Week 1- primary research

Visit to Liberty London

Recently I have become quite interested in print design and surface design for products such as bedlinen and other home furnishings. I always thought it might be quite fun to experiment with my own designs one day, applying my illustrations to different mediums. Therefore for my FMP I decided to start here, looking at ways this has been done before and how I could put my own spin on it whilst finding a concept to base my ideas on.

One of the first places of research that came to mind was Liberty's and their very distinctive and interesting fabrics that they produce and sell. I therefore decided to take a trip there to find inspiration for my project.

Immediately I could see that the designers use a large variety of bright and bold colours within their designs, a detail which I often like to include in my work. Their new scarf collection was entitled "Garden of Beauty"  which seemed perfect for me as nature is one of the topics I considered basing my project on.

I loved these beautifully colourful flowers outside the store and would love to include illustrations of pictures such as these in my project however I want to do something a bit more interesting and creative with them rather than just using a literal representation of nature in my work.

Before visiting the store I did a bit of research online and found a video on youtube interviewing some of the designers of Liberty Arts Fabrics, in which they revealed their design processes and means of inspiration.

The designers at Liberty's seem to use a variety of different techniques to create their pieces, including screen and block printing and digital softwares. A lot of the designs are also made from a combination of different layers and images produced in a variety of different ways from photographs to hand drawn illustrations and even camera-less photography. 

This is evident in the images of some of the fabrics bellow. Some of the prints and patterns were also very detailed which made for very impressive pieces. I am going to use both of these techniques when experimenting with my fabric designs as I feel it is very effective in creating something out of the ordinary.

The design in the photograph above reminds me of an almost "Alice in Wonderland" type scene, where different objects are falling down a kind of abyss into an imaginary world.

Looking around the store made me realise how many of the patterns and prints are effective because of how repetitive they are. If I want to end up printing my own designs onto fabric to create other things, I will probably need to learn how to do this digitally on what even software I have to use.

I really liked one of their displays pictured above. They had made a dolls house out of cupboards/a chest of drawers and used their own fabrics to make all the interior furnishings. I thought that this could be a possible way of presenting my own designs for my final outcome as it seemed like a really clever way to show their clients how their fabrics might be used.

I really liked the design above as it is a classic water colour painting of a landscape but instead of this artist's work being applied to a canvas, the image has been presented on an unusual medium a, cushion. I thought that this could be something that I could experiment with as it could almost act as a world with in a world (a person's reality) and therefore be a form of escapism as just by looking at this colourful and uplifting image the viewer/owner could be transported into another world.

The design pictured above also really interested me as I had already thought about maybe using Ravensbourne's embroidery machine as a way of applying my designs onto fabric and I felt that this design was really unique and engaging. I really love the detail in the image and how every vain in the leaf is represented by its own embroidered line.

I definitely learnt a lot from this trip and by seeing the different designs first hand, I was really inspired to go home and create my own.