Getting my blog together... FABULOUS AND FREE RESOURCE

Morning...
So every once in a while the universe hears ya and you get a little bit of what you need landing in your lap... or your inbox.

I really like the idea of having a blog. I have blog envy when I look at some folk's blogs - they're consistent in style, tone and posting. Me? I'm a little bit all over the place but I'm enthusiastic.

The big buzzword for me this year is PLANNING since I've heard a lot of people talking about individuals only having a certain amount of Decision Juice. What you use up deciding what to wear and what to eat each morning you don't get back... so you might have run out by lunch time if you're anything like me and suffer DECISION FATIGUE!!!

Therefore, planning is bang on trend. Schedule a time to plan your weekly wardrobe, or whattheheck: be like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama or Albert Einstein and get your own uniform wardrobe. I don't think I can bear to wear or eat the same thing everyday but I can spend one moment each week planning it. And I can simplify lots of other things in my life by not having to make a series of decisions about them every single day.

So how does this relate to my blog? Well I'd started back with enthusiasm a few weeks ago with a new schedule of 3 times a week. On Monday I missed my post. I just couldn't think what to write and I have so much design work to do at the moment that I just couldn't spend the time deciding what to write about. Then I saw THIS... I can't quite remember in all the madness of trying to get stuff done if the offer for it just appeared in my inbox or if I clicked through some links in an email about something else but whatever happened it appeared without me searching for it at all.

It took me no time at all to read through it and fill in the plan and oh what a plan! Themed weeks and scheduling stuff will really help to keep me enthused and organised and get the blog that I really want for you, dear reader (I love that phrase!!!).

So, Beth Kempton - cheers, you really are fab.
Love
Frankie x

Progress...

Morning,

Just thought I would share a little bit of the work I've been doing this week. I am preparing for my first trade show and trying to add lots of one off patterns to my portfolio. 

Hand drawn geometrics with a floral twist really are my most favourite patterns to make and the reason I started making patterns in the first place. This one reminds me of looking through a kaleidoscope a little bit and I really enjoyed creating it. It was inspired by some drawings of Edwardian brooches I have done this week and I can't wait to make some more like this one. 

This culinary inspired repeat is something that I created whilst on Lilla Rogers' MATS course. I spent some time improving the repeat, polishing up some of the motifs and recolouring it. I still think I might try tweaking the colours further. I'm spending this month reviewing the work I did on the course and further improving it so I can add it to my portfolio. 

Also this week, I've been looking at Islamic art and tiles for inspiration. And I'm loving this book that I got for Christmas...

Marnie Fogg

...so expect some 1950's inspired doodles soon! 

Love 

Frankie x

Essential Resources - Jessica Swift's Goal & Intention Kit

Good Morning!

On Monday I woke up really early after a fabulous weekend of fun,  feeling really ready to get cracking so what better way to start the week than with a great big plan for world domination  design delight!

Working for yourself is REALLY hard, especially when you are new to it. Spending many years at school and then working for the man doesn't really prepare you for being your own boss and I find the balance between being really disciplined and losing control of everything is a cause of constant anxiety. I often push myself really hard but don't always remember to reflect on the good stuff - you know, the stuff you did that made you feel brilliant and might give you the confidence you need? So here's a little rescue remedy in paper form.

If you've read my blog before, you'll know what a huge fan I am of Jessica Swift's work. She really switched me on to wanting to make patterns because not only is her work beautiful but she writes in a really nice, encouraging style that says, "you can do it too". And it's not just a touchy feely gesture from one artist to another - here is some actual, practical help in the form of a kit. I used her Goal and Intention Kit in 2013 and I don't know why I didn't use it this year as I feel I would have been way more productive - but anyway I've already started again for next year so no matter.

The kit is a home printable resource costing only $15 dollars - that's less than a tenner in sterling right now. WARNING: my printer is not working properly and my photography skills are not top class so don't be put off by the muddy colours - I'm out of blue! Here's a screen shot of what it should look like:

Mine is more of a crimson and khaki affair but I still love it!

The first page gives you some instructions and then you can dive right in listing all your successes from 2014. Get a cuppa and make this a really enjoyable thing to do, dig deep and try to remember all your brilliant moments from the past year. There's also the chance to reflect on challenges and lessons learned before you embark on your big dreams for 2015.

