All Posts in Patterns

April 26, 2023 - Comments Off on Grit & Collaboration

Grit & Collaboration

Combining talents for delectable outcomes

Last summer, the Méli Mélo Charcuterie Boards — a lively collaboration with 600 Grit fine wood design — debuted in the art festival world. Maria Garcia, my former tennis partner and expert woodworker, had applied as an emerging artist to two of the nation’s most prestigious fairs — the Fort Worth Main Street Arts Festival and Denver’s Cherry Creek Arts Festival. A Colorado native now at home in Texas, Maria clearly had soaked in some of the “go big or go home” Lone Star attitude in targeting these events, but even she was slightly overwhelmed to be accepted by both. 

Our 600 Grit/EnZed collaboration began with volleying ideas on the tennis court. It went something like “wouldn’t it be fun to take some of your wrapping paper motifs and translate them to wood?” After a few years of playing with the idea, mostly in our heads, we found ourselves mixing epoxy and pigments in her Dallas workshop. We experimented with maple and walnut hardwoods, metallic and solid pigments, and two designs. Maria prepped the boards for the CNC operator who used my vector artwork to rout the inlays. After several prototypes in which we adjusted motif sizes and color palettes, played with depth of routing and angled edges, we landed on the finished product and perfected the silky finish. 

Méli Mélo translates to “an assortment,” which captures the essence of charcuterie and the nature of our collaboration. Once the boards began selling, Maria envisioned expanding the concept to furniture. The board motifs enlarged beautifully onto coffee, cocktail and side tables, and she received a commission for wall art at this larger scale. Maria’s furniture designs are inspired by the Arts & Crafts and Mid Century Modern movements, but the rich walnut hardwood and bright resin inlays transition across many interior styles.

What started as a friendship on the tennis court quickly became a delicious meeting of minds and materials. Talking with the art lovers venturing into our tent was energizing and Maria secured several furniture commissions in each city, a primary goal for showing at the festivals. (Prior to that, we had a brief foray into wholesale and set up shop on PaperieZ.com, selling directly to friends and others.) 

While I’ve enjoyed seeing my designs in three dimensions as Maria has added new, unique product offerings, the best part of this experience by far is the collaboration. Each bringing our best to the table (saw) inevitably yields tasty results.

For more about Maria, follow her on Instagram @600grit and visit 600grit.com. She’s available for custom charcuterie board and furniture commissions. Let us collaborate with you, too!

Join my mailing list to receive monthly reads about adventures, design, marketing, other creative musing, and how they all relate to and inform one another. Follow my antics on Instagram. — Helen

February 10, 2023 - Comments Off on French Diamonds & French Toast

French Diamonds & French Toast

“I do,” was my reply when Denny’s creative services popped the question: Do you design wallpaper? 

I’d just completed a custom pattern and a dozen or so templates for the corporation’s to-go boxes, cups, bags, and seals. This new request was a special invitation — to design the wall covering for their Las Vegas Wedding Chapel* on the iconic strip. 

With unbridled enthusiasm, I reviewed the creative brief. My task was to marry icons from the bride and groom t-shirts with the iconic French diamond shape housing the restaurant’s logo. A childhood of road trips and a decade of designing wrapping papers groomed me for this very moment. 

Initially, I presented seven designs featuring a bow tie, diamond gem, and French diamond, adding some additional symbols of love and location. They selected two motifs to see in a variety of color ways that complemented the new restaurant interior materials, then settled on one design. We further looked at color and scale with mock ups of the wallpaper in the space. Denny’s creative team selected a tone-on-tone print on a pearlescent paper. 

The project was a grand slam. This background will be photographed behind many happy couples, cutting into their wedding pancake stack and linking arms to sip mimosas. 

Elvis may have left the building, but the wallpaper is here to stay.

Thank you, thank you very much.
— Helen

*Yes, chain restaurant weddings are a thing. Rate the best “cake” - post below!

P.S. Need a custom pattern for your project? Check out our Custom Collections offering.

January 27, 2023 - Comments Off on “I’ve got nothing to wear.” ~ Your Brand

“I’ve got nothing to wear.” ~ Your Brand

Custom patterns can bring your brand fashion forward.

