inkfibre: design process

Sunday, 16 February 2014

the winter of the iguana

We are under cold weather advisory tonight and this is what our winter has been like as of late:

From left to right: 1-Our drive to school during the first hour of a snow storm. 2-Our driveway after said storm. 3-A stroll down our street captured the beauty of what the storm left behind.

As the winter seems to linger on, and on, the promise of warmer, snow-free days to come have me yearning for summer, which immediately brings to mind iguanas. Why? Simply because last summer, while visiting the Yucatán peninsula, we kept stumbling upon them everywhere! From the hotel grounds, to the sidewalks to the ruins in Chichén Itzá. The reptiles were completely unaffected by our presence, showcasing a remarkable capacity to contently bask under the sun for hours on end. Then again, what else are you going to do if you happen to be an iguana?

A majestic iguana in Chichén Itzá. Photo credit, EC.

Later that summer at the Hall of Bones in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C., we came across the skeleton of an iguana, which allowed a close examination.

Thereafter, I could not stop thinking about Timorous Beasties, a Glasgow design studio well known for its self-described "surreal and provocative textiles and wallpapers". The phrases original artwork and trend setters can only start to describe what this Scottish atelier's brilliant body of work is all about. After learning more about iguanas (by mere observation), it was easy to understand how and why Alistair McAuley and Paul Simmons, the creative forces behind the studio, may have been inspired to create their incredible iguana pattern.

©Timorous Beasties, Iguana.

At some point they had to follow the great tradition of excellence in the creative process (think Mondrian, think Glaser) and became one with their subject matter, in this particular instance, they became one with the iguana. This is what art and design of the highest order is all about, the artist/designer has to be knowledgeable and passionate about the project at hand, Picasso and his Guernica immediately come to mind.
In the world of textile design this happens mainly due to the extensive research and sketching/drawing that takes place during the ideation process, resulting in conceptually strong, well-informed, very successful designs. When visiting Toronto, while imparting a seminar at Harbourfront Centre (back in 2010), Alistair elaborated precisely on this particular matter and illustrated the point by showing us a plethora of drawings and rough sketches he had recently been working on in his sketchbook.
The moral of the story: Inform your work, be prolific, edit.
Now, if you will excuse me, I will proceed to follow my own advice.
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The V&A has a brief and fabulous video interview with Timorous Beasties. Click here to watch it.

Sunday, 12 May 2013

food inspired

Good food provides not only nourishment, but if allowed, it also regales us with great sources of inspiration, including of course striking colour palettes.

Here are three examples:

BAJA FISH TACO
Queen West Street houses many of our favourite haunts in Toronto. Here you can find excellent shopping, entertaining and most certainly, food! Grand Electric is the perfect example of the latter. I'm not sure what the story behind the restaurant is, but it has (along with Maizal) the best Mexican food in town. With an eclectic ambiance, and somewhat loud music, they offer a most delicious fish taco (their key lime dessert is simply spellbinding). When my order of tacos arrived the first time we visited, I found them so quaint that my immediate reaction was to take a picture. E looked at me suspiciously since I hardly ever take pictures of food as in my opinion, food tends to photograph unfavourably.

Grand Electric has a section on one of its walls decorated with some Lucha Libre paraphernalia, which I thought would tie-in very well with the Grobet post. The tacos image depict, on the left, a chicken taco, on the right, a fish taco.

LW'S SALAD

One of the advantages of working in a very creative environment, is being surrounded by very creative people who effortlessly make art out of any medium at hand. This image showcases LW's lunch salad. She was giving the final touches to it when I happened to walk by and see it. I stopped on my tracks and commented on the beauty of it, a few seconds later, I was documenting it for posterity. It was perfectly composed, all elements in harmonious balance.

SUNDAY PANCAKES

Though not exclusively, Sunday seems to be the preferred day of the week for pancakes (always made from scratch). We all tend to eat them very differently: E likes them with just a bit of butter. F enjoys them with the superb maple syrup we have been treating ourselves to since living in Toronto (culinarium sells the best in town, seriously). I'm keen on sprinkling them with powder sugar and lots of strawberries.

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After cutting the strawberries this is what I'm always left with: An intriguing possibility of motifs in the form of strawberry tops arranged in the semblance of a design unit. Today I decided to run with it, here is the resulting design process:

Strawberry tops on cutting board.

With the aid of Photoshop, the strawberry tops exist now without the background and are ready to be put in repeat. A straight repeat moved things along expeditiously during this initial process--I gave myself 10 minutes to resolve the rapport.

This was a very quick, fun, repeat exercise, all with the aid of Photoshop.

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The next steps consider the motifs themselves, the goal being to push the concept further to fully re-contextualize the design. Some Photoshop filters were used. It is important to disclose that I am not a fan of using filters (in my view, most images altered with filters tend to have a somewhat "photoshopy/filtery/ready-made" look), however, in certain instances, they can be convenient sketching tools.
In order to bring the content of this post full circle, the 3 food palettes were brought into play as the platform to generate 3 colourways out of the basic design, which is this one:

E pointed out a very under-the-microscope look which granted a fresh start to a design that still had a long way to go. Needless to say, the results were quite unexpected mostly considering they were worked under a very tight (self imposed) time restriction.

The dynamism foisted during this task was very enjoyable and reminiscent of my university years when we worked on "repentinas", meaning a "mini/micro charrette", in this case with no collaborative element.

Last notes on the exercise: End-use and scale need to be determined (I see the repeat at least 15") and I would like to try it as a half-drop repeat (though as a full-drop is working well). If it were to be screenprinted, it would be in at least 3 colours, resolving the films by hand.