Lake Leisure

Finally, the bounty of my Surface Design project.

Goal: Create a cohesive line of products using completely original art elements.

Inspiration: Silver Bay on Lake George, always my muse. I pictured a line of products that could be for sale at the Silver Bay Gift Shop. Products that could appeal to any part of a generation. Silver Bay is conventional, preppy, rustic, and funky all at once. Lots of tradition, lots of family. It's a place people keep in their hearts for their whole life. These things (combined with my lack of fashion know-how) geared my line of products into a strange hybrid; think country club meets outdoor enthusiast.

Title: This was the last thing I did, but it seems appropriate to list it first here.



Icons: First we created a series of graphic elements that could stand alone or be combined with other Icons to create compositions. I had no idea where I was going with my project at this point. I only knew I wanted to incorporate hand-written type, because that's so hot right now. I got out the watercolors and started painting.







Badges: Badges are mini compositions which could be used on a hat or chest print of a t-shirt (or mug, etc). My favorites involve the Sunfish; I love how their bright colors pop against the deep blue greens of the mountains (in real life and in my badges!




Patterns: The Patterns portion of the class was challenging for me. We used our icons, badges, and borders (mine were too lame to show here) to make repeating or organic patterns. I think this would have been easier had I started with more abstract shapes, but the realism of my icons begged for a composition. Who wants a sheet set with a billion repeating sailboats all over it? Therefore, my most successful ones involved a simple brush stroke stripe.


I was able to use my watercolor birch leaves with a found image of a birch tree trunk. That turned out pretty cool.



Product Line: Finally, we created a product line. This involved finding/creating silhouettes on which to place your masterpieces. I found products and hand drew them to give it that "Silver Bay Look," then took the scans into Photoshop and applied my patterns/icons/badges. Here are a few of my favorites.









Outcome: I had a fantastic teacher, got a glimpse inside an industry I knew nothing about, picked up some Photoshop tricks, met some nice classmates, got some great sketchbook time in, and challenged my brain to not think composition first. Good times.

Thanks for your patience. If you made it all the way down to the bottom, you get a special treat - a joke!

What's brown and sticky?

A stick!