Journey to Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer-Part 1

What is a Surface Pattern Designer?

My "Bright Hearts" pattern-acrylic, ink and collage on canvas. 

When I tell people I'm working toward becoming a Surface Pattern Designer their first response is either a blank stare or they ask "What is that?"  I'll try to explain below. 

"Vintage Bouquet" 

Think about all those cute notebooks, calendars, greeting cards, journals, art prints and wrapping paper you see at an art or office supply store.  Not to mention the rows and rows of quilt fabrics in a quilt store.  Someone, an artist, designs those patterns for the company to print on their products.  Some of those artists are in house, but many are free lance artists that license their designs to the company.  

"Honeycomb"

The company has a position, usually called an Art Director, that directs what art will adorn their products for the coming seasons.  They are always on the look out for new and fresh ideas to set themselves apart in the marketplace from their competition.  They find artists/work they like and contract with them to provide designs for their products.  Sometimes this is an ongoing contractual agreement where the artist gets a royalty (% of sales) from the products sold with her (or his) design.  They often continue to work for that company for years.  The other option is that the company may just pay a flat, one-time fee for one or two designs in the artist's portfolio.

"Flight Path"

For years I've been an analog artist (pencil, paintbrush and canvas).  However, a lot of time is spent creating a piece and, at the end, you only have that one piece to sell. Needless, to say, it's only the lucky few that get to earn a living that way.  With Surface Pattern Design you get to sell that same artwork over and over without any additional work. 

"Sage & Mustard Plaid"

Now, it's not that I'm lazy, but I do have to pay the rent. This seemed like a good avenue to take so that one can be compensated for all of the years of learning, practice, skill building and trial and error.  You still get to do what you love, but now it has "legs" as some people would say. 

There are other avenues for the Surface Pattern Designer, but we'll get into that in a future post.  It also requires some technical and software skills, but more about that later!

Original drawing for damask pattern below.

For now, I just wanted to explain what a Surface Pattern Designer is, what they do and talk a little about my personal journey. So, next time you're out and about see how many patterns on products you can identify that were created by an artist. I bet you'll be surprised!


Next blog post we'll talk about what it takes to be a Surface Pattern Designer. (Do ya'll mind if I abbreviate that from now on as SPD?)

As always, thanks for stopping by!
Jan