Tag Archives: designer

Textile Collection Tutti Fruity

It feels as though we’ve been hit with a heatwave! & what better way to celebrate things heating up than with a fun new range of textile prints that simply scream Summer. For these designs we’ve been inspired by the beautiful simplicity of summer fruits. We are very excited to introduce our new Tutti Fruity Collection.

Creative inspo came straight from our green grocer, and we were really excited to create a range of playful designs that celebrated simple motifs familiar to everyone. The range includes a quirky minimal print, a tangerine dream and a seriously sweet statement print.

A mixture of acrylic paints and watercolours were used to create the artwork for this range, resulting in a range of interesting and juicy textures. The hand-painted nature of the designs gives the range a lazily elegant feel.

It wouldn’t be a summer fruits inspired range without plenty of colour, and our design team did not hold back. The collection features plenty of bold colours and primary brights in perfect contrast to ensure balance within the prints.

The Tutti Fruity collection has been designed as a celebration of enjoying the little things, and we must admit we are definitely enjoying the change of season. We love to know what you think these designs would be perfect for so get in touch. Prints are available in our Fabric Shop now.

Snippets: Chats With Creatives, Carmen Hui Illustration – Series 2, Snippet 6

Snippets’. Chats with Creatives. We are back with series two! Here at Digital Fabrics we love everything print, pattern and colour and we love to know what makes designers tick. This second series is all about asking some fun and different questions and learning about the inspirations and ideas behind the artist and their work. We hope to inspire others by sharing snippets of these creative stories. We gave the artists and designers featured a varied and different set from series one list of questions to choose from so we will learn something new from everyone involved, should be fun!

Today on snippets we are talking to Carmen Hui from Carmen Hui Illustrations, her drawings are detailed with a playful and fun Australiana theme and often feature botanicals and animals. Each drawing is a labour of love using layers of coloured pencil strokes and her style is unique and very distinguishable. Her designs can be seen across a variety of mediums including paper, jewellery, textiles and ceramics to name just a few and she also teaches workshops so she has lots of advice and knowledge to share with us!

Tell us a bit about yourself, your brand/label name what your creative practice is, how and when you began:

Hello, my name is Carmen and I am an illustrator focusing on animal and botanical pencil drawings. I started Carmen Hui Art & Illustration about 4 years ago after wanting a sea change from my job as a designer. I didn’t have a set plan when I started my business, I just participated in a few group art shows, a couple of local markets and then opened an online Etsy shop. It was a slow process but each little step gave me the confidence to keep going. Nowadays, my days are split between running my online shop, doing commissioned works, teaching drawing classes and attending design markets.

Where do you call home?

I live in sunny Marrickville with my partner Mat and my cat Miso.

What 3 words best describe your creative style.

Delicate, emotive and Australiana

What does a typical creative day look like for you? How do you stay on plan and organised?

Everyday is different and consists of juggling many hats. I start the week by prioritising what’s important and allocating time in the week to complete each task. I usually start the day by doing the less fun stuff such as admin, accounts and packaging orders. Then I will do more involved work such as planning and commissioned work.

What would your dream creative project look like? Who or what is your dream project, client or job? Tell us about why you would love to collaborate with them and what you find inspiring about their work.

I am in love with surface design at the moment and would love to see my designs on clothing and accessories. This is something that I have started dabbling in, but would love to collaborate with an experienced clothing brand and adapt my drawings into a small range of clothing.

What would you say is the biggest challenge when working for yourself ?

Being kind to oneself. Being your own boss can have many advantages and disadvantages. You are constantly thinking about your business and what more you could be doing, It is important to give yourself a break every once in a while and be happy with what you’ve achieved. I burnt out really quickly after the first couple of years working for myself, so this year I’m trying to slow down a little. It’s not easy, but I think I’m getting there.

What’s the best thing about being in the creative industry in Australia today? And on the other hand, what do you find most frustrating?

