In this article I share about inspiration and process behind designing my new mini collection.
The idea for this collection came to me very suddenly. As I’m new in surface design field so I always want to enrich my portfolio, I had already thought about my 2nd collection after my 1st one was done.
Winter finally finished its job. Spring came. I could feel everything around me has changed. Everything seems to have more energy and become brighter. That vibe inspired me to make this “Spring vibe” collection.
When I had the idea, the next step was gathering inspirations. I often look for inspiration on Pinterest, sometimes from Unsplash (stock photos site) or even around me.
When I have all my inspirations, I often start making my mood board. It’s just a document where all my inspirations were gathered together. Then I choose my color palette from those photos, or sometimes I searched for color inspiration in advance.
Mood board with photos I found from Pinterest and Unsplash
I often sketch more motifs than I need, then decide what motif will be in my patterns and what can wait for the next time.
With this collection, I’ve done everything in Affinity Designer app on iPad. Before Affinity, I always used Procreate to make my patterns. Now I use Procreate sometimes just for sketching and fine lines then vectorise in another app called Adobe Captures before colouring in Affinity.
Based on what I’ve learned, mini collection often has 5-6 patterns. It includes 1 hero pattern which is the most complicated and detailed and has almost colors in the color palette, 1-2 secondary patterns which are less complicated than the hero but still detailed, 3-4 blenders or supporters which are less colors and less motifs, just simple patterns with different styles.
Professional surface designer usually plan their collection before they started drawing their motifs. I don’t plan as much, I often make any patten that come to my mind first, then I develop the collection as I go, so I can’t decide what will be my Hero in the collection.
patterns Vs inspirations
This is full of my collection with the large pattern is the hero of the collection. The second big one is the secondary.
In this collection the hero and secondary are haftdrop match.
After finishing my patterns I often put them in mockups to see how they look in the real products and then upload them to my POD shops. I started this journey from Redbubble, so Redbubble is always my most favourite POD platform to sell my patterns.
I really love the way they look in fabrics, I’m still thinking about Spoonflowers, maybe I will try with this collection.
They’re all ready for licensing, just contact me at info@lemfindesignstudio.com
Thank you for reading!
