You'll receive direct input and create ten highly commercial, SELLABLE designs with career-defining superpowers.
As commercial designers, we need to work fast. Understanding which corners to cut is vital. It's okay to make the laborious task of drawing faster by tracing motives. You can edit as you draw. This can save hours and then you can spend more time making sure your colours are pleasing and your composition Interesting. Watch the video here.
If you are planning on printing your designs to fabric, there are a few things to consider. When ink is printed to fabric, it bleeds ever so slightly into the weave or fibres,...
Longina Phillips Designs has had booths at shows for over a decade. "For us, it's a marketing exercise," says Longina Phillips (Lola), owner, and founder of our medium-sized design studio. You have buying teams from the biggest fashion and lifestyle brands like H&M, ASOS, and Zara, and fabric converters like SET come in to buy in bulk. "So while financially, a show can be very good, it’s also very important for a studio to see and be seen," she says.
Buying teams are constantly changing. "You have people...
And you can see here that the designer has done a great job with color, super commercial. I especially love this green and pink combination. It's really happy. It has white in there for freshness, which is really important for swimwear. So I think the only issue I would have with this design is that it's a little bit messy.
No problems with iPads as long as you don’t do everything in Procreate. As long as there's...
Today, I want to talk about the importance of shopping at bricks and mortar stores. As Head of Design at a world-leading surface design studio, I can tell you that in the business it’s crucial you stay in front of fashion trends.
However, online research can only take you so far. Visiting retail stores in person can provide valuable insights and inspiration that you just can't get from browsing online. Keep watching for our 4 best reasons to go shopping ASAP!
First and foremost, when you are in a retail store, you get a better understanding of how a print customer buys a print.
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As a studio, we use Photoshop as it allows our designers to have the most creative freedom when it comes to editing and manipulating their prints.
So a good time to use Illustrator is when you want to create vector-based artworks. So they are shapes that use points and anchors instead of pixels. So it means that they are infinitely scalable. So a good time to use Illustrated would be if you're doing a Pucci print or maybe you're doing a Geo print that you don't know what the scale of it might be. So it could be put on a billboard. And in that case,...
Read on and favourite this page for future reference!
Bec: Good question. If your style is naturally very detailed, you would just take that across into your skins where you might use more detail in the hair of the skin or the movement, you'd be more detailed in the way you draw a flower.
If you are very loose and abstract you would still take that same handwriting into paisleys or animal skins. I think it's just practice and finding the right methods for your handwriting. What do you think Lola?
Lola:...
Words by Erin, Digital Design Media Manager
First of all, congratulations for being on this design journey — wherever you are, whatever stage you’re at.
You've made the wonderfully rewarding decision to nurture your passion for print. The fact that you are even reading this blog proves it!
You are doing the work and putting it out there. And we know that can be scary. Even the simple act of putting brush to paper, and not sharing it online will expose you to the worst critic there is….. yourself.
We know here from personal experience how awful that inner nag can sound.
...“My painted rose doesn’t look anything like I wanted!”
“I have published my digital folio but had no interest in my work!”
“I’m a failure.”
“I’m not a good enough artist to be in print design”
“I cannot complete this print in Photoshop, but I should be able to!”
“My work is rubbish.”
Written and produced by Erin, Digital Design Media Manager
If you're reading this you're on the path. You want to make a solid living from your surface prints and we congratulate you on that! You've made the decision to create the life you've always dreamed of.
But we don't want to lie. Making it in this competitive biz takes work and a lot of learning about the print industry and how it operates. The good news is, we've created a course so we can explain everything in-depth to you. Check out our Comprehensive Business Builder for Surface Designers and sign up for the waitlist right here.
So you know that, within the realm of fashion,...
Three students of our Comprehensive Business Builder for Surface Designers e-course had a burning question for Longina. Read on for her direct reply to them over Zoom (transcribed and repeated here for you lovely blog readers!).
Some clients do get very upset if you post without their permission and it's better to avoid that argument. It does rattle you because you think, Well I've done all the hard work, I should be able to post it. But ask for their permission first, or if it's already in the marketplace [in stores etc.] then it's usually fine to go ahead and...
Words by Lyndsay, Creative Lead and Senior Designer
Are you a surface print pattern designer? Want to make money selling your prints one day? Unless your goal is to work as a designer inside an established studio, you'll need some sales skills. Yep, not only do you need to know how to design impactful, impressive, and on-trend designs, but you'll have to convince a customer to buy your design (and not someone else's!).
So what does it take? Well, we'll tell you! We're Longina Phillips Designs and we've learned a thing or two about selling prints over 30 years of being in business. Read on for our top sales secrets and turn your creative mind into money now!
If you want to create a commercially viable, diverse, and desirable selection of work, you'll need to offer a broad array of styles. Customers have different needs and so the more looks you can supply, the greater your chance of having the right print at the right time. ...
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