Development...

I had a look at The Designers Guild website and some Cath Kidston bedding to see the kind of floral designs that are happening. There were lots of lovely painterly and large floral motifs! Also a few half drop repeat designs too. This has encouraged me to produce some more colorful floral pieces and helped me look at the layout of the pattern design, as I kept producing designs that were a little out of place and not very accurate!

Possible Motifs...

Going through my old work and selecting pieces has been quite tricky! So decided to do some more observational work of florals so I have a wider range of images that I could choose from, also there were several pieces I would have liked to have used though they did not work well for bedding designs.

Above are a few paintings, drawings that I want to use for my bedding designs. I like the idea of repeating these multiple times and creating a detailed and ornate theme, which would answer the Le Marais themeboard.

Holly Lawton

Recently I spoke to Holly Lawton, a surface pattern designer who creates some colourful and beautiful designs. I asked Holly a few questions about what inspires her works and what interests her.

How would you best describe the style of your work?

A combination of detailed linear work and strong colour with a crisp finish.

What interests you and influences your work?

I find inspiration in an array of things and I am a great believer in the interest of the everyday. One of my strong influences has been urban architecture, which appeals to my love of linear detail and strong form. I then find myself being drawn towards the organic, flowing forms of flora. The thing is to be open minded, to keep your eyes peeled and respond to what excites you at the time, leads you to create original work and has enough mileage to produce a strong collection.

What is your favorite aspect of surface pattern designing?

The tranformative power of colour. I am constantly surprised and excited by the way colour combinations and ratios can completely change the look of a design. It's an extremely powerful tool and I always enjoy the process of applying colour to my designs.

Which artists/designers works do you admire?

Lucienne Day - such an important figure in the history of British textile design. Her designs are still relevant and contemporary to this day. I love the hand drawn and sketchy elements.Orla Kiely - because she has cleverly built an extremely strong brand around her style in an industry where it is hard to stand out. Her combination of crisp, graphic, 60's influenced designs are deceptively simple.Nigel Peake - I adore his linear aesthetic, which appeals to my love of hand drawing and the vast array of patterns that exist within one image.I could go on and on, but they're the people that sprung to mind.

What products do you like to see your floral and graphic pattern designs on?Anything from paper products to fashion to interior furnishings. I just like my work being out there to be enjoyed.

Who do you see are your target market?

Working through an agent, means that to a certain extent this is taken out of my hands and the buyers make that judgement for me. I receive a brief, mood board and colour palette and create a collection based around these elements and focus more on trends than target market. Personally I think my florals will appeal to women across quite a broad age range. My graphic/geometric designs I like to think will appeal to both men and women 18-30 age range.

Primark Brief

For the next two weeks I am to come up with a few concepts for bedding which would be produced for Primark. I have six theme boards to follow, two of which I really think my work could fit into. Le Marais, luxurious, detailed, elegant, soft, muted colours. The other one is Seraglio, bright clashing colours, fairly big floral motifs and patterns.

As it is such a short amount of time I will be selecting works from past projects, design sheets, sketch books to edit onto Photoshop/ Illustator, maybe some of them will be an improvement!

Experimental work

Yesterday I started to develop my sketches, observational work on Photoshop and Illustrator which had some interesting results. Being inspired by concealing and layering images and line drawings, I furthered this by layering a few images on Photoshop and adjusting the fill and transparency tool. The images looked less still life and more romantic, tonal and had an ethereal quality. Most of my experiments were large motifs which could be used to print onto cushions, though to fully answer the brief I need to look at wallpaper designs such as half drop repeats for example.

Helen Amy Murray

I'm still in the process of collating primary research for the interiors brief painting and sketching various plants and flowers. I came across a designer, Helen Amy Murray who creates designs for all sorts of interior products and wall coverings based on nature and form. Her bespoke pieces are very luxurious and pure which make them individual and one off. These beautiful three dimensional pieces are almost like sculptures and works of art, I would like to create texture within my interior designs to have a kind of sculptural effect; which has lead me to think about designing my final design by hand as opposed to a digital design.

Freelance design visit, Shelagh Heritage and Nicky Sharp

Yesterday evening I went over to a local freelance designer's house, Shelagh Heritage whos neighbour, Nicky Sharp also happens to be a freelance interiors designer! Unfortunately I was unable to get photographs of their lovely works to post on here.
It was a very insightful and interesting visit as both designers take very different approaches to their work. Shelagh specialises in wallpaper design and has an agent who sells her work in many countries China and Russia to name a few who at the moment are buying an excessive amount of wallpaper. Though, all of her design work is drawn and painted by hand and does not use any kind of digitial design programme which is very rare in today's design industry. While Nicky also initally draws out designs and then develops them onto Illustrator and Photoshop, designing duvets, pillow cases. Both works were very unique in style as Shelagh's was very floral and chintz with painterly effects,whereas Nicky's often geometric yet also used florals in a more abstract and digital theme.
I asked what it was like to work freelance as it is a career I'd like to consider in design, both agreed that in order to become freelance it is best working for a design company to gain knowledge and understanding of the industry and what kind of themes/styles different companies go for. Having shown them my current work for the Bradford Textile Society brief, they agreed to futher my work to possibly increase the scale of my drawing/paintings and research into chintz and florals as these are upcoming trends in the ineriors market.
It was nice to speak to two very talented interior designers and I hope to keep in contact with them and see what work they will produce in the upcoming months.