Alice Perry Designs: Studio | Our Design Process

Hello there!

It's been go go go in the studio recently, we've been working on some very exciting design projects which are still to be revealed later in the year so today we thought we would preview some new designs we are currently working on as well as telling you the process behind creating them.

Have you ever wondered how these designs start? Well... it all starts with brainstorming ideas and collecting inspiration, wether that's from a photo, colour palette, mood board or even an object that draws our attention. Once we have an idea (or sometimes if working for a client a brief) we put together a refined mood board dictating style, colour and detailing. With a mood board set up to inspire us and keep us on the right track we reach for our sketchbook, hours can be spent sketching and doodling rough ideas in pencil until we have a design or character we wan't to develop further. We then draw out the components of the design or character in pen (we love to use Faber Castell PITT artist pens) until we are happy with the design. Our work has a very strong illustrative and hand drawn style, this is so important for us to capture in every piece of our work so drawing is SO important to the process. As well as drawing, creating texture is also a key element to our designs, so using either pens or black ink we create marks and textures on paper to scan in and overlay on designs later on.

Once we have our design elements on paper it's time to scan everything into our iMac ready to add colour and detail. Each drawing is individually scanned into the computer and then opened in either Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. Most of our drawings are re worked in illustrator, turning the scanned jpeg into a vector file to clean up and work on top of. We can then add colour as well as texture from our mark making. Adding texture really lifts an otherwise flat design and has become a key element to our design handwriting. Sometimes we need hand drawn typography and lettering for a design too so we draw phrases and words in pen and scan these in too! It's at this stage we can experiment with scale, the great part about editing work on the computer is you can be brave and try ideas and if they don't work you can go back to what you had before.

Colour is so important, it can really make or break a design, if used effectively it enhances the whole design! We find colour inspiration in every day life, wether it's from photographs of nature or landscapes or even objects on our desk! We have naturally developed a distinct colour palette within our work over the years, so much so it's become part of our design signature. We then either develop the design for an illustration/character or a surface pattern design or repeat print design.

Below we have shown examples of some new illustrations we have been designing, they are still drafts and work in progress but it's exciting to see projects come to life from a flat drawing to a full colour design. We will share the finished designs with you all at a later date!