Karolful Karolful

Romantic Meadow

To walk through a wild meadow, during a warm summer evening as the sun is slowly setting, is truly an uplifting experience. Buzzing with life and bursting with growth it provides a never ending source of inspiration and true awe. This artwork is meant to evoke a memory of such an experience, whilst also being an ongoing celebration of nature’s abundance and the versatility of shapes of its creation.

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 of the Brief

This pat­tern series was com­mis­sioned for a client’s Spring Sum­mer Col­lec­tion aimed at girls aged 18 to 36 months old. The over­all order includ­ed two designs which would cov­er both parts of their Sum­mer release. These were sep­a­rat­ed by two cor­re­spond­ing colour palettes, both designed by Kidspat­tern. The first one com­prised of a range of pale pinks con­trast­ed with a deep bur­gundy and a navy blue, mean­while the sec­ond one replaced the bur­gundy and navy with a selec­tion of two warm browns.

Draw­ing from time hon­oured tra­di­tions of flo­ral pat­terns, this series por­trays a col­lec­tion of a whim­si­cal, hybrid flow­ers which blend diverse blos­soms by hav­ing them grow out from a sin­gu­lar stem. This design was intend­ed to be screen print ready, there­fore the hand drawn ele­ments were live trace and vec­torised. An addi­tion­al lay­er of flat draw­ing was added on top to define the details. Dur­ing the devel­op­ment of this series these botan­i­cal ele­ments were con­se­quent­ly recoloured and rearranged into var­i­ous com­po­si­tions includ­ing reg­u­lar, scat­tered and diag­o­nal. 

Starting Point

Here are the ele­ments select­ed for the first part of the Sum­mer Col­lec­tion along­side the intend­ed palette. This ini­tial, base ver­sion of the pat­tern makes a use of the palette’s full spectrum.

Placed on a stan­dard, white back­ground with the pinks applied in the blos­soms and the stems recoloured in tint­ed navy. The arrange­ment is bal­anced, reg­u­lar and verit­i­cal and visu­alised in a medi­um size. 

Silhouette in Blue

This ver­sion of the pat­tern proved very pop­u­lar as it focus­es sole­ly on the blue aspect of the palette. As a result, it end­ed up being a sig­na­ture print for a whole blue range of cloth­ing items. It is a com­bi­na­tion of the flo­ral ele­ments, matched with a fur­ther lay­er of silhouettes.

Click right to view the accom­pa­ny­ing, fur­ther sim­pli­fied and thus sec­ondary print in pink, com­posed pure­ly out of the sil­hou­ettes lay­ered in two con­trast­ing sizes.   

Dark Background

This ver­sion of the pat­tern was placed against a tint­ed blue back­ground with the flo­rals recoloured in shades of light pink. The ele­ments are arranged close­ly togeth­er with some of them flipped upside down. Over­all com­po­si­tion remains reg­u­lar and ver­ti­cal, how­ev­er now the pat­tern is visu­alised in a larg­er size. 

Placement Print

The sec­ond part of the Sum­mer release was built around an altered colour palette that matched the pinks with warm browns. Addi­tion­al­ly, the flo­ral ele­ments dif­fer from those used in the first part. Here the brief required a design pre­pared for a place­ment print, hence, we explored a vari­ety of posi­tion­ing for the art­work. View some of our ideas below.

In the first idea, the small scat­tered details radi­ate side­ways from the mid­dle of the gar­ment or alter­na­tive­ly up its sleeves.

The sec­ond arrange­ment was a tran­si­tion­al com­po­si­tion made from dark flo­ral sil­hou­ettes topped and dot­ted with large sized flower heads.

Last­ly, all the flo­ral ele­ments were placed along the rim of the dress in a reg­u­lar, ver­ti­cal, and lin­ear manner.

Design in Print

Please browse through a slideshow selec­tion of var­i­ous exam­ples of this pat­tern in print below. These pho­tographs are of the client’s first cloth­ing sam­ples which were pro­duced to dis­play at a trad­ing fair for the launch of their over­all Spring-Sum­mer collection.

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

Here you may observe how the Mead­ow Pat­tern was used and print­ed across mul­ti­ple items in both parts of their sum­mer release. Hope­ful­ly these quick snaps should give you an idea of how this design fits with­in the wider aspect of the cloth­ing range it belongs to.

I’ve also attached close ups of the mate­r­i­al and dis­plays of dif­fer­ent ver­sions, place­ments and arrange­ments, which demon­strate this design’s ver­sa­tile use.

“How does the Mead­ow flower its bloom unfold? Because the love­ly lit­tle flower is free down to its root, and in that free­dom bold.“

william-wordsworth_biopic
William Wordsworth Eng­lish Roman­tic Poet