Journal Day 153-The mugs and business cards are here!

Both the mugs and the business cards have arrived now- look at them!!

Can't wait to see the rest of it and see how it all turns out :)

Abiento x

Journal Day 152

Getting everything done on time for this project has been really quite stressful, as in order to have everything professionally manufactured a large amount of time is needed, which I haven't had! Designing and printing everything in 4 weeks is exceptionally tight, and the tea towels and tote bags I have ordered will be delivered just on time on the very day that our assessment starts! Eeshk! Anyway, I have been planning the final show, and how I think I would like it to look in some rough sketches.

Basically the idea is that each product will be displayed in a row, representing the very logical and organised method that has been the style of my project, and has been how my worksheets have been also. This will have a strong visual impact on the viewer, a hit of colour and information.

I will also be displaying some business cards to show the business concept side to my plans and the project, and will have some cupcakes with my designs on them for both the private view, opening day and closing day of the exhibition.

So far I'm really pleased with all of this and think it works well, but am just hoping for all the products to arrive on time and in good condition!

Abiento x

Journal Day 154- Looking Back

Today I started organising and creating the worksheets for the project. I had not put any of them together after the flamingo designs had been done, as I was on a tight deadline, and so have been printing out the designs and placing them onto worksheets. As well as doing that, I placed my original mood boards onto A1 worksheets to present them, and to make notes around them on what it was that I liked about them/was inspired by. I have had them stuck up in my workspace for the whole project so I can see them easily, and now thought they would need presenting a bit better. In doing these two tasks, I had a chance to look back at my original ideas for the project, and it has really shown me how much I strayed from that inspiration for my own designs. I really should have referred back to them more often to maintain my original ideas, but got too bogged down in the computer room. However it does now give me the opportunity to go back, for my own personal satisfaction, and re-design the bird designs with the original mood boards ideas in mind. This will give me such a different series I believe, and also having done this project, will give me the confidence to really push the designs further than I seem to have done in this project.

I do believe that given more time for this project, I could have had an evaluative period (which I had planned on) to re-asses the designs and then improve on them. It was the inclusion of two new bird designs that eliminated this plan from my project. I really wanted to spend more time exploring what it was that made a pattern work, and with an evaluative period I believe I would have seen new ways of changing and pushing my designs to create much stronger patterns. It was really only at the end of the project, when I was getting bored of the designs, that I started to do this.  I would love to spend some time re-doing this project in many ways- starting, essentially, back at the beginning with drawings. I would then re-create my designs with these new elements much more based on the mood boards I originally created using the ideas I had taken from the other artists work.

These ideas included much more rotation of the animals, and random over-laying and over lapping of them with some being opaque. I would have tried to include more hand drawn pattern, such as stripes or doodles into the designs and shapes, and then over-layed (or under-layed) with a silhouetted version of the shape. However most of the designs became very simple, with the silhouette shape as the main motif. I regret this hugely and would really love to have more time to spend on this series of designs.

I have no doubt that when I do have the time, that I will re-vist both the bird series and the pear series, and will dedicate quite some time and energy into re-creating these designs. As I have said in my catalogue, at least the designs created in this course have shown me what I need to be doing more of, and what I did wrong with these designs. They have shown me how I should be designing and working, and how I can work and design. They have given me confidence and a great foundation from which to work with so much of the work and learning already done. Combining this with the online surface pattern course (with Rachel Taylor) that I'm doing, is giving me so much more confidence and excitement over the potential of what I can do. I feel that so much is possible, I just need to do it!

Abiento x

Rachel Taylor- Doing What You Love

So, nearly two weeks ago I begun an online course focusing on Surface Pattern Design. It's run by Rachel Taylor and Beth Nicholls  (founder of Do What You Love) and teaches students, using Rachel Taylor's experience and knowledge, how to create patterns and then turn them into a profitable business. The first module focuses on the creative side of things, starting right at the basics, and progressing forward to the second and third modules which focus slightly more on the business elements.

So far we have just covered the basics, most of which i vaguely knew or understand, but they have know been reinforced, deepened or explained further for me which is great! There are new ways of thinking and drawing which I'm really enjoying and it's so great to not just be inspired to do things, but have actual ways in which to begin doing them. So often you are either given immensely detailed and complication directions to follow that are far beyond your expertise, or your inspired and given no more. I always feel one or the other. So having simples ideas to think about when it comes to drawing simplifies the technique for me and inspires me to actually start doing it. Combining that with this project on the foundation in which I started doing that myself I feel I know have a strong foundation for continuing with pattern design.

