definatalie.com

I have promised to do a tutorial on flourishes, but my RSI is quite chronic at the moment so I’m reducing the amount of fine pointing activity I do – unfortunately this includes flourish work in Illustrator! I do have some free vector shapes lined up (peacocks!), but I’m quite snowed under at work right now and tend not to want to sit on my computer at all when I get home!

Right now – it’s my lunch break, and I’m sneaking in a quick blog entry just to let you know I’m still alive and thinking about you.

As I approach the upcoming flourish tutorial, I’ve been thinking a lot about individual style, and what I’m inspired by. A lot of my flourishes are derived from the lines and forms I see in gardens – albeit highly stylised. I’m also an avid fan of lurid patterns in textiles and anything tactile in general. I try to bring as much of this aesthetic into my own design work as possible, so I keep an eye on lots of interior design, craft and graphic design blogs.

The other night I came across a mother lode of gorgeous vintage floral and paisley fabric images on ebay, so I’ve transloaded many of the images to my flickr account. I’ll post my favourites here, along with a selection of other flora inspired items that really inspire me.
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I’ve had my first request for a tutorial! It never occurred to me that people weren’t aware of how to get elements “weaving” in and out of other elements (like text) in Illustrator. So click through and check out my first tutorial on “Weaving Flourishes”. Read Full Post

Honestly, it feels like flourishes are everywhere. As someone who has doodled throughout her life, during classes at high school and university and later whiling away time in meetings in “proper adult life”, I feel a little sold out. But to tell the truth I also feel a little vindicated. I remember I first started seeing those sneaky little vines wending their way through soft furnishings, involved in patterns reminiscent of Florence Broadhurst but also in damasks boldly ripped off from eras gone past. It seemed like the bland white plastic patinas of the iPod age were dead, and I rejoiced.

And then… a designer in all of his or her wisdom decided to combine the two. Now, I see glossy veneers paired with these beautiful natural and organic flourishes. What’s going on?! I’m currently struggling with this at the moment.

shinybinary.com

Nick Ainley is an incredible graphic artist, but I just don’t dig on the plastic surfaces fighting against the flourishes. In his favour, he does have a knack for perspective and three dimensionality. A lot of designers just wack in a few flourishes and chalk up another crowd pleaser. Nick obviously thinks about how each element fits in.

Design jump

adhemas.com

Chuck Anderson

I find these to be faddish and somewhat poorly executed, in-so-far as uniting the flourish with the subject matter. I don’t mind juxtaposition, but some of these feel awkward and very flat.

Alberto Seveso

It’s not all bad though! Alberto Seveso is amazing, his current schtick is a much more left field use of flourishes. They aren’t even flourishes he’s downloaded from istockphoto.com! They’ve all been lovingly created by himself – it’s plain to see – and form a new skin over the anatomy of high fashion models. I love it! I even love how his doodles aren’t even flowery, they’re soft and like chewing gum… something that really appeals to me.

The handmade flourish aesthetic obviously resonates strongly with me, and in order to find my own style, I brought doodles in to Illustrator from my notebooks and put them in sets of flourishes or combined them into seamless patterns. I don’t think fads should be avoided entirely, but in order to avoid the naff I like to put a credible and strongly voiced spin on it!

A little while ago i submitted patterns to Naked & Angry, a community driven site focusing on pattern and textile design, created by skinnyCorp - the guys behind threadless.com. I was stoked to see my submissions approved, and shamelessly promoted myself to all my internerd friends, and then promptly forgot about it.

Tonight I came home from a friend’s place and decided to see how my little patterns were doing. To my surprise I saw that scoring had ended, so I zoomed around comparing my scores with the others in this batch… and I think my pattern “tuesday, florence” has come in the top five! Apparently the top five designs get printed on wallpaper or fabric, and sold on the site!

Of course, I could be jumping the gun here, but here’s to hoping!

Click to go to a bigger view, and then view full screen. Trippy!