This year I participated in the Make it in Design Summer School 2016.

For those of you who have never hear of Make it in Design, it is a website running a series of Surface Pattern Design courses created by a team headed by successful designer and entrepreneur Rachel Taylor. If you’ve never heard of her I suggest looking up her fabulous designs!

There are 3 tracks for the summer school and I took beginner and intermediate. We are given 2 design briefs to work to based on emerging trends. The school is a great way of getting your creative juices flowing and gives you the chance to tackle a project you might otherwise have ignored. I thought I would share with you the designs that I created for the school.

 

Beginner track brief 1 French Riviera

 

I used my mother’s collection of seashells for this brief.

 

Beginner track brief 2 Honest Hand-marks

I have to say this brief didn’t come easy to me but I created a dress mock up to display my design.

Intermediate track brief 1 Honest Meadow land

I went out into the big wide world for inspiration for this brief, finding lots of meadow flowers and grasses to draw.

Intermediate track brief 2 Escape Souk

This was by far my favourite. I would have never thought to look at this kind of thing before now but I simply could not stop designing! Needless to say I came up with a whole collection for this brief but this is the design that I submitted for the summer school.

 

Pattern Bombing

 

Immediately after the summer school, the make it in design team launched a pattern bombing competition where designers Photoshopped their own patterns onto objects in the outside world including architecture, animals and other things. This was great fun and interesting to see my patterns on other things! I used my holiday snaps from Paris to display some of my patterns.