How to Create a Finished Design from a Trend Board

 Learn how to create a stunning design collection from our free trendboards. Download them and follow along!

So I've had some feedback from our customers and students that receiving trendboards can be kind of daunting and overwhelming. So today I was thinking that we could go through the free set of trendboards that are on the print school website, how we pull out print ideas and create our own stories and just see how many prints that we can get from these totally gorgeous trendboards. 

So what is this gallery saying to you? Your first look?

Yeah, so the first board that we're looking at is the Master Theme and that's kind of the overview for the whole trend. And this one's called Hypercolor. So the first thing that I see when I look at this is just like a beautiful intense color, like it's crazy beautiful. But the first thing really is that really interesting use of color. 

There's not a lot of lights I can see straight away that there's more of those mid tones and darker hues and they're balanced off just one or two light colors. It's also just a really interesting use of color. So I can say there's one or two really clean bright color and then it's balanced off these kinds of dustier mid tones and slightly darker colors just to make a really interesting color palette. So for me just like looking at that at the start, the color is just stunning, it's really interesting, a little bit quirky and bold. 

And with the images would you take one image like this flower here? Would you take that image and design a print based on that or would you kind of combine a few images together? 

Yeah, I think for this first because this is just kind of the master theme, I usually take this as just an overall mood or vibe. So yeah you can definitely take a couple of images but for me it's really about absorbing what is this telling me about this trend. And so besides color as well as now I'm looking, the images feel really contemporary so it's not about looking backwards at all, everything feels really new, really fresh. And that overall feeling.

So next we can scroll down and have a look at the color direction. So this is where we're getting our information that is specifically for color. 

And how would you use these color chips and what do they indicate for textile design? 

Yeah, so for the color chips you'll see that they're not all the same, they're different sizes and those color chips indicate color proportions and color usage. So the larger color chips that we see are the colors that you would have the emphasis on, whereas those tiniest little bars of color would really just be accent colors or pop colors. It's not about that as much, you're just getting a little fun accent in there. So like what I can see here again is these beautiful darker kind of bluey indigo colors, that's the main picture and it's also a large color chip so I can kind of see that that's obviously key and these deeper kinds of reds and maroons.  

So is it important to balance the color in a print? 

Yeah it's really important to get the color right. For me personally I always feel like the customers see color first. Yeah of course. Even when I'm buying things I'm not always buying it for the print, like the color has to be perfect as well. Yeah so color is key and even for retailers including you can see here there's some neutrals as well so off these really beautiful colors having some neutrals in so that retailers can always pair their more basic clothes off of the really interesting color that is included in the print.  

Do you have to use all the colors in the color palette or  just use a few?

No, again the color, I would say the color is more of like the feeling. You might only pick a few colors for a print or for a print story. You don't need to feel like obliged that you I have to use all of these colors exactly. You might pick out one color print story and then just use a few colors and then maybe for another print story use a few others and again you don't have to like eye drop them and you use that exact pantone. You can now use it as you need and what looks good in the prints that you're working on. 

 Ellen: Yeah so the pantone color could change slightly. 

Yeah of course depending on especially like we've got the pink here you can you might have a pink flower but just in the way that that color is shaded you're going to use maybe deeper reds and maybe lighter pinks but the overall flower is going to give off that style and that kind of color. 

So next, you can see here that we've got these three trend boards within that larger hypercolor trend and the first one is hyper flowers. So the first thing that I do and sometimes I do forget is to always read the information. I'm so drawn to the pictures that I'm just so excited to get in there but there is also always important information in the text. So reading what the text says yeah it's really important. 

Ellen: Because there's a lot of keywords in there that you can take into your design. 

Yeah exactly it's really the keywords that you can pull out so I'm not going to read the whole thing up but even I can see that there's like a botanical print like dramatic and immersive so all of those words like help you to understand what these trend boards are really trying to get across. 

So if I open that one up we can see I've got the hyper flower trend board and just looking overall I can see that there's kind of like I can see a lot of digital, I can see a lot of photo reel. 

Is scale important for “Hyper” trend boards? 

Yeah well I can see even with the hyper I think in one of the ways it could be hyper is through scale so like a hyper scale. Yeah, like you could do a whole print story of flowers that are bigger even if you just have one really big beautiful bloom and maybe it's a photo reel. Maybe it's got digital blurs on it like spaced out around a garment that could look absolutely stunning. So that is one way I would probably that's one whole print story I would probably pull from this is like an exploded photo reel maybe painted. It could be different techniques but those exploded just really vibrant large statement blooms. 

How would you adapt ‘Hyper Flowers’ in a homeware collection?

Left: Ameri Vintage, Right: Stine Goya

Yeah so I think yeah those really exaggerated large blooms would look really nice like on homewares on like a quilt cover something like that but I think going with that scale and making it hyper through scale would be really great. I can see some dark grounds here image eight and nine could look beautiful if blown up on a quilt cover. Like I would really like that and I think you could do a small print story just of these like larger beautiful blooms for homewares and even on the dark grounds like it's really moody. Yeah I think that could look really beautiful especially considering the color palette that we just looked at. 

Ellen: And you just used the one element for this? 

I think you could and you could also be really smart about it like if you had one super beautiful painting of a flower that was really time consuming that you'd spend a lot of time on, you could use that, place it around, but you could also then hop into photoshop and alter it. Maybe you take a little bud from that larger bloom and just be really smart about how you've designed it and save yourself some time. But, I'm also looking here. I think reference four is this really digital kind of daisy that's been warped and twisted really has all these digital effects and I'm thinking that would look really cool for more of like a story for the youth market. 

Prints by Longina Phillips Design

Ellen: And they're quite blurred as well like in the image. 

There's all like a rainbow edge outside of it and I can just imagine that on a really light slinky slip dress at a festival. I think there's something to another smaller print story I would pull or make multiple prints of these prints that have some kind of like digital effects, digital warping, like a glitch effect almost. So maybe if I've got the large scale collection, I could also do a medium scale with various spacings but all having that kind of a digital glitch. You could do different effects but all kinds of digital and technique. Maybe one's more blurred, maybe one's got more glitched, maybe one's kind of stretched and warped. I feel like it would really hit that kind of late 90s, early 2000s, like Y2K vibes. I'm really excited for that actually.

Now, I'