Live Brief: Tigerprint: Mark Making

This month I decided to take part in the most recent Tigerprint competition which is based on Mark Making. I wanted to take the opportunity to use the natural theme that I have been working with within the brief of mark making. I therefore looked at textures and patterns found within nature, as well as using natural objects to make pattern. The idea of printing with natural objects and making my own tools to paint with was an idea that I left behind in the Practice unit, but now that it's relevant, I decided to pick it back up again.

I started off by collecting plants and natural objects that I could use to paint, or make tools with. I also observed natural patterns and textures to replicate with the tools, as shown below.

I enjoyed the challenge of completing a shorter project that allowed me to work with more abstract patterns, whilst picking up work I had left behind. After sampling with the mark making that I had completed, I selected a final collection of eight designs shown below. I decided to use two different colour ways, to show how I can use colour, whilst trying to cater to the brief, as I don't know what colours they are looking for.

I have submitted the designs with orange circles next to them, because they fit the brief, whilst all being different and suiting their context. The pastel stripes design (top left) was shortlisted, which I am pleased with because it shows that I was working well towards the breif. I also completed a photoshoot to show how I visualise these designs in the context of gift wrap.

Creating Promotional Material . Preparing for Degree show .

Due to the fact that I am showing my work at the degree show and New Designers, I want to make sure that I have business cards and post cards to promote my work. After collecting many business cards from the degree show and the Northern Contemporary Craft Fair last year, I looked back at some of my favourite designs to get some inspiration.

I felt that the most effective business cards had a simple side with writing on (including website, and contact details), and a design on the opposite side. The most effective post cards contained a brief summary of the artist and their work on one side (and contact details), with a variety of designs on the opposite side. The post card allowed for a more complex design due to the size.

Below is the design for the postcard. I might change the designs I have chosen when my collections are finished, but I feel that the postcard will provide the reader with a sufficient amount of information about myself and my work.

Post Card Design

The smaller business cards contain less information but I feel that they are perfect for their purpose. I will print the same information on all of them, but include a variety of designs on the back so that people can chose their favourite design.

Business card designs

Along side this I have started to consider my display for both the degree show and New Designers. This has been harder than I expected because I want to display both my surface pattern and wallpaper collections. However because they are different styles with diffrent colour pallettes, I run the risk of making my space look cluttered and crowded. Showing both collections in some way is important to me, as I want to show the breadth of my practice, especially at New Designers, as various companies will be present.

I have therefore decided to use the idea above: hanging two bold wallpapers and having a small simple shelving unit to display a few stationery products. Placing the black and white design behind the stationery products should ensure that the colours don't clash, and bringing the product stand forward from the wall should separate the two a bit more. I will check whether I can use this method of display at New Designers, otherwise I will consider how I can adapt this idea.

Along side this I have also considered how I will produce my wallpaper and stationery products. I have therefore been researching different companies and collecting samples from them to check the quality and pricing. I have decided which companies I am using so I now need to liaise with them to ensure they can produce my products to the correct standard.

Developing the Moments collection

After completing a large proportion of my Botanical collection, I have started working on my surface pattern collection.

As my surface pattern work is based on moments in time, I wanted to make a print based on the pond in my garden, as I have always been fascinated by the amount of plant and animal life that inhabit it.

Some of the nature that I drew from consisted of plants, frogspawn, duck weed, lily pads, frogs, dragonflies and iris petals. The designs above represent the pond in the way I envisaged, however the colour isn't perfect, and I feel that the designs below have more potential, due to the good use of colour and composition. The Iris design would add a variety to the collection so far, and the dragonfly design captures the pond perfectly, corresponding to my initial learning agreement.

After visiting the Lake district over the easter break I wanted to use this as inspiration for my Moments collection as well. Whilst I was there I took photos and sketched things that interested me.

After drawing motifs to design with, I started to assemble designs. I think that the design on the left is visually appealing, however the vertical stripe is too strong, and it's too simple. The design on the right also didn't fit the brief as it doesn't convey the Lake District, however I feel that this is because of the colour use.

 The design below was based on Grisedale forrest and I am happy with the result, as it portrays the layering of trees on the hills, with a good use of colour and line.

I also really like the design below based on a visit to Grassmere because of the composition and the fact that it represents my visit. It also suits the products I am designing for well.

