BLAK: Behind the Print

This week I was interviewed by BLAK about the exclusive print I designed for their Spring/Summer collection. Here are my answers:

Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do:

I am a freelance Textile Designer based in Wellington. I fell in love with Textile Design while studying Design at Massey. I have always loved fabrics and patterns but didn't know that was an actual career! Since then, I graduated in 2018 with a Honours degree majoring in Textile Design and I have been freelancing ever since. I enjoy exploring different media and mark making to create unique motifs, then working with colour to bring them to life.

Talk us through your process when designing a new print:

Ideas for new prints are everywhere, nature, art and colour usually spark a lot of inspiration for me. I work my inspiration into a theme or story, then I will start creating mood boards and sketching motifs. My work is usually hand drawn or painted so once I have motifs that I am happy with, I will scan them into photoshop to be manipulated into a tile ready to be repeated. I tend to go back and forth between drawing and photoshop. If I think it needs something extra, I will draw more motifs and scan them in. At this stage I will be refining, making sure that the colours and motifs are working together harmoniously. If I am working with a client, the whole process is quite collaborative; a lot of shared mood boards. I am checking in at every stage to make sure we are always on the same page!

What was your inspiration for your exclusive print for BLAK?:

My garden! I am lucky enough to live in a house that has an amazing garden with lots of lovely hydrangeas and wild flowers. When BLAK first approached me to design this print, I was quite obsessed with preserving the beautiful flowers in our garden by drying them out. I really wanted to capture the flowers for this print in the same way, drawing didn’t seem to capture the same texture so I collected a few and started to stamp them! So this print is essentially all the beautiful flowers from my garden.

I hope you enjoyed reading my answers.

Sam x