CSM - Childrenswear Design

At the start of lockdown, I signed up to do an online course with Central St Martins in Children's wear Design. I wanted a little project to do while I was on maternity - some dedicated 'me' time. I also (as you can see a few posts ago) designed and made my son a Wolf - Brave - Bold illustrated pair of dungarees and I LOVED creating it. It made me realise that I wanted to move into print design for Children's wear and I decided to spend as much time as my maternity leave affords to explore this area of illustration. At the same time (again, as you can see from my previous post) I started doing some freelance work for Lion & Leopard Print Studio which has been a dream - and where I am designing illustrated prints and characters for Children's wear - I'm so excited to see how that unfolds. 

So it was all really good timing - being inspired by my new son, my focus being on him, starting this course and producing freelance designs for Lion & Leopard.  

The course was really good to do during lockdown, it was nice to meet and chat to people from all over the world who had similar interests. We were encouraged to design our collections by extracting shapes from our moodbaords and inspirations. We could take our theme from anything we wanted. I decided to look at 'lockdown', 'pandemic' and 'social distancing'. Mainly because it was weighing heavily on my mind, and I thought it would be nice to address my thoughts and fears around the experience and be creative with it. 

I really enjoyed the idea generation, playing with shapes and concepts based around an omnipresent fear / thing in our lives (the virus) and how this could be translated to a creature. I thought about how there already are these creatures in our modern mythology - from the Loch Ness Monster to Japanese fairytales and mythological creatures. I included all of these ideas in my visual thought process. I also looked at more abstract shapes that came from the new signs and symbols of social distancing that are a big part of our environment now in this 'new normal' 

It was really good to learn how to use Illustrator in a more fashion - focused way. We didn't physically make any garments, but we learnt a really useful process to extract ideas and expand ideas so that in the future I could apply that approach to producing my own collection if I desired. But I discovered that my heart does lie in print design, placement and making characters, and that is where I want to push my own work further going forward. It allowed me to produce lots of ideas in a short space of time, with focus. I also really enjoyed drawing the little people illustrations for my clothing ideas.