Playing with Pattern

I’ve always loved pattern and notice it everywhere—café tiles, packaging, wrapping paper, shop displays, even random objects that definitely weren’t designed to be interesting. My brain is constantly collecting visual references and turning them into ideas for future surface pattern design work.

Most of my illustration process starts the same way: sketching small individual elements without any fixed plan. A lemon, a lipstick, a vintage telephone, a star, a pickle. Just loose drawings that sit in my sketchbook until they start to feel like they belong together.

From there, those individual illustrations slowly evolve into repeat patterns.

That’s the part I enjoy most about surface pattern design—bringing unrelated elements together and seeing how they behave as a whole. Sometimes a pattern works immediately, sometimes it needs adjusting, and sometimes it completely changes direction during the design process.

Some of my recent pattern designs include playful pickle and condiment-inspired illustrations, a cosmic desert print inspired by a kind of neon graveyard glow, and a series of colourful vintage telephones reimagined in a bold, contemporary way. Each one started in my sketchbook as loose, individual motifs before evolving into repeat patterns, and I’ve loved seeing how everyday objects and slightly unexpected ideas can be transformed into something much more expressive when they’re placed into a pattern context.

At the moment, I’m working on some Christmas ideas which are still under wraps for now. The process is the same—sketching, refining motifs, testing compositions—just with a more seasonal palette and a lot of festive ideas still in progress behind the scenes. Sneak peek coming soon!