The context for the Moments collection is the high end of the highstreet. I can see my products being sold in companies like Paperchase and Selfridges. More specifically, the context for my work is similar to that of Anna Emilia and Khristian Howell. They both create and design contemporary, quirky stationery that sells on their own sites and through companies on the High street, such as Waterstones and John Lewis. The price range for these products is therefore between £5-£20, and is of a very high standard and quality. I therefore feel that my work fits this market because of the style of design, colour use and quality of final product. Creating visuals and doing a photoshoot will allow me to portray this to others as well.

Anna Emilia . Khristian Howell

Developing the Botanical collection

I have been continuing to draw and paint images for my wallpaper collection for a large proportion of this unit, in order to meet the requirements of my learning agreement. As they take a long period of time to draw, I scan them in at different stages so that I have a large quantity of imagery to work with. This is illustrated below.

Due to the amount of time that these illustrations take, I plan out drawings before hand to ensure that I will be able to use them in a design. As well as creating the design I planned originally, I also designed other potential wallpapers, some of which are shown below.

The elements that I have been drawing over the past few weeks have been meadow plants, so I was keen to get across that feeling of delicate, yet cluttered flowers. I feel that the prints shown get across this feeling whilst staying contemporary. I think they also work well because of the contemporary composition and colour.

I also wanted to use the pencil sketches that I scanned in, and the traditional botanical writing. I feel that this is working well in the image below, as I have used the white, solid sketches to overlap the watercolour images, giving a contemporary twist to a traditionally inspired design.

I have also been creating more drawings using pen to draw with rather than pencil and watercolour.

I think the green background of the design above will fit into the rest of the collection well, but I am concerned that the style might not suit. I could therefore create other design that is similar to this to bring the rest of the collection together if this is the case.

I also tried to create a watercolour effect in the background of the design below. However I don't think the design is successful as part of the rest of my collection, as the style looks completely different.

I preferred the designs (below) which involved all four different plants that I drew as there is more to look at within the design. I also felt that adding text in the background helped my designs to link more to the rest of my collection. However, I felt that the white design would probably fit into the rest of my collection the most. This is due to the text in the background, but also because the images look less graphic as the background colour is the same white as the imagery.

My context for this collection is similar to that of companies such as Osborne and Little, Harlequin and in particular Marimekko. I feel that Marimekko's prints have an impact due to their size, and they also digitally print their wallpaper onto varying widths of paper, which is exactly what I intend to do with my designs. As well as selling through their own site they also stock companies like John Lewis. This production method and scale mean that their wallpapers are specialist, designer products, and this is why I think my work would fit into the same market. 

Marimekko

I am really pleased with the developments over the past few weeks. Although it has taken a long time to do the drawings, I feel that it has made my designs a very high standard. The only problem I will have is that I can only use an element in one design. It will therefore be hard to chose which design or designs to take forward for my final collection. As I am finding this decision hard, I might look back at it in a few weeks time, and might have to redraw some elements if I want to include the design in my final collection.

Creating a website.

A large part of this unit is about being professional and taking an entrepreneurial approach to our practice. As part of this I am keen to promote myself online, so that if people see my work at the degree show or New designers, they can see my whole portfolio. I have done this by creating a:

• Website
• Behance account 
• Linkedin profile

These are useful because they are used by professionals and make portfolio's and CV's easily accessible. The portfolio is a crucial element of these platforms, but I am aware of the need to protect my work online. Some designers watermark images to protect them, however I believe this can detract from the design. I therefore decided to attach 'Jenna Simpson Designs' to the bottom right corner of every image, as shown below, as well as making the images small and not including the full repeat. This makes the image easily traceable back to me, whilst meaning that it can't be copied.

I therefore added some of these images to my Linkedin account, and also updated it with my recent work, projects and experience. 

Linkedin Profile

In order to start making a website, I researched website building sites and other designers websites to see what they included and how they present their work. I noticed that some of them had certain aspects in common, such as pages for portfolio, about and contact. They also had links to various social media platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest and Linkedin. 

www.jessicawilde.co.uk

I took this on board by creating a social page, with Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest feeds (below). I also added a page for my blog, and a contact page so that anyone who is interested in my work can easily get hold of me. Social media links are also in the footer of every page.

Screen shot from my new website

Another feature that appealed to me was the promotional sliders on homepages containing imagery and information. I therefore created some to allow people to instantly see my work and make them want to look through the rest of my portfolio (below).