I think right now is the best time to be in the creative industry in Australia. People have a deeper appreciation of craft and great designs and are very supportive in helping small businesses to grow and develop. The growth of social media is also extremely helpful as it helps us reach people far and wide, something that is near impossible in the past unless you have a large marketing budget.

What projects or collaborations from last year stuck out, good or bad and what is coming up this year that you would like to plug!

The project I’m most proud of this year is my Everyday Bag designs. This was a passion project of mine and am so happy that it came to fruition. I’m hoping to slowly build on this and release more designs in the new year. In terms of collaborations, I have an illustrated plant pot design with Plernters, a range of Christmas cards and accessories that are about to be launched with La La Land, as well as some soon to be available wallpaper designs with Milton & King which I’m super excited about.

You can follow what Carmen is upto: Website, Instagram, Facebook.

Textile Collection Animalistic Innocence

This year’s big chill has had us dreaming of warmer climates, and in anticipation for sun drenched adventures and hot summer nights, our design team has been working hard on a new range of exotic prints for our fabric shop. We are very excited to introduce our new Animalistic Innocence Collection.

To create this playful range we we’re taking creative cues straight out of the Jungle Book, and wanted to create a visual narrative around the serene beauty of temperate forests, the thrill of being wild and the romance of being far away from home.

The gorgeous jungle inspired artwork for this range was painted using both inky watercolours and rugged dry brush techniques to create a variety of textures, line and form. It was important to maintain a naivety to the style of the design elements to give a sense of child-like wonder and curiosity.

Colour was central when designing this collection and a palette of luxurious greens, blues, golds and blush pinks were chosen. All of the motifs were then digitally manipulated and layered to create lush repeat patterns, full of interest and drama.

The Animalistic Innocence Collection has been designed to help you shake off those winter blues by taking you off the beaten path, so go wild for your next DIY textiles project and let our playful range of prints stir up some creative instincts. We’d love to know what you think these designs would be perfect for so get in touch! Prints are available in our Design Library now.

Nailed It: Q & A Style Interview With Megan Mckean From Mckean Studio

Nailed It. Creative business success story

Here at Digital Fabrics we love finding a new and interesting success story on a brand or business that is inspiring to the creative community. We thought it would be useful and informative to find out how these creative businesses nailed it, lessons learned on the way and tips they might have. We have asked them to share important “How to’s” and growth hacking tips for start-ups and emerging designers. Read it, get motivated and nail it yourself!

First up in this new series is Megan Mckean from Mckean Studio, an inspiring design label based in Sydney who create colourful, fun travel keepsakes with a modern twist.

Tell us about your creative business, what’s it all about and how did it begin?

McKean Studio is a design label with a focus on contemporary souvenirs. We’ve been running our business for almost 4 years now, and it came about after working on some passion projects to soothe the post-travel blues! Inspired by our time spent holidaying around the world, our pieces are a modern take on travel keepsakes.

Do you work on Mckean Studio full time now?

I work full time in McKean Studio, and am coming up on my 1 year anniversary of full time self employment! It’s been a rocky road for retail in the past year, but an interesting challenge in diversifying my skill set and exploring other avenues that I might not have otherwise considered. It’s been really great to have the time to focus more on what I’m passionate about, and try out so many different projects.

If so, how long did it take you to get to that place and what advice do you have on career transitioning for creatives hoping to do the same.

I’ve been really fortunate with the timing of all my transitions, and each stage of change in the business has come about quite organically. I was working part time on McKean Studio and part time in a retail role for several years after studying, and this was perfect as it allowed me to create for McKean Studio without huge overheads or financial commitments (and still bringing in enough income to pay my rent each week). Having the flexibility of a casual position alongside the business also allowed for travel, which has been really vital for both my inspiration and product development. I think everyone finds the groove that works best for them, and there’s certainly no shame in having a ‘day job’ or part time role if it facilitates the creative work you want to be doing.

What goals do you think are important to achieve before you can make that leap?

