Karolful Karolful

Autumnal Treasures

Autumnal Treasures, is a design inspired by precious little finds brought home from an autumnal walk in the forest. Foraging in nature’s pantry not only keeps us connected to the changing seasons, but also mindful of the reassuring, anticipative cycle of growth.

This project was a part of my ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kidspat­tern. If you’d like to learn more about them please vis­it their web­site HERE. Alter­na­tive­ly, view the archive of our pre­vi­ous projects HERE, in which I dis­cuss in detail the his­to­ry and nature of our work.

All cloth­ing-mock­ups pre­sent­ed here are pro­vid­ed cour­tesy of Kidspat­tern and are used for visu­al­i­sa­tion pur­pos­es only.

Overview

This design is from a pat­tern devel­op­ment series com­mis­sioned for a client’s Autumn Col­lec­tion aimed at boys aged 6 – 36 months old. The orig­i­nal colour palette pre­pared for this group by trend and colour spe­cial­ist Kidspat­tern, con­sists of a selec­tion of refined greys com­ple­ment­ed with two shades of uni­ver­sal blue. 

Cel­e­bra­tion of the sea­son was rep­re­sent­ed in an abun­dant selec­tion of ver­sa­tile nat­ur­al ele­ments like nuts and seed­pods. These were com­ple­ment­ed by a fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle col­lec­tion of acorns, chest­nuts, pine cones, leaves and sycamore heli­copter seeds arranged amongst dried twigs, berries and leaves.

These ele­ments were ren­dered in two dif­fer­ent tech­niques, depend­ing on the method of print avail­able for the item of cloth­ing. The first was pre­pared for screen print and as such is lim­it­ed to 3 – 4 base flat Pan­tone colours. Whilst the sec­ond was set up as a dig­i­tal print and thus explored more of a flu­id, water­colour effect that seemed more fit­ting for such an organ­ic theme.

This effect was first devel­oped in the pre­vi­ous design from the same Col­lec­tion — Clema­tis (view HERE). It involved a bespoke com­bi­na­tion formed from a base, which was made from manip­u­la­tion of pho­to­graph­ic mate­r­i­al, topped with an addi­tion­al lay­er of dig­i­tal draw­ing. You can see the artwork’s details in the close-ups pro­vid­ed above.

Newborn Collection

The first ver­sion of the pat­tern has the ele­ments in a reg­u­lar and bal­anced arrange­ment with even spac­ing, with the lines of twigs mark­ing a sub­tle rhythm in the com­po­si­tion. Here the design is pre­sent­ed in both large and small sizes and in two colour ways.

One ver­sion focus­es on just the grey side of the palette, whilst the oth­er incor­po­rates shades of blue. A sim­pler method of print made this design more appro­pri­ate for the younger age group.

Watercolour Effect

These designs explore coloured back­grounds in both dark and medi­um blues. They also dif­fer in the size of the pat­tern and the spac­ing of the tran­si­tion­al, dynam­ic arrange­ment that the ele­ments are scat­tered in.

The water­colour effect tech­nique allows for smooth tran­si­tions between deep full-bod­ied colours. These options were aimed at the old­er age groups.

Monochrome

In order to cre­ate a more pared back and sub­tle option to bal­ance out the bold vivid one, for this ver­sion, groups of ele­ments were reworked in pale, mono­chrome shades from the palette.

This result­ed in a lighter and more under­stat­ed design, which was matched with a white back­ground as well as a misty grey. The arrange­ment remains scat­tered and the visu­al­i­sa­tion presents two dif­fer­ent sizes this could be used in.

“Nature gives to every time and sea­son some beau­ties of its own.”

Charles Dick­ens