Screen shot from my new website

I also looked into Behance: an online portfolio site linked with Adobe, allowing easy access to professionals and jobs. I decided to create a profile to allow maximum exposure for my work, and I have added lots of information about myself such as work experience, as well as my portfolio.

https://www.behance.net/jennasimpson 

I believe that these platforms will allow a wider audience to see my work, and provide a finished, concise overview of my practice, rather than my blog which is a work in progress.

Unit X Launch

During Unit X I intend to complete both collections that I started in the practice unit, whilst undertaking a live brief and creating a strong, professional portfolio.

I believe that the Wallpaper collection, Botany, was developed very well within Practice, and feel that dedicating more time to drawing for this would be a good investment of time. I don't believe that the concept needs exploring any further as I developed it within the last unit to produce a good style and concept that worked well as a collection.

The surface pattern collection, Moments, was also developed to a good level within the Practice unit, however I want to make sure that I draw upon a variety of imagery and inspiration sources to ensure that each print in the collection is distinct. I therefore aim to dedicate time to gathering a variety of imagery from various places.

I also want to participate in a live brief, drawing upon research that I left behind in the last unit, and allowing me to continue the theme of nature throughout my portfolio in a slightly different way.

Throughout the unit, I will dedicate a considerable amount of time to research methods for printing and making products including stationery, wallpaper. and business cards. This includes researching into methods to foil my wrapping papers and liaising with companies regarding pricing and printing of products for the degree show.

To compliment these aims, I want to create a strong professional portfolio that is sensitive to the industries standards, as well as increasing my online presence to allow more people to see my work. This will include creating an online portfolio and updating and maintaining social media platforms that I am already on.

Unit Evaluation

This unit has allowed me to explore every aspect of textiles that I love. I have been able to use and enhance my drawing skills within my Botany work to develop highly detailed wallpapers. I have also been able to develop my stylized drawing skills in the Moments collection. Using these elements digitally has also meant that I have learnt even more in Photoshop in Illustrator, especially putting images into repeat. I am glad that I have been able to cater for the surface pattern and wallpaper contexts as this is important for my portfolio when I graduate.

At the start of the unit I feel that I explored my concept very well, navigating lots of options for my theme. I continually pushed myself in many ways, including working very large scale, and working with abstract ideas. I chose my two favourite aspects of this research to develop into different collections. I feel the initial exploration allowed me to ensure that the two areas I developed furthest would give me enough material to work with, and it also ensured that I had a strong and interesting concept behind both collections.

I have also faced a few challenges during this project such as deciding which aspects of my research to carry on with and presenting my work during the review. Choosing which areas of research to not carry on with and develop was hard because I didn't want to risk missing a good idea, or choosing the wrong idea. Overall I am really pleased, as I feel my decisive decision making has lead to two potential collections that I am proud of, and that represent me as a designer. Also, having these two collections to work on meant that I was rarely stuck for inspiration. This can sometimes be an issue during projects, but if I felt stuck with one collection, I could switch to the other one and eventually I would be back on track with both.

At the start of the project I aimed to improve my colour work and I also feel that I have achieved this. Both colour palettes that I used for this unit I haven’t used before, and I am pleased with the results, as it has made me more confident with colour.

Undertaking work experience at Tigerprint and completing a brief for them has also been extremely rewarding, giving me an idea of how designers work to real briefs. I also had the chance to push myself by working towards a fathers day collection, which isn't my usual floral, feminine style. Entering my work into other competitions has also allowed me to become more professional, as my work has been seen by the general public amongst work of other textile designers.

Overall I am confident with the work I have produced and am excited to use this as a starting point for Unit X. I intend to develop both collections to make two collections of at least 8 designs. I might also develop a Christmas wrap collection along side this. I have conducted initial product research to allow me to continue this in Unit X, so I can find the best way to print and make products for the degree show.

Developing Surface Pattern designs

This week I have had the opportunity to develop my surface pattern designs further along side visualisations.

I am really pleased with some of these prints as I feel the scale is working well, along with the colour and content. Although I was worried that my concept was hard to explain and get across in a print, I feel that these prints are successfully representing data. To enhance this idea, I have named individual designs with the moment that the data was taken, such as winter woodland.

When starting to look at the prints together, I started to notice that certain elements stood out from the rest of the collection, for example the typography in the print above. I do like the typography but in Unit X I might consider adding it into more than one design so it works well over the whole collection.

