TDL News 1-13-20

This Week: Branding Group-Study

The response from our 2019 Summer of Creativity was so positive that we have turned much of the content into a new branding course!

In this Group-Study you’ll explore your brand identity and create pattern collections that tell your unique story. This is done through a thoughtful, pro-growth itinerary and series of high-value tutorials.

The Group-Study started on January 13, 2020, but it’s not too late to join. This event is free for Textile Design Lab members.

Register here.

Speedy Design Challenge: Glitch Florals

I am so excited to release our first TDL Speedy Design Challenge! Just to clarify, this challenge is not for a real client. It was created to give you experience in working with a client or studio who needs a design turned around quickly.

Imagine that you are an in-house textile designer working remotely from home. You arrive at your desk in the morning, open your inbox, and find an urgent request for a new pattern concept! You have until the end of the day to design a completed pattern based upon the brief provided.

The goal of this design challenge is to train yourself to design in a more efficient manner, much like you might experience if you worked as an in-house designer. It’s also an opportunity to focus on completing a pattern within a certain time frame, allowing you to let go of the pattern being perfect and spending days moving pixels around and around. Just get it done! LOL!

Take a closer look at this design challenge here.

Chelsea’s Challenge: Summer Menswear

We are kicking off our first Chelsea’s Challenge of the new year with a few fun, summery trends for the menswear market. Inspired by a recent WGSN report, Michelle put together these three boards that showcase a laid-back surfer style with retro influences.

The trends include: 1950s Hawaiian, Nomadic Blockprint and Sun-Bleached Checks & Stripes

To help keep you motivated and on-track we developed these deadlines. If you need help along the way please post to our Chelsea’s Challenge forum.

The deadlines for this challenge are:

• Monday January 13th – backbeats due on the forum (more info about backbeats can be found in Lesson Four of The Sellable Sketch.)

• Monday February 3rd – finished collections due on the forum! Collections should consist of 3-5 prints–one main print and 2-4 coordinates. (More about main prints can be found in Lesson Six of The Sellable Sketch, and more about coordinates in Lesson Seven.)

Take a closer look at this design challenge here.

Upcoming Event: January Illustrator Live with Laura Coyle

From Laura, “Happy New Year everybody!

Thanks to all who participated in the December session, where we talked about working with Image Trace.

Our next meeting is Tuesday, January 21st at 11 am ET

We’ll be talking about adding glitter and other bling-y effects to your Illustrator work using the appearance panel, gradients and other fun techniques. We’ll take apart a kit from Creative Market to see what’s inside and how it works, so you can decide if these techniques fit with your workflow and how to customize them.

I’ll also demonstrate my background color trick in Pattern mode, so you can design on a background color without the overlap issues caused by background shapes, then add your background fill in the Appearance panel.

If you have questions, feel free to add them to this thread.”

Recording: Adobe Textile Designer with Sherry London

As part of our Photoshop for Designers I & II group-studies, Sherry London graciously offered to host two live Q&A events for our Textile Design Lab members.

In this second session Sherry covered Adobe Textile Designer and showed us how this powerful tool can be used to turn a group of motifs into a repeating pattern.

Watch the recording here.

Weekly Art Critiques. Please join the TDL community on THURSDAY at 1 PM Eastern for a live art critique. Our art critiques are fun events where Lab members come together to review artwork and ask questions about pattern design, marketing and sales. A registration link will be emailed the morning of the critique and will also be posted in our Weekly Art Critique forum. Textile Design Lab members can watch past critiques here.