This brief immediately caught my attention due to the artistic nature of the designs we’ve been asked to produce. English Weather began as a knitwear brand, but has since developed into rather exclusively a luxury scarf brand. All of their designs are made by the brands founder Gohar Goddard in physical mediums, so I want to stay true to that somewhat by not relying on digital means to create a print.
None of English Weather’s prints thus far have been repeat patterns, so I’d like to honour that and create something unique enough to fit into the brands previous designs, whilst still bringing in a new perspective.
We need to design for the Summer/Spring 2021 collection in a silk modal fabric, to a 140cmx140cm square. With this in mind, I’d like to use quite light colours with a white backdrop, as the fabric isn’t entirely opaque, so when it naturally drapes I want the bolder colours to still be seen.
Stuck on how to start, I began to make a mood board with suggested artists and some general images that I want to take inspiration from.
Also taken into account was the typical customer of English Weather and what they’re looking for, found in my blog post here.
My partner on this project is Phillipa, and she suggested that we perhaps take influence from Oxford’s architecture in our work, as it is a unique take that we could use to put a spin on our designs.
Stuck on what colours I wanted to use, I decided to take some illustrations I had completed earlier in the year that I felt had successful colour palettes, blur them, and then repaint over in an abstract manner.
I felt that some of these worked quite well whilst others were definite “no’s”. The ones I liked most were the ones that incorporated blues, pinks and some negative space. In particular, the last two in the gallery above. With this new idea for colour palettes in mind, I started to do some traditional swatches and experiments with watercolours and markers.
I really liked the combination of the hot pink and the bright turquoise. Whilst it brought an almost 80’s aesthetic, I felt that it still felt somewhat unique and modern.
My partner Phillipa had gone around Oxford taking High Res images of the architecture to influence the shapes I would use – which I did in the following images. I used a method wherein I placed the colours with rough watercolours first, waited for them to dry, and then freehanded with loose charcoals. The main tone I really wanted was one of liberation and freedom with the marks I made.
I was then planning on taking these ideas and producing them again but much larger in a traditional medium – but when I started experimenting with the images I had already produced, I realised that the carefree nature of the tests was exactly what I needed in the final product anyway. So I used what I had already produced to experiment in a digital medium for the final outcomes.
For the initial tests I worked to a 72dpi canvas of 70x70cm, just for the sake of ease.
I began by just seeing how some of my compositions would work in a square canvas – and then I started to incorporate other elements, such as hue shifts and freehand text from one of my tests. I really liked how the text looked over the free lines and charcoal, so decided that I would definitely incorporate this into the final design. I wanted the writing, however illegible, to actually say something of worth, so I took a few sheets of paper and began to write.
The writing includes various street names from Oxford (fitting with the Oxonian theme suggested earlier), the materials used to create the images, various buzz words that fit with the English Weather brand, and some filler to pad it all out.
With this new asset, I moved onto making potential final designs in Photoshop, in a document that fit the measurements and dpi necessary.
The process was quite tedious at times, as the way I was changing the colour of the very high resolution texts involved a lot of clipping masks and effect layers; however, I really like how these turned out. I’m planning on presenting at least two of these as options, and I am very open to feedback from the client when it comes to any changes that they would like to be made.
I think that the use of text adds a slight intrigue to the pieces without relying heavily on recognisable imagery. I’m happy with how vague and abstract the designs are whilst remaining somewhat architectural; and I feel that in an ever so slightly transparent, draping format like a silk scarf, my colour and texture choices are going to look incredible.
One thing I would like to do, ideally, is print these on some scrap fabric to see how the colour distribution works on legs around a neck when worn, but unfortunately I have neither the time nor facilities to do so. But from looking at examples of English Weather spreads, I think that I’ve done a passable job at making sure there’s no large blank areas that will look bad when worn.
Prosaic Vocabulary 