For me, making the decision to go full time in my business was mostly influenced by time; I was down to just one day per week in my previous role, and finding that I still wasn’t able to fit everything I needed to into my week. I had a couple of years of business data to look over and ensure that it was going to be sustainable, so eventually just had to bite the bullet and make the jump!

With your experience in mind, would you recommend to jump full steam ahead into a business giving it your full energy, with big intentions right away or would you suggest doing it slowly and giving the business time to grow before making the leap?

I think if the opportunity is there to grow the business slowly and steadily, then I tend to lean more towards ‘cautious optimism’ and continue on that path. But at the same time, you can’t leap a chasm in two jumps, so it comes to a point where you’ve just got to make a decision. I always told myself that if the worst happened and I wasn’t able to sustain the business, then I’m still totally employable and can go and work elsewhere!

Manufacturing is a complicated process, there are so many angles to consider. Do you have any disaster stories? If so, what did you learn from that experience?

There are no major disaster stories, but plenty of ‘face-palm’ moments and frustrations at not always being able to achieve the end result I had in mind. I’ve worked with such a wide range of materials and manufacturing processes, between handmaking myself, local production, and offshore production, and have learned that sometimes trial and error is the only way to figure out what’s best! I’ve had some annoying communication errors with international suppliers that have meant the quality of a product isn’t where it needs to be (even just simple things like a print resolution not being high enough for the product) and other projects locally that I’ve sunk a LOT of money into but haven’t been able to find an affordable solution for the final production. I’m still working on that one! 😉

What is your advice on working with manufacturers for those who are just at the beginning of their journey?

Local is best wherever possible, there’s nothing better than being able to problem solve in person, or communicate directly with a business who knows exactly what the problem you’re having is, and how to solve it. I would always say it’s better to start small and closer to home, until you’ve got a better understanding of the processes and the outcomes to scale up from there.

You do a lot of the trade shows and big markets such as Finders Keepers and the Big Design Market. What are the biggest benefits other than sales that you think come from attending them as a brand?

We don’t do any trade shows, only a couple of the big markets each year, and it’s such a great chance to get to spend time with our customers and chat directly with them. We get invaluable feedback from this face to face contact (even just on colour choices, or product suggestions) and it’s always lovely to chat with our audience and trade travel stories!

If you were to start your creative journey all over again, would you begin differently and what avenue you would take to accelerate your venture, if any?
I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have had my creative journey run quite smoothly, so the only thing I would change if I could go back in time would be to tell myself to chill out a little bit! I’m a big worry wart when it comes to future planning, and wish I could have been a little more relaxed about trusting the timing. So many great projects I’ve been able to work on have popped up out of nowhere, and there’s no amount of planning I could have done to have made them happen. Even the books, which are such an important part of my career now, I had no plans to pursue at the time I was approached by my publisher. It was a wonderful, serendipitous meeting and something that I was able to find a new passion for and work into our range perfectly.

We saw that you have been nominated for small publishers Children’s Book of the Year, which is pretty impressive! Do you have any exciting projects coming up that you can tell us about?

I’m so delighted to have long listed for an Australian Book Industry Award, and I’m still pinching myself! Working on the books the last 2 years has been such a different way of working and a great brain stretch… so keep an eye out for something new in that category later in the year!

You have travelled the globe soaking up souvenir inspiration, where is on your list for the future and could you ever see yourself living somewhere other than Australia?

I am always dreaming of living overseas, and we’ve been so fortunate to spend time in some beautiful cities all around the world. I’d love to live in New York one day, or retire early in Palm Springs (or live bi-coastally between the two!). We also often talk about moving to Sweden, so you just never know! We love Sydney for now though. We’ve got some other travel coming up this year to Japan, but after that we’ll see where the wind blows us!

Tell us something people might not know about Mckean Studio.