Does your logo deserve a bigger, better sense of style? Whether making an online or in-person appearance, a brand requires a suite of assets — or wardrobe — to differentiate the organization it represents. Brand guidelines typically cover the basics, such as logo colors, fonts, maybe photo style and copy tone — the white t-shirt and jeans of marketing. But maintaining a powerful presence by ensuring visual continuity is far more complex – not unlike fashioning the signature look that makes a day-to-evening transition effortless. 

By providing my clients more options, customized options, they’re able to rapidly claim brand recognition beyond the obvious. Custom branding patterns, when designed as an integrated part of a client’s branding assets, add the flexibility to “mix and match” with ease. This creates brand recognition with variety — the difference between wearing a uniform, and choosing classics with the added flair of accessories. Plus quality branding begets quality products. A well-crafted brand communicates success subliminally, if not overtly. If great care has been put into presenting information, then it must be valuable. 

Case in point. When we revitalized the FCCS brand, part of the process was creating a suite of patterns that ranged from “boldly forward” to “background conversation.” The client knew a range of applications would be needed, even though specifics were still being determined. A child brand was born the same year, with the launch of their Accelerate Center. It, too, required patterns uniquely its own. Cross-over patterns worked to maximize flexibility, unify presentation and link the brands into a cohesive, powerful presence.

A suite of brand patterns and complementary assets can also work wonders to tie everything together. Patterns can grab attention and quietly accent. So if your logo is the cashmere of your brand, the pattern serves as the designer shoes. The gemstone ring, the platinum watch, and the diamond earrings appear via brand devices — bullet point, page divider, and quotation marks. 

The upshot? The ensemble is everything. Add a surface pattern collection to your brand wardrobe and brand recognition soars. And you’ve taught a master class in style.

***

What’s your go-to wardrobe piece? Comment below.

Join my mailing list to receive monthly reads about adventures, design, marketing, other creative musing, and how they all relate to and inform one another. — Helen

May 17, 2021 - Comments Off on Branding and the Power of Pattern

Branding and the Power of Pattern

The most memorable brands do not live by logos, alone. Instead, they leverage their well-designed mark in every possible manner. The conscious, consistent use of fonts, colors, tone and positioning adds dimension. Some even encompass scent and sound to elevate distinction.

One of the simplest ways to mark territory is through the development of a custom brand pattern. Possible applications range from a subtle background for an engaging website to a star-powered position on a best-selling product. 

We create custom patterns for clients by using elements of their logo in proprietary designs. The objective is to add texture and depth across multiple media for optimal visibility. Branding demands reinforcement, and this is one more way to achieve it.

Here are examples of logos we designed and their custom companion patterns. 

The Power of Process

When I create a custom pattern for a brand, I start by looking at the elements and shapes in the logo. Whether it is a new logo designed by my firm or an established mark, we address it the same way — identify the most significant visuals and build on them. We also consider how to create a seamless repeat with these elements. 

Repeats can be horizontal, vertical, diagonal, block or offset (partial drop or brick). Certain shapes and scales lend themselves to different repeat styles. For example, round shapes half-drop well in an offset repeat because the shapes fit into each other snuggly. Asymmetrical core shapes require additional elements around them to create a block repeat. It takes some experimenting to eliminate striping or gaps for a clean, seamless repeat, especially in designs that need to “read” in all directions (not just up and down, as on wallpaper).

Brand patterns must apply well on myriad surfaces — electronic media; printed small or large on paper, fabric and other substrates; and often rendered flat or dimensionally (e.g. routed into metal). Because these factors can influence the motif’s complexity and color palette, it’s best to know where the pattern will be used before beginning design. Once these specifications are set, it’s exciting to see the variations that emerge. Often, more than one design hits the mark, resulting in a suite of brand patterns that can serve as a library for the client over time.

The POW! of Results

Here are some examples of designs we’ve created that make it easy to see how the patterns relate to their brands. 

  • Denny’s to-go boxes — Their signature French diamond was overlapped and rotated to create a geometric pattern that also looks like a box motif. 
  • Blackbird General Store tissue paper — The illustration of the bird and branch in the logo was reworked as a toile pattern, a custom take on traditional fabric that reinforced the nature of the brand.
  • What’s the Scoop? cups — The spoon from the “O” is repeated in a simple linear pattern that feels like sprinkles on ice cream. 
  • FCCS conference folders — The conference logo shape repeats in a fine-lined geometric micro-pattern, acting as a texture (further enhanced with gloss and dull varnishes).
  • LiveWell Colorado branding — The colorful burst created the perfect any-direction pattern for branding a variety of communications.
  • Children’s Circle of Care event — The heart of the logo combines with icons from the host hospital to create a pattern to brand the event through a custom tie (fabric), invitations (paper), water bottle (plastic) and more.

