‘Celestial Playground’ is the most recent design I worked on, and there is a bit of a story behind it.
This design was an entry for the ‘Make it in Design’ Winter School (Check out all of their incredible courses here) which I was half-way through when suddenly the bottom fell out of my world as my mother became critically ill. Within a matter of hours I left Australia and went to her bedside in France. She passed away shortly after I got there.
I had packed my sketch book with me, thinking that it would be a good distraction to keep working on the design school briefs, anticipating that I would be spending a lot of time at night, possibly by myself, mulling over things and falling down the rabbit hole. In the dark couple of days after her death, I worked away on my sketches and ideas for the intermediate track, called ‘Cosmos' - Celestial’, which seemed a very apt theme to allow me to escape into my imagination.
My ideas started forming around the imagery and concepts from a personal favourite tale, ‘The Little Prince’, which tells of the frustration of a little boy who doesn’t understand why grown ups cannot see things in the way he does. I focused on a little boy character who was playing in a celestial environment, planting stars, catching stars, gazing at stars. It all felt right. Perhaps it was unknowingly a little homage to my beautiful mum and her vivid artist’s imagination and childlike way of interpreting the world at times.
Working the sketches into the pattern happened quite organically, and the MIID school provided a beautiful colour palette involving some rich mustardy yellows, dusky pinks and deep indigo blues. I inverted the idea of a typical space palette by making my planet forms dark and the surrounding atmosphere a light, playful pink tone.
The final design, ‘Celestial Playground’
After completing that brief I was unable to continue with the Winter School due to the bereavement. I plan to go back and complete the last couple of briefs in my own time.
A few weeks later, It was with first astonishment, and then delight, that I clicked on a link from the Make it in Design facebook page, seeing one of my designs featured in the link. Curious to know why my design was on there, I followed the website link and discovered that my design had been given first place in the Winter School’s intermediate category, selected out of a lot of other incredibly talented designers’ work, by the wonderful Fashion Formula judges. I will now be able to see the design come to life printed on 3 square metres of a fabric of my choice, as well seeing it made into gift wrap.
Thank you so much to the wonderful Make it in Design school for this wonderful acknowledgement, and for all the opportunities that you offer to so many aspiring surface pattern designers.
I am pleased that at least my mum got to see the preliminary sketches for this design. This one is most certainly dedicated to her.
This mock-up template was provided by the Make it in Design team for the Winter School participants. It really helped to visualise the design in situ