Karolful Karolful

Graphic Botanicals

The inspiration for this surface pattern series was derived from the dialogue between geometric and organic elements. This is reflected in the interconnection of digital flat shapes with the hand drawn free-flowing line drawings.

By juxtaposing organised geometrical order, with nature’s elegant shapes, this design contributes to the ongoing relationship between the two.

This sur­face pat­tern design 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.

Surface Pattern Brief

This sur­face pat­tern series is a briefed com­mis­sion for a Spring — Sum­mer Col­lec­tion for boys aged up to 36 months old.

Below you can view the colour palette com­posed by Kidspat­tern: two shades of brown matched with a duo of blues (light and dark). The palette is also shared with anoth­er pat­tern set from the same group. To view “Leaf Veins” please click HERE.

To cre­ate the ele­ments used in this sur­face pat­tern, the process began with a lin­ear out­line of dif­fer­ent­ly shaped leaves and botan­i­cals with a dig­i­tal ink pen. The main con­cept for this design involved using these in a graph­ic com­po­si­tion struc­tured around a flat, dark anchor point. This con­trast was cre­at­ed by jux­ta­pos­ing geo­met­ri­cal shapes with nat­ur­al ones, bring­ing in both abstract and organ­ic qual­i­ties to the design.

Fur­ther arrange­ments have the ele­ments brought clos­er togeth­er, so that they start lay­er­ing on top of one oth­er. This result­ed in an inter­est­ing over­lap­ping effect, mak­ing this series very dimen­sion­al. These pat­terns are fuelled by inter­ac­tions between the lines and shapes of each ele­ment with­in the graph­ic composition.

Geometric Shape

This is the main arrange­ment of this sur­face pat­tern series fea­tur­ing an addi­tion of a bold graph­ic square. The square acts as a focal point, whilst the remain­ing ele­ments are arranged and ordered neat­ly as a sur­round­ing flat lay.

Here, the design is recoloured in brown shades from the palette, and is visu­alised in both large and medi­um sizes on a white, as well as tint­ed brown back­grounds. This arrange­ment was select­ed by the client and went to print.

Additional Spacing

In both of these sur­face pat­tern ver­sions, the botan­i­cal ele­ments are spread fur­ther apart and are also rotat­ed. This offers a more spa­cious and irreg­u­lar arrange­ment. The total num­ber of colours used here is reduced to only two.

In the first recolour­ing, for vari­a­tion, the pat­tern is placed atop a light cream back­ground to com­bine the blues and browns from the palette.

Blue Jungle

In these sur­face pat­terns, all parts of the ele­ments are over­lay­ing each oth­er, which cre­ates a sen­sa­tion of a dense foliage. In this close-up, you can see more of the details of the inter­twin­ing drawings.

To end, these are recoloured in a mono­chrome blue with an addi­tion of white. Placed atop both light and dark blue back­grounds they are visu­alised in both: medi­um and large sizes.

Surface Pattern in Print

Please browse through a slideshow selec­tion of a few exam­ples of this pat­tern in print. These are pho­tographs from the launch of the client’s Spring-Sum­mer Col­lec­tion in their brand shop. Here you may observe how the pat­tern was used and how it fits with­in the wider con­text of the colour group.

Please note that these images are pro­vid­ed cour­tesy of the client and Kidspat­tern and are used for port­fo­lio pur­pos­es only.

“I’m like a plant, I reach for the sun.”

Car­ole King