Enrich your brand with a custom pattern that creates instant recognition wherever it goes. 

And it can go virtually everywhere.
Contact Helen to get started.

June 13, 2018 - Comments Off on Patterns in Culture: Japan

Patterns in Culture: Japan

My love for travel started before I was two years old, when my parents flew me from New Zealand to Chicago, the beginning of what became their 30 year adventure in the United States. Each summer, we traveled. My brother and I made a nest in the back of the station wagon and we’d motor around the vast countryside of America or we’d hop on a plane to vacation overseas, taking advantage of my father’s light summer workload to see the world. Even as a child, I took in new cultures through small details and remembered each state or country by their textures, textiles, buildings and gelato flavors.

Today I see patterns everywhere I go, whether at home in Denver or in foreign curiosities. I've learned that each country reveals itself through the people’s expression of art, pattern and design. What is rendered are revered items of daily life or spiritual aspiration. Through my adventures, I’ve discovered that culture is not contained in a museum, but open to all and constantly evolving — simply walk, wander and take it in.

Patterned Roof in Kyoto Japan EnZed Design Helen Young

Japan

On my recent trips to Tokyo and Kyoto, I found objects rich in color and variety of pattern. The Japanese attention to detail is highly symbolic of their respect for others and their surroundings. Their connection to the Earth and its energy is part of their spirituality and expressed via the vermilion, gold and colorful patterns on their Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. There’s a rhythm to their spaces, creating visual patterns in three dimensions. Most of the printed patterns you find on papers and fabrics are representations of nature — flora, fauna, water and sky. Many are symbols associated with spirituality, luck, abundance and good fortune. This Kiriko clothing company article shows the most prevalent patterns, explaining their names, symbolism and origin.

Azaleas and Gates in Tokyo Japan EnZed Design Helen Young

The Japanese mix patterns and color expertly, which is especially notable in the multiple fabrics layered in their kimonos. You also see this in their fine art. They combine patterned papers as borders or mattes on hanging paintings and within hinges and borders on painted screens. Patterns are inlaid on boxes and painted on ceramics. Their combinations of pattern scale and object shapes within them is deft and often unexpected. Most of us are familiar with origami paper collections that fan out a gorgeous mix of patterns. The variety of these origami packs in Japan is dizzying. When I visited the iconic stationery shop Itoya in Ginza, Tokyo, I spent nearly 2 hours combing through 12 floors of paper, washi tape, journals, cards, bookmarks, pens, and shaped sticky notes. My Pinterest board on Japanese Design has an array of eyecandy featuring items with innovative simplicity or intricate decoration — all with a deliberately delicate touch.

Shoes in Kyoto Japan EnZed Design Helen Young Patterns

What’s particularly interesting to me about Japanese pattern is the motifs are ancient yet very contemporary. This mix is evident everywhere in their culture and takes many forms. In modern Tokyo, it’s subway riders with heads bowed absorbed in their phones balanced by their custom of bowing in greeting. In Kyoto, it’s a hunger for shopping high-fashion brands balanced by young people renting kimonos and queuing for tea ceremonies. (Side note: The shoe selections in Japanese department stores are on a scale I’ve not encountered before. Wowza.)

Kimonos Kyoto Manhole Cover Tokyo Japan EnZed Design Helen Young

Harmony and beauty come from this knack for balance. A quality I love about the Japanese people is their utmost respect for one another and their surroundings. You’d be hard pressed to encounter brash personalities or see careless littering. At the end of a rainy day, Tokyo’s subway train floor was shiny and spotless. The city’s manhole covers are famously shared on Instagram. Consumerism is high and space is precious, yet patience and civility underpin the culture. As the world capital of cute, with a love of animal ears on everything and hats on cats, I surmise that people strive to find small joys in many places or moments, especially in Tokyo, one of the world’s most densely populated cities. I’ll have to explore the country more to test that theory. Until then, enjoy these 20 photos + 20 haikus expressing my impressions of Japan (3 minute video). Arigato.