I also spent time this week taking photos of objects for visualisations to help bring my products to life. I am happy with these but in Unit X I feel I could produce stronger images that set more of a scene. For example a set of stationery, or a pile of presents.

I also started to see that some prints (e.g. above) have the potential to develop into a christmas collection in Unit X. I feel that this would also be good for my portfolio, showing I can work to realistic breifs.

Surface pattern designing

This week I have been getting back into designing for the surface pattern part of my project. I decided when I divided my work that I wanted to work with data for the surface pattern aspect of my project. After having a break whilst working on my botany work, I now know that I want my prints to represent the data I have collected from a specific moment in time.  After looking at how other people represent and collect data, I realised that I didn't want my prints to look like mathematic data as it wouldnt suit my target market, which led me to the idea of making my print a way of representing data, or a moment in time. I am therefore going to collect or draw items at different times and locations, and turn these into prints.

I had already been doing this sort of data collection throughout the project, but this week I took the opportunity to document more objects around me. I started at the bus stop that I use to get to university, and also went on a woodland walk. These have produced good drawings but I feel that in the next unit I can gather more data using more varied locations. This will also end up producing more interesting prints.

When I placed these motifs into photoshop I created a number of prints to allow me to experiment with the motifs to their full potential. This resulted in producing more than one print that had the potential to be a final design with the same elements (shown above). Therefore in Unit X I could recreate a similar print after drawing new motifs.

Next week I want to create more prints with different elements so I can see how the collection might function as a whole. I feel that to enable me to see which prints are working best, I need to take some photos for visualisations, which I will complete next week.

Designing Botanical Wallpapers

After spending two weeks creating detailed botanical drawings I had enough material to create designs this week which are shown below.

When I started to assemble designs, I soon realised that scanning in my drawings at the pencil stage and the watercolour stage was really useful for the design process as it allowed me to build up layers of line and solid imagery. I feel that the different styles of layout, from organised to scattered are working well and are giving a breadth to my collection. I also used many drawings of the same plant to create more detailed prints including buds, stems, cross sections of various parts of the plant and writing (as is used in traditional botany illustrations). I also feel that the context and layout of these prints reflects my concept really well.

Some designs were simpler with just two colours, and the Echinacea design above worked really well, as it also had a linear quality that would work well for wallpaper. I feel this contrast could add a nice variety to my collection.

Creating visuals as I designed helped me to see how the scale of my designs were working and also gave me more inspiration for other designs. I now feel that the way I am working to create my designs is working really well for me. For future designing, I will bear in mind that plants with flowers produced better prints, due to the different qualities to the drawing such as colour and shape.

Botanical Drawings

I have spent the past two weeks dedicating a lot of time to drawings for my wallpaper designs. I know that in order to create high quality wallpaper designs, I need to produce large scale, detailed botanical drawings to work with, so I have managed my time well to accommodate for this.

After my research and experimentation based on botanical drawings, I now have mastered the technique for creating these illustrations. I start off by creating a detailed pencil drawing like the fern above, and then go over it with detailed watercolour as shown in the foxglove image below. This technique has worked well for me as it recreates the botanical illustrative techniques really well, and creates high quality drawings.

When choosing my subject matter to draw from, I have also been considering my initial concept, science and nature. I am keen for the plants I draw to have a scientific relevance, for example, the foxglove has medical properties such as curing heart disease. However if consumed in its raw state its also poisonous.

I feel that using a long period of time to do these drawings was a good use of time management, and will allow me to produce high quality drawings that reflect my concept really well.

Engaging with the outside world: Applying for graduate jobs

I am aware that at this time of year, many graduate jobs are available to apply for which start in September. I have therefore been looking for any relevant jobs within the design industry. I have contacted these companies with applications, which involved adapting and updating my CV, as well as creating a cover letter and answering application questions.

One of the applications that has developed the furthest so far is for the Hallmark Commercial Graduate scheme. I progressed to the fourth out of five recruitment processes which I am very proud of. This involved a telephone interview, online non-verbal and verbal reasoning tests, and a video interview. Experiencing this variety of recruitment processes has been a fantastic experience which will help me when applying to other jobs in the future.

I have also signed up for email notifications for various companies and job sites, in order to give me the best opportunity possible of getting a job when I graduate. I have also updated my linkedin profile in order to make myself a more employable person.