And here's a small selection of some of the sheets you get to dream big on!

So if you're looking for a boost or just a really effective way of getting your plans in order, I can't recommend this enough. Thanks Jessica.

Have a great day everyone,

Frankie x

Essential Surface Pattern Design Resources #5 Jump, Trust, Repeat by Jessica Swift

Hello!

©Jessica Swift - image from her website

I'm writing this post with a big smile on my face, having just received an email from Jessica Swift agreeing to take part in my Studio Tuesday feature. I'm a huge fan of Jessica's work - her patterns are original, quirky and so wonderfully colourful.  She also paints, she writes and has a lovely website and blog.

©Jessica Swift - image from her website

Jump Trust Repeat is aimed at anyone who wants to really make a go at being a full time artist. Part One is all about Jessica's personal journey from leaving college as a fine art graduate through to her present day position as a successful artist and surface pattern designer. Part Two talks about the practical aspects of getting a business up and running and finally Part Three brings together the experiences of other successful artist and designers - most of whom you will be familiar with in surface pattern design circles.
Jessica is generously honest when talking about her journey. She is joyful about her successes and reflects openly on things that didn't go so well. Her admittance to problems is incredibly endearing. I really liked how she told the story about when she was having her rain boots manufactured and was sent two left boots, she still looked for ways around photographing them so that they looked like a proper pair. It's sharing this kind of information that tells you that it is a real, normal person, just like you or me,  behind these ventures; human, vulnerable, hopeful, hardworking and ambitious. This really does help you to believe that if you are willing to commit to and work towards making it happen, then you can. 

©Jessica Swift - image from her website

There's lots of information about attending trade shows and licensing deals. It's the stuff you'd like to just ask someone straight out but probably wouldn't: how much it costs, how to prepare, what kind of royalties to expect from licensing deals and so on. There's also a lovely little section on how Jessica works - showing the two different ways she designs patterns - straight onto the computer or drawing and scanning. I found this to be really helpful as was her advice on putting collections together.
Compared to books you can buy electronically in the Kindle store or on iBooks, Jump, Trust, Repeat may seem quite expensive at first glance but I would say it's easily worth it - it's an investment. I've spent so much time with this book - reading and rereading it - it's not just instruction, it's a true inspiration. What you are paying for is years of experience honestly documented, lots of positive encouragement and great advice. Whenever I feel I'm getting a bit lost, I refer back to this book for a hit of inspiration and to get me back on track. It's also very beautifully designed, but that's hardly a surprise when it's been designed by Jessica. 

©Jessica Swift - image from her website

Read more about Jump, Trust, Repeat here. Incidentally I've also used Jessica's Goal and Intention Kit and The Declaration of You and they're all fabulous too.
Thanks for reading and look out for Jessica on my Studio Tuesday feature in the coming weeks,
Frankie x

©Jessica Swift - image from her website

Essential Surface Pattern Design Resources #4 Textile Design: 200 Years of Patterns for Printed Fabrics arranged by Motif, Colour; Period & Design by Susan Meller & Joost Effers

Hello!
Another lovely weekend of food and friendship and a new week starts with the exciting prospect of completing my strawberry thief collection and entering a couple more competitions. I've decided to enter lots of competitions this year as they are a really good way of getting my work 'out there' and practising working to a brief, creating something that is going to be commercial and relevant. Whilst I love self tuition and solitary working, I know I'm in need of some feedback and direction so I'm seeking to create opportunities for this... I've been asking on twitter whether anyone could provide me with a reading list for a degree in textile/surface pattern design so that I could further educate myself - I'm thinking about history and geography of pattern. Finally today my call for help was answered (partly - I could still use a proper list!) and I was pleased to see that this fabulous book was amongst the book list that I saw.

Textile Design: 200 Years of Patterns for Printed Fabrics arranged by Motif, Colour; Period & Design by Susan Meller & Joost Effers

This really is one of my favourite books. It’s up there with any of Bowie Style’s wonderful Print & Pattern books, 5000 Flower and Plant motifs by Graham Leslie McCallum and Jessica Swift’s Jump Trust Repeat. All of these books have been fantastic resources that I constantly refer back to.