I think something that people don’t always know about McKean Studio is that everything is made/designed by just the two of us! I do all of the illustration work, and handle all of the production down to packing and sending out every order. People often think we’re a much bigger operation than we are, and I always chuckle when we get work experience and internship requests (as flattering as they are!). Our Mini Cities are entirely handmade and hand painted here in Sydney, and all of the new pieces are connected and work-shopped for quite a long time before they’re produced.

You can follow what Mckean Studio is upto: Website, Instagram, Facebook.

Snippets: Chats With Creatives – Series 1, Snippet 7

Snippets’. Chats with Creatives. Here at Digital Fabrics we love everything print, pattern and colour and we love to know what makes designers tick. This series is all about asking some fun and different questions and learning about the inspirations and ideas behind the artist and their work. We hope to inspire others by sharing snippets of these creative stories. We gave the artists and designers featured a varied list of questions to choose from so we will learn something new from everyone involved, should be fun!

Today on Snippet’s we are talking to Dawn Tan. Melbourne based artist, soap maker and teacher who’s colourful work is inspired by travel and grocery shopping among other things..

Tell us a bit about yourself and what your creative practice is, how and when you began:

Hello! My name is Dawn Tan and I’m an artist, soap maker and teacher! As a young child, I’ve always loved art and knew I wanted to pursue and art career. I guess being terrible at everything else apart from art, helped me discover that being creative was my thing. Hah! I discovered teaching many moons ago, while doing research for a children’s book I was creating and I ended up falling in love with it! To me, being able to teach and share my love for art – that’s simply the best so I just keep doing what I do! Our world needs more art so the more people share, the merrier!

Which five words best describe you? Funny, dreamy, kiddy, happy and hmmm.. CLUMSY! (The kids often have to catch my flying paintbrushes!)

If you could spend a day in another artist’s studio shoes who would that artist be?

No doubt, Quentin Blake. He’s my number one art hero and I absolutely LOVE the way he paints and creates. If I could watch him on you tube all day, I could definitely use a visit to his studio!

In another life what natural talent would you wish for?

To fly! Although I must say, I’m pretty scared of heights. Actually no. Scrap that. I’d love to be able to blink my eyes and teleport. I looooove traveling but hate the flying part. I get all anxious like a headless chook. So to be able to teleport (for free!) – that’d be super awesome. This way, I can go visit whatever place on earth I’d wish to go and I can get so much more inspiration.

Love your Locals:

City/Town/Village where you currently reside:

Sunny Yarraville in Melbourne.

Favourite spot for a bite:

Corner store, Goje for the best, healthy yoghurts!

Secret Inspirational spot:

Pompello – My local green grocer. Haha! It’s a tiny little spot but it’s such a happy place for me. I find so much of my inspiration through grocery shopping.

You can follow what Dawn is upto: Website, Instagram, Facebook

Create a strong identity for your brand through Fabric Print and Design

We live in a hyper-visual world, where imagery dictates your rating. The increasing need to have a positive impact on sales especially high in a vast and competitive design world.

That is why print design is becoming an increasingly utilised tool in any designer’s tool kit, be it swimwear, stationery, fashion, brand or home wears designer. Print designs, surface design, patterns they called different but carry same purpose, is to capture people’s interests in instant, unifies the design collection and creates point of difference from other brands.

For example Tigerlily always been known for they boho and travel inspired prints and easily recognised in Australian fashion market.

Say, We Are Handsome and beautiful swimwear with stunning photographic print design are evoked.

But what if to take print and fabric a bit further? Doesn’t this collaboration open more door? There are so many ideas and product that can be created with using fabric as a base medium. Don’t think of a fabric as a cloth on a roll.

Would be a wedding invention a luxurious idea to make your invitees fill extra special and setting the tone of your weeding?

Fabric packing is very unique concept too, wrap your product, or even how about envelops or business cards?

To archive all the above ideas is a breeze now days. We live in the new era of digital printing technologies. Fast, cost efficient, ecofriendly they opens doors to the craziest creative projects!

That is why we are in love with digital fabric printing!

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