What is Surface Design?
Have you been wondering what all this is about? Well, wonder no more. In this “Quick Tips” blog, I’ll describe what Surface Pattern Design is, how you can learn to practice it, and the exciting opportunities ahead of you as a Surface Designer.
I had never heard of surface design myself, even though I had a 25-year career in retail where the clothing companies I worked for sold a lot of clothing that had patterns on them.
Essentially, a surface design is any beautiful design or pattern that makes a product more beautiful, whether it’s a dress, a rug, wrapping paper, pillows, you name it. I teach you how to do this in my free mini course, From Doodles To Dollars®, that’s starting in a few weeks.
In essence, you take a little drawing or sketch, which doesn't even have to be complicated, and then I teach you how to create what's called a “repeating pattern” as it repeats endlessly from top to bottom, and side to side. You can then turn your repeating pattern into something like beautiful tissue paper. Here’s a photo of one of my sketches that I turned into tissue paper.
I include this tissue paper in my shipping boxes when I send out my products to people who’ve purchased them. This same design is on other products as well.
Many people love to create designs and then create their own stationery line, and Surface Pattern Design is not just for paper products.
For example, you could have little flower doodles on cute little pouches sold through print-on-demand shops, or you can put your designs on things like paperweights and cute little mugs, which I like to do too. These designs can be as simple as some dots, little lines, and little “V” shapes, arranged in a pattern.
That is what Surface Design is and the reason I love to talk about it is because it's a wonderful way for you to monetize your doodles, sketches, or other artwork!
You do this by bringing them into a computer program called Adobe Illustrator, which I teach you how to do. I break this process down step by step by step to show you how to then turn your sketches or doodles into what's called “vector artwork” that you can put on pretty much any product you can imagine in the world!
You can share these products with your friends and family, or sell them. For example, you could create a series of patterns for Christmas wrapping paper and then all of the presents that you wrap this year could be in wrapping paper that has your designs on them!
You might love the cute little drawings that your grandkids are creating and decide to make fabric out of some of those designs to put on a onesie or a blanket, or to turn into a quilt!
All that said, I wanted to define Surface Design for you because a lot of people have never heard of it before. I had never heard of it before myself, but when I discovered it, I became completely hooked.
I'm incredibly excited to share both my passion with you and my step-by-step process for actually doing it, which is in my upcoming free mini course, From Doodles To Dollars®.
Join us! It’s the last time I’m offering this free program in 2021. You don’t want to miss it.
Pop over to my YouTube channel to watch the video version of this blog. Click HERE and please subscribe while you’re over there.
xo,
Anne
P.S. My free mini-course, From Doodles to Dollars®, starts soon. Grab your free seat HERE.
To prepare, grab a free 7-day trial to Adobe Illustrator. You’ll get both the desktop and the iPad version. Win-win, right?
Have fun and I’ll see you next week.
Remember,
It’s Never Too Late to Create®
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MEET ANNE
Hi…I’m Anne!
My creative inspiration comes from a lifetime of observation. I grew up in Paris on the Place St. Sulpice and walked to school through the Luxembourg gardens. And that was only the beginning… Learn more by watching the video on my About page.