Be warned, this book is not very portable! Larger than A4 and coming in at almost 500 pages, it's not one for carrying on around in your bag to read on the train. I keep mine on my drawing desk and thumb through it regularly as it’s a constant source of inspiration. 

The book is divided into 5 sections: Floral, Geometric, Conversational, Ethnic and Art Movements & Period Styles. I now divide my design files in this way on the computer as I find it makes it much easier to find my designs and helps me to think about the different elements I can put together to make a collection. There’s a small section of text on each page giving a little background to each pattern style and it’s just enough to give a brief explanation of the origins of each pattern type.

I enjoy using the book as a starting point for inspiration. I often just browse until a pattern catches my eye and then take it from there. I might be inspired by palette, motif or composition. For example, this week I decided I wanted to do something that was reminiscent of flocked wallpaper. I flicked through the book and came across a couple of nice examples of damask which then led me to start an ink drawing that I developed into this...

...which has given me lots of fresh ideas for motifs and I'm really looking forward to playing with these ideas over the coming week.

I hope you have a lovely week!
Thank you
Frankie x

Essential Surface Pattern Design Resources #3 Bowie Style's Print & Pattern

I'm not really sure where to start when talking about Marie Perkins' (aka Bowie Style) contribution to the world of surface pattern design - it's really quite amazing. A designer in her own right, committed blogger and curator of all things bright and beautiful in the printed pattern world, her influence and inspiration is huge. She is the go-to to for what's hot and happening, not just on the high street but also at the desks of up and coming new designers. 

Her blog posts happen at 8am UK time every weekday. I know this because it's usually the first thing I look at whenever I get online and I return at least once in the day! There's often more than one post at a time - with a vast amount of images and it's nice and concise textually (unlike me) - Marie lets the pictures do the talking. I wonder if Marie ever dared to dream that her blog would be so successful - I doubt very much that it was started with the motivation of garnering a huge audience. It perhaps started as a personal resource that now we're all thankful for! 

Marie studied Graphic Design and Illustration - her own work is bold and balanced, simple and clean - a style not easy to achieve. There's a profile of her here and a few examples of her own work. More examples can be found here. I don't think this blog is updated any more but there's lots of lovely examples of her style. Here's a few I picked out. All images from inkjet designs blogspot

Designed for Robert Kaufman fabrics collection

Designed for Robert Kaufman fabrics collection

The Print and Pattern books, published by Laurence King (AMAZING books!!!) are simply wonderful. From cover to cover they are a feast for the eyes and are so inspiring. They're the perfect size for the bedside or coffee table and handbag. I pretty much leave my collection of them lying around everywhere so there's always one to hand. Even non-designer types have been known to thumb through them.

So if you haven't discovered Marie Perkins/Bowie Style... WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! And if you have, I'm sure you'll be as thankful as I am for her Print & Pattern books and blog. She really does give new starters a lot of inspiration and exposure with the opportunity to be featured on her blog beside established designers. Now go and immerse yourself in the world of Print and Pattern! 

Thank you for reading,
Frankie x

Essential Surface Pattern Design Resources #2 Laura Coyle - Illustratoring

This weekend has been a feast of learning! Last Thursday I tweeted the question: What size art board do you use to design repeat patterns on? I only got one reply! But it was probably the most valuable reply I could have wished for. A tweet came back from @eyecontactart telling me about the wonderful Laura Coyle's automatic repeat pattern tutorial and so off I went in search of Laura's tutorials. 

There are many of Laura's videos on YouTube but sadly the Renee Pearson website where Laura's classes are hosted is taking no more students. I seemed to have got in at the very last minute and have spent this weekend learning how to mimic the Ai 6 pattern tool in Ai 5. It's great to see a preview of your patterns live and I also picked up some general Illustrator tips along the way. Lots of things I didn't know about that are fundamental to using Illustrator properly! 

Here's a pattern I made using Zapf Dingbat glyphs - something I would never have thought of doing! A fast way to create simple shapes.

I'm self taught on Ai - I haven't really delved into all the resources available on Lynda.com or elsewhere and relied on what I had learned as part of my ABSPD course which was basic but proved sufficient for a good while. I do think it's important to know the look you're trying to create and then seek out the skills to achieve this rather than knowing Illustrator inside out but not having an idea what to create! A balance of developing style and skills is what is needed.

