Karolful Karolful

Space Explorer

Mysterious and infinite, outer space has consistently sparked mankind’s imagination and continues to beckon with its shimmering stars in the far distance.

This series is a celebration of man’s insatiable desire for exploration; our curiosity to reach out further than we’ve ever experienced in order to expand our knowledge and understanding of the world (and beyond). 

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.

Above you can view the main ver­sion of the pat­tern, which has the astro­naut flipped in a mir­rored mod­ule. It’s arranged close togeth­er, which cre­ates a bold and full pat­tern. The tan­gled, con­nect­ing cord adds a ver­ti­cal, free-flow­ing rhythm.

This design works equal­ly well on both, white and black back­grounds with use of just two print colours. An accent spot of red detail was weaved into this design to fit with the con­text of the over­all col­lec­tion and the colour group it was com­mis­sioned for. 

Overview

This design forms part of a pat­tern series com­mis­sioned for a client’s AW col­lec­tion aimed at boys aged 18 – 36 months. The attached colour palette was com­posed by Kidspat­tern and con­sists of a selec­tion of warm browns and tra­di­tion­al blues con­trast­ed by a spot of a ver­mil­lion red. To the side, you can also view an addi­tion­al, sim­pli­fied “stamp” ver­sion addressed for newborns.

The ele­ment we chose to focus on was an illus­tra­tion of a fear­less astro­naut in a space­suit float­ing in the cos­mos. It is based on a pho­to­graph­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion, turned into a draw­ing filled with lin­ear shad­ing with an addi­tion of a thick­er hand-drawn out­line. 

First Version

First­ly, the main ele­ment is arranged diag­o­nal­ly in a sim­ple repeat with plen­ty of space around it. The fill of the astro­naut blends with the medi­um blue back­ground, whilst the cord is filled in with white, which cre­ates a pleas­ing flow.

For the adjust­ment, the astro­naut was flipped and arranged in ver­ti­cal columns with the cord con­nect­ing them. Now it is the small detail of the space­suit that pops out in white against a dark­er shade of blue background.

Here, the pat­tern is visu­alised in both small and large size as an over­all print. 

Starry Galaxy

Now, the design becomes more com­plex with the back­ground filled in with specks of shim­mer­ing stars to help con­vey that end­less galaxy feel­ing. In this ver­sion, the astro­naut was rotat­ed around, as if spin­ning weight­less­ly in space.

Also, it has been recoloured so it adds to the depth of the design, as it blends in and out with the back­ground — high­light­ing the mul­ti-dimen­sion­al effect.

Please swipe through few colour and size options here.

Dark Background

Since this is a pat­tern inspired by out­er space, often the default back­ground colour was set at mid­night blue. That’s why this last ver­sion once again has the astro­naut float­ing amongst the galax­ies of dis­tant twin­kling stars.

The ele­ment is out­lined in medi­um blue with a lay­er of white on top and with red accents run­ning through­out the design. Here you can browse through for few colour and size options.

“Today the stars and tomor­row the galaxies.
No force exists in the Uni­verse that can stop us.”

James P. Hogan Inher­it the Stars