Meet the Designer – Tessa Jones

Meet our newest featured designer in the Designer Project, Tessa Jones. Dive into her world of creativity and innovation as we explore her unique design journey. Get ready to be inspired by Tessa’s captivating designs and artistic vision. Let’s embark on a journey through the extraordinary work of this talented designer. 

Keep reading to find out more! 

Hello My name is Tessa Jones and I am the creative brain behind “The Welshman’s Wife”. I’m excited to share the process behind my surface design creations. From concept to the final product, every step is a labor of love, and I hope this glimpse into my world inspires fellow artists and design enthusiasts alike.

The very first step in my surface design process is finding inspiration. This can come from anywhere – a walk in the park, a holiday, a book, or even a conversation. For many of my designs my inspiration is drawn from nature, particularly flowers and fauna, this tends to be the starting point of most of my designs as it is an unwavering source of inspiration.

After pinpointing my inspiration, I dive into research. I collect photos, images, colours, and textures that align with my vision. Creating a mood board helps me visualise the overall aesthetic and ensures I stay on track throughout the creative process.

With my mood board as a guide, I start sketching my initial ideas. These sketches are rough and exploratory, helping me test different patterns and compositions. It’s a critical phase where I let my creativity flow freely, allowing for unexpected discoveries. I generally only sketch in pencil in my visual diary, pencil albeit simple is my favourite medium. I draw many sketches and motifs and will also write and plan pattern and design layouts.

Once I’m satisfied with my sketches, I move on to digitalisation. I use Adobe Fresco and sometimes procreate for this process, I am a bit of a vector nerd, so everything will end up as vectors in Adobe Illustrator in the end, as this is where I build my repeats. I generally take a photo of my sketch in Fresco and then draw it in here, I really love the vector brushes, and building it in Fresco allows me to work seamlessly across the Adobe suite.

Choosing the right colour palette is crucial and can completely transform a design, both positively or negatively. I tend to look at colour as a whole topic of its own, there will be days when I feel colour inspired, whether it be from a photo or image and I dedicate time to build colour palettes and save them for another time, this way I always have colours to choose from and I am not forcing myself to create colour palettes when I‘m not so inspired. I tend to work with several colour palettes at a time and when building my design I experiment with them, this is one of my favourite parts of the process.

With all of my digital artwork and colours at hand, I start creating my patterns, I generally start with my hero prints or more complex prints, as this works to my strengths, I find these come to me more easily than the simpler prints and co-ordinates, these set the tone for the collection and my big vision for how I see my collection transpiring.

I print my designs on paper first, this is cost effective and a great way to look at the designs and scale before sending them to my fabric printer, although colour will not be accurate it gives me a good idea of the design and scale and how the collection works as a whole. I can lay them all out and see which designs work well together and which don’t and get a real feel for the collection.

After making any needed tweaks, I’ll finalise the collection, this includes preparing the files for print, ensuring they meet the technical requirements of various printing methods. I’ll then order my first lot of fabric samples, once they arrive, they are either approved or amended, generally if anything needs to be changed it is usually the colour, as sometimes due to different fabric printers does not translate as I would like it to, but this is easily rectified, and with experience this tends to get less as I build a library of colours I love and I know print well.

My designs are not only applied to fabric but an array of products such as stationery, wallpaper, home decor, and more. The application process involves working with manufacturers and printers to bring my creations to life, and it never gets dull seeing my artwork on all of these amazing products.

My surface design creation process is a deeply rewarding journey of creativity and self-expression. It’s a testament to the power of inspiration, research, and hard work. I hope this glimpse into my creative world inspires you to embark on your own artistic journeys and never stop seeking inspiration in the beauty of the world around you. Thank you for joining me on this creative adventure!

Grandma’s cupboard is a selection of vintage and retro inspired prints. They showcase Tessa’s typical soft and feminine style with a strong focus on florals and fauna.