It's been a fantastic weekend and I've still lots more to do - I've decided to do at least one lesson a day now in Basic Illustrator just to make sure that I'm not missing some other vital skills. There's been a lot of "Oh, that's how you do that," and "Oh I always wondered about that," this weekend! And a lot of pyjama wearing too! 

If you are using Ai 4 or 5 and would like to learn about automatic patterns, there's a video here from Deke's Techniques where Laura originally got the idea from. Then this is Laura's follow on video from her paid for tutorial on how to make swatches, which as I said, is not really available at the moment I don't think. It doesn't really follow on from Deke's video exactly - you need to have multiple artboards in place but maybe it's possible to understand this by watching these two videos side by side. If anyone really, really wants me to try and explain it you can email me but in all honesty I just really hope that Laura's classes will be available again soon as they are fantastic for beginners in Illustrator. She has a lovely clear, fast paced style of delivery and a really good working knowledge of Illustrator. 

So, that's all for now. I hope someone somewhere enjoys my blog. I'm certainly enjoying writing it! Please feel free to comment if you wish.
Enjoy your day,
Frankie x

Essential Surface Pattern Design Resources #1 ABSPD

This is the first in a series of posts regarding what I consider to be essential resources if you are starting out in surface pattern design. I'd like to share some of the things that I've found helpful. If you'd like to suggest any other resources, please leave me a comment, I'd love to hear what has helped you!

1. The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design - Online Course 

I have taken modules 1-3 of this course and can confidently say: it has changed my life. I've always loved pattern but I followed the Fine Art route when I went to university and always regretted it a little bit as I loved design - I didn't pick textiles though because I couldn't sew and didn't have a massive interest in fashion, not realising that these things were only aspects of studying textiles - it's about so much more. After doing a couple of bits of freelance graphic design work I decided that I would look for an online course and that's how I stumbled upon ABPSD and immediately realised it was the course for me. I took module 2 first because I couldn't wait to start and then took all 3 modules in succession when the course started again. It was a fantastic journey, both fun and challenging and it gave me the skills and confidence to believe that I really could have a go at doing something I love.

The course starts with basic motif design. Rachael really emphasises the importance of developing your own style and gave clear direction on how to work towards this. This is so important not just for the sake of integrity but also for personal satisfaction. There are some lovely drawing exercises to support this - I particularly liked the doodle wall - I obsessed over mine and it ended up being a great source of inspiration. 

The tutorials for Illustrator and Photoshop are easy to follow and I've used pretty much everything I learned in my personal work since. 

Business was covered with live briefs and essential business stationery design, technical information regarding print and production, live briefs and interviews with working surface pattern designers.

The course is fast paced but not overwhelming and the use of Flickr for sharing work provides a virtual common room where students can offer support to each other.

One piece of advice I would give is to try to commit to completing the course on time. Although access to the classroom remains open for months after, it's much more rewarding to complete with assignments alongside the other students - it can be quite lonely and difficult if you end up playing catch up. This happened to me in the middle of module 3 when I went on a family visit abroad. I was so distracted by wanting to know what the assignments were and wanting to work! 

At the end of the course the only things determining whether you are ready to embark on licensing and selling your patterns will be the quality and quantity of what you have in your portfolio. The course gives you all the necessary tools and advice but you will still need to put in the time to develop your portfolio to a professional standard,which might be particularly challenging if you have no previous experience of design before the course. I'm pleased to see the addition of module 4 which goes a long way towards tackling this issue. Upon completion of the course I knew I wasn't ready to publicly launch myself and needed time to develop my style and grow my portfolio. I was already in the groove of working every day on designs after the course so the transition to working independently was easy. Some people seemed to pick up work immediately after the course and had fab portfolios and lovely websites. Don't be put off if this happens, students are from a variety of backgrounds and some may have worked in the field already or be used to working freelance. I found this range of ability and experience inspiring rather than disheartening. The course gave me all the skills and knowledge I needed, I just needed to then go away and put in the time building my portfolio and developing my style which I've been doing since and feel I've really grown as a designer. 

ABSPD was a wonderful start to a marvellous journey of learning that continues to bring pleasure to my life. It's empowering and inspiring and delivers everything it promises and more!

You can find out more here

Thanks for reading,
Frankie x