoiding, the dread of looking back at them knowing they influence a totally different set of patterns that I originally made. I opened them up a few days ago and they have just been sat in my Photoshop workspace while I do other work around them, but today was finally the day to get them sorted!

These are my old moodboards, the feedback on them was that the layout should be more stylised and with a more uniform border. I didn’t really understand the feedback, as I wanted to avoid the plain nine image moodboards I did in previous years, but I do think after looking back at them they are too busy and disjointed, with a lot of different shapes going on. I think by trying to make them too dynamic they have just become too busy and crowded.

I began with the theme board, after adapting my patterns I realised that colourful leaves became a bigger part of it than before so I wanted to reflect this, and still show the three different creatures that I wanted to focus the collection on.

My colour palette was one big change I made since the last feedback, which was now more of a green, pink and yellow which I think has worked much better than the old one. This reflects the idea of the texture used in the soil and what the insects can leave behind as they move through it, as well as the texture found in the actual insects and the leaves.

My competitors have stayed the same, I think these four companies I looked into do reflect exactly what I want my own patterns to portray and target the same kind of age range that I am aiming for myself, which will be covered next. I wish I had had the chance to go into the actual stores of these competitors to look around properly, it would have given me a much better idea at how they place sets and designs together too to show the co-ordination of them, something I have seen especially in Paperchase before.

The customer profile actually changed once before, from aiming the designs towards children, to more of the age range their young mothers would be. The board contains the same photos basically just in this new simpler layout which I think works better.

The occasion board again is more simple but clearly showing the idea of birthdays that I am trying to portray. While probably the most common occasion that requires presents and wrapping paper other than Christmas, I see this as an advantage in the way that it is a wide market, whereas something more specialised like Valentines, or Easter, would probably have the same amount of designs for the short period but not as many would be buying them.

As part of the professional practice module, contests are important to show development into a professional surface pattern designer. Even though I was not taking the module yet this year, I had started looking at some contests before and decided to enter a few now that I have a lot more spare time than I did before.

• 

• 

I entered the dragonfly and ladybird design as pillows in the Ohh Deer Pillow Fight contest, I think they looked good and it gave me automatic product mock ups as well which was nice to see. I also tried the Spoonflower ‘Pastel Cafe’ contest, inspired by the 50s French and Italian cafe idea.

I have a few more upcoming too which I am pleased about as it gives me some time away from my main module to look into my personal interests in surface pattern design, which is relaxing, especially in a time where we cannot leave the house at the moment.

Producing my own product mock ups has been great to see all my patterns together and how they look together, I think this has definitely helped me to decide what I want to put together for a final collection that Mat wanted, which is a giftbag, a tag, a card, a roll of paper and a flat sheet of paper.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

This photo shows my idea for the final collection, with some other photos showing some details, as without the physical products printed due to the circumstances, it may be hard to tell some details. The giftbag is shown here with a side view as well, showing the green background hero design featuring the ladybirds on the front and back of the bag, and the pink squiggle blender as the gusset of bag. I also decided on a complimentary pink ribbon handle, with a ladybird tag attached to it, with dark pink tissue paper inside the bag. The next couple of photos show the card in detail, with the bold design on the front and the inside of the envelope in a small scale printed blender, with the rest of the envelope in a light yellow colour. There is also a white square on the front of the envelope to put the address or name in neatly. The inside of the card has a simple “Happy Birthday!” greeting, with a few decorative leaves in the corners. The large full collection image shows the flat sheet design in the soft white blender, and the roll design is shown here as double sided, so the both sides have a roll each with the corner lifted to show the design on the other side as well.

I also thought about my mini fabric collection, the dragonfly hero I thought would be perfect for this. I made a small makeup pouch, a few re-useable make up pads and a travel wrap to show this in mock ups.

• 

• 

These were done quite quickly but I think they will be effective to show the idea of the designs on the products here.

• 

• 

• 

So the small make up pouch here is done in the dragonfly hero design, with the three little make up pads each showing a different colourway of the lily pad design, and finally the travel wrap with the yellow secondary lily pad pattern on the outside, and the white blender on the inside. I am not sure whether this all work together as well as they could, so I might look into this again and maybe put a more simple blender on something to make it a little less busy as a collective.

My photos were taken for the purpose of creating my own mock ups, which I have learnt to do through online tutorials and through workshops in Uni with Charlie, Sian or Matt. This is another thing that has a few ways of doing the task, much like pattern designing. I think it is useful to learn a couple of ways, as it helps with the individual project as which way could work better. I find that I used a different technique for a card than I do with fabric for example and its important to see the difference in the results of this.

I also worked more on some card designs, I think I improved greatly from my very first card design that I handed in last time, but I definitely wanted to refine these further and create more to go with each family as well.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I think I was quite successful with these designs, again just little tweaks and changes to help them improve a little more. I particularly like the first couple I did with the leaf designs as well as the beetle repeat, I could see this working as a design because it is eye-catching as a pattern.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I had a go with putting the cards into context here with an envelope inside to go with it, usually using one of the blenders from the same family I was designing the card for. I think I prefer these to a bold design on the outside of the card, it works a lot better, although I could look into the outside of the card just being the lightest colour on the card.

• 

• 

• 

• 

These were the designs I was excited about, as I got to see the designs in the same family working together in context, I think all of these work well together nicely and I was careful to show off the different scales too. I think the next step would be deciding on the actual five piece collection, whether that is just the one family or I could get some designs from the other families to mix in due to the similar colour palette throughout the three, just got to be careful that the five designs do all go together in a way that is got too busy or clashing.

• 

The bag is tricky because there is a lot to think about here, the front and back, the gussets, the ribbon type and colour, and the tag, and even what else could be inside the bag, I think I would try this again with pink tissue paper inside it too as it would cover a little of the untidy top and also compliment the colour scheme nicely.

Following a short tutorial yesterday, we identified some areas for improvement with some of the patterns I created in the collections, and also some further feedback on the logo.

The points on the Ladybird designs were that there was only one yellow pattern in the collection, which I did notice and needs another one to go with it. There was also a point about one of the blenders with just ladybirds not being needed, just putting the ladybird in flight into the secondary that had leaves in a very similar colour and shape.

I think this does look a lot better with a little more yellow in the collection, I think they all work with the hero and as independent designs, I would like to put them on a mock up next together and make sure they do work.

With the dragonfly family, we noted that the lily repeat blender could have some different colourways. The busy blender could also be less obvious as the block repeat was not as attractive as it could be with a brick or half drop repeat.

• 

So I included a different colourway of the lily blender in this one on a much larger scale as I thought they are pretty and could be seen a lot better closer, the lilies and the pads blender is now a half drop so I think this is much more interesting and appealing to look at.

Finally, the beetle collection secondaries are all the same scale, all white backgrounds, and quite similar looking in terms of how much white is showing in each one. They are all different in the way that the top one is tossed, the second is a brick kind of repeat and the leaves half drop down from the columns next to them, but they do look quite similar to the eye initially. The scale needs to be looked at a little too with less of the background showing maybe.

Adding yellow to the background of the middle secondary has helped a lot here and the change in scale makes it look very different, I also changed the single leaf blender to white from pink because I think it suits the colour much better now.

I had a go at some mock-ups earlier in the week, I found them very difficult to try and do, the images are very hard to find in the right position and quality, and this is a big factor in the end quality of the pieces.

• 

This was probably the best one that I managed but the quality was just not there, so I decided to try creating my own to use, I wanted to have a few rolls next to each other so I can see how the patterns work together, as well as have a good shot of the bag and a card design to work on.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

These photos were taken in a little photoshoot in the daylight, which got them a good mix of shadows and highlights which I think will be useful, as well as the quality of the images being higher than what I am used to from google image searches.

My logo is a massive part of my identity as a designer, I want it to reflect my interests and my strengths, but also be recognisable and versatile whether I am using it on my pattern designs or selling it on small handmade products.

This was the design I created initially, using my pattern work in the antlers and a rose at the end to finish the design and to add the nature elements to my designs. The feedback on this however was that it was quite masculine and stark compared to the pretty, light designs I do for patterns. I thought I wanted to do with the natural brown background, however again this appears to darken the design when actually through my patterns I have shown that my motifs on white do work quite well.

So with the feedback, I decided to try and feminise the antlers, by adding more flowers around it I think these do look a lot prettier with a big of colour injected into the design too. I also tried a far simpler leaf approach, which I like but I think the antlers does show more of me, it shows my patternwork and my motifs, combinging the two styles of artwork that I love to do.

I did an Instagram poll to my followers for an opinion on this, there was a 70% preference to the antler design, including fellow designers. I think this is important as it would be the audience that would see my logo. I think I will try to print this out to see how it looks on different sizes too, as this is important on a small scale business card, which would determine whether the design needed to be simplified.