Lauren Nus Design

My patterns and graphics start by noticing a trend. Here you see references I collected for my Vintage Hunting Lodge series of prints and Peace and Love on Planet Earth graphic. I find inspiration from what other artists are doing, products I see when shopping, products and textiles I see in the thrift store that I think could be revived, or online all across the internet.

I use Pinterest and Miro to start collecting reference. Sometimes I'll take imagery from a design era with the intention of subverting a trope of the genre. In this collection, I knew I didn't want to include violence, gore, people, or guns. The idea to make a Tshirt graphic with all the animals huddling together happily with the slogan "Peace and Love on Planet Earth" came to me as part of this process.

After I collect reference and research trends, I start making sketches. I may include elements not seen in my references that I think will put the project in a certain design era or style. I was also thinking of the landscape paintings by Gainsborough, as well as 80s hunting lodges made of exposed wood, where I would like these patterns to fit in.

Although I never included a stripe, I experimented with using contemporary geometric framing. This is the part of the process when I'm planning my aspect ratios and how I want my patterns to repeat. Often I'll start in a square and draw shapes overlapping into the edges and across the squares, however I am experimenting with rectangles, and tilted diagonals. When I'm observing textiles and seeing how they repeat, I'm analyzing. I saw a fabric lately that was a rectangle aspect repeat set on a 70 degree tilt with all the items crowded and a similar size, which made the repeat hard to detect.

After I have a good handle on how I want to approach my patterns, I start to think about what anatomy or style reference I'll need for the final look of the graphics. For the animals, I collected reference images of real animals from online that I would later trace over loosely with the pen tool. If I were planning on selling this design, I would be sure to source fonts and reference images that were not copyrighted or that I had bought the rights to.

I choose my color palettes mainly by design era. I think color combinations are a dead giveaway for the period the design was created. It's interesting to me that in every design period, there are competing looks and different palettes. When I look at vintage fabric collections from the 80s like Cranston Fabric Works collection of game birds for pillows, they are prodominantly brown, with a little rust, green, and darker browns. I wanted a brown, cream, rust, and green palette. As a designer, I really try to stay away from total black and total white, as I think they look a little ugly and starkly modern.

After establishing a palette, I start going in with the pen tool just as if I was sketching. For the animals, I loosely traced the bodies of the animals and used layers of vector shapes. After I was done with my patterns, I started looking towards my graphic.

Determining a font, just like color palette, is all about the references to the design era. Unlike some other designs from the 70s-90s, the World Wildlife Fund shirts use classic and scientific fonts without getting too funky. The phrase "Peace and Love" made me think of the 70s but I quickly realized I wanted a more generalist vintage font.

I was happy with this design for about a day, before the top font started to make me want to beat my head against he wall. I quickly found a new font and edited the graphic. I think editing and following up on a "completed" design is an important part of the process, so long as it's not past your deadline.