Pattern designs for children
Pattern designs for children
Recently, I created two sets of pattern designs for children for an online course; ‘Rise, Design and Shine’. Actually, the first set was for a separate brief, or a trend report, set by Emily Kiddy. I created a series of three ‘Cats in Space’ designs, for younger girls. The main design has cute cats wearing astronaut helmets, and my coordinates were of space mapping and cat’s faces with stars.
The second design collection was for the ‘Cute Character’ brief (week two). We were to design as the title says, ‘Cute Characters’, and I decided to create a pre-teen boys collection. As I had already created a cats space theme and thought it would be lovely to see this theme run through into boys’ apparel.
For this collection, I designed a rosy cheeked space boy, to be placed on a pyjama top and two coordinates for the bottoms. The space boy illustration is pretty simple in design, when compared to the matching space patterns. I have noticed a trend where pyjama tops have one image and the bottoms have a busy pattern. I used the space boy, two aliens, planets and stars for one of the patterns and a bold planet and stars pattern for the second design. The overall collection has a graphical feel and stronger colours, suited for pre-teen boys.
In the near future, I’d like to produce an additional two designs, because I went a bit overboard with my initial drawings, so have a number of as yet unused images which I can re-purpose. I’m thinking of a softer palette as an alternative to the primary colours, especially in the striped planets and stars pattern. I find it interesting to see variations within a theme.
‘Cats in space’ girls apparel collection
For my Cats in Space patterns, I initially painted the cats using watercolour and ink, collage and crayons. Then, I put them together in PhotoShop, bringing in some hand drawn icons from Illustrator. I love the colour palette. The brighter pinks, oranges, lime green and yellows stand out against the navy, black and soft greys.
Pre-teen boys ‘Space boy’ apparel collection
When creating my initial drawings for this collection, I began by using marker pens, gouache and watercolour. I’d say that for this brief I was much more experimental with materials and had a lot of fun drawing aliens, space boys, rockets and other space images. As mentioned earlier, I still have lots more material to play around with for more designs. I love my little wash bag, which my husband likes too! Hmmm… I may just have to look into this!!
Weeks three’s brief is all about florals, and those who have been following my blog, Instagram and Facebook page will know that I will be very excited about this! (grinning widely) 😀
Emma Jayne x