During my first year on the Surface Pattern Course, I had the opportunity to produce a body of work in response to a competition brief. The competition is called The I-Dott Wallpaper Competition, and involves leading designers and wallpaper brands in the industry to view new emerging talent. Every year theres are usually 4 different briefs to choose from, each have their own sponsors, which will also be deciding winning designs.
For this year that I entered, I chose to study the brief ARTISAN. This was all about creating beautiful repeating wallpapers, from initial handcrafted artwork using traditional methods, which are then digitised into modern flawless patterns. I had the opportunity to explore various different methods of producing work with that artisan vibe.
Through testing and experimenting, I found a love for Lino relief printing. This process of printing is much slower and time consuming, and very delicate. My design was inspired by the contrast of geometric structures with botanical forms, with research directed by work of Martha Armitage and Lyubov Popova.
after submitting my body of work for marking, and my design to the competition, I was very surprised and overwhelmed to hear that my design had been shortlisted, and then later found out that I had placed 2nd place in the ARTISAN category. This news for me was a massive confidence boost in myself as a designer, and fuelled my motivation to develop my skills and design knowledge further.
The Gala Dinner event in The Monastery Manchester, where the award ceremony took place. Here I had the great opportunity to network with other upcoming designers from across the UK, as well as people from design companies such as FineDecor.