I can't wait to see what else the course brings and will no doubt be showing some of what I produce on here soon! :)

Abiento x

Journal Day 146- Final Selection

(Woop Woop!)

The following designs will be printed onto mugs :)

While these will be on tea-towels, 

And these will be on tote bags. 

All of them will then be on some gorgeous moo business cards, which I had similar printed before for my photography business and love to bits. I have also considered the idea of making some cupcakes with photo toppers of the designs, but am unsure of the logistics of this and did fiddle about with getting an iphone skin made but thought it would look a bit out of place!

So glad to have this all sent off and sorted and can't wait to see how they turn (especially as I had no samples made! eek!)

Abiento x

Journal Day 150

It's amazing how long it takes to get things done sometimes. On Monday I had everything prepped and ready to send of the manufacturers to get my products made, however I only managed to get the mugs done, and it wasn't until yesterday that everything else got sent off. Wowza. I'm learning that this stage is time consuming and then lengthy in terms of waiting for items to be made and delivered. I'm hoping for the mugs to arrive today, while the tea towels, bags and business cards I have ordered could be up to and possibly over 2 weeks! It's cutting it so unbelievably close that I am extremely glad to have a fast-tracking option for my catalogue printing. By this stage I feel less like I am constantly catching up!

Abiento x

Journal Day 146

Today I woke up tired and feeling stressed and overwhelmed with the project and life. However a quick break followed by tutorial allowed me to clear my head and see that I have done all that needs to be done, and that it is time to get these mugs and tea towels printed! Having pushed it last week past the stagnant stage I made a quick breakthrough with some great designs and have plenty of great options for the final show which is great. Yes my head is full of ideas and possibilities but for this project I need to take control and close them down for another time. I don't need to edit and compose the pieces to match, as essentially, this project has become about the process. It became about the method and the ideas, so in order to have a great final show I want a true representation of that, not a composed and edited version. Jane has encouraged me to find and think of lots of other possibilites for procucts for the final show too, as essentially as a surface pattern designer that is the whole point, my designs can cover any surface! Which is really exciting! So, off to the printers we go, and time to stop worrying!

Through this I have to say I have learnt a huge amount about my process as a designer, and the methods I like and work best with, and know that any future project will be hugely enhanced because of this. I can look back at the beginning of the course, and the beginning of my exploration into surface pattern design and can clearly see how I have developed, grown and learnt. I am hugely excited to keep this going and make it into a career! I will post the final design choices later on today when I have selected them! :)

Abiento x

Journal Day 145

Oh Computers. How I love, and hate you. I spent 5 hours non stop in front of a computer today, and didn't even break for lunch. And now my eyes and my head hurt. Mainly because I walked home, had a salad, and within 10 minutes I had picked my computer back up! Meh.

Anyway, here is a little snippet of what I achieved today, focusing today on Toucan's. I began to struggle today with creating the patterns for this bird, as I felt that in creating patterns with two more birds, I am replicating a lot of the same stuff and it felt slightly stodgy. But I went ahead and did it anyway. Having got a few of the birds in place, I began to introduce the triangles and instantly felt that I wanted a hand drawn element to the design. However in the interest of continuity I left this to create the digital images that I need to work with the other bird design.s By the end of the day I really really wanted to introduce hand drawn elements, and so drew a few leafy, flowery motifs and then scanned them, plus some of the fruit drawings that I had done earlier in the project, and started to see how they would work. Sadly by then it was just gone 4.15 and so we were closing up for the day, and so I will have to spend a bit of the evening messing about if I want anymore computer time today! I'm working both Saturday and Sunday this weekend, so would really like to take my evenings off to relax this weekend! No more square eyes for me please!

The two that I did manage to do are at the end of the post, have a look a see what you think. I quite like the pear one :).

P.S please ignore the rubbish to the far right hand side of each image. Sometimes in editing I forgot to change the furthest (and hidden) birds/triangles. These also feel quite small which I'm not so happy about! They don't have quite the same impact...

In keeping the same kind of layout as before I'm definitely starting to notice a stagnant and stuck kind of feeling. Nothing is new or original or interesting and more is definitely needed. I want to go back and tweak quite a few of these, and re-asses the layout. Although, having said that, this is only one variation and I did quite a few for the flamingos before finding one I loved so may have to do the same here rather than just changing the colours. This work has to happen soon though in order to get them sent off the the manufacturers for printing. Hopefully if I spend all of Monday in the computer suite then this can happen on Monday evening or Tuesday morning.

So here are the ones with hand drawings. I got a bit carried away...

 

 

 

Abiento x