It has been a busy week, but I can now tell you about the competition that I recently entered was for Tiger print.
The Surface design competition was the first of the year, and will be followed by many more.
The brief was to design a pattern that would be used for gift bags, cards, stationary, which included pencils and pencil cases, as well as wrapping paper. I needed to consider the audience my design was for, and where it would fit in the industry today.
So I chose to do some research into upcoming trends for 2014. Where I noticed that flowers were going to be big thing this year. As well as colour which seemed a big influence in upcoming trends and the specified surfaces that my pattern would be applied to.
With my designs I chose to do a modern take of the classic polka dot design that has been used on gift items for many years. My twist was to have the entire surface covered with pattern, instead of the classic block colours. I chose to have a leaf background as it felt it made more sense to have my flowers sit on top of them. As you would imagine them in a natural environment. The 'dots' were represented by my flowers in this classic design. I chose to make them more of an exotic nature as the influences from India have become a prominent feature in fashion, and I found the vibrant colours worked better.
The images above and below are my entry designs that I submitted for the competition, to represent a card format and the surface pattern. Sadly I was not selected to be shortlisted for this competition but I personally did enjoy designing work with a brief again. I found it interesting to work in colour instead of my signature black and white. I sometimes found it difficult to make the patterns flow as well as they usually do. Usually growing as a group but instead it was more independent seeds of designs.
What do you think of the designs? and what do you think of the colours? Any comments will be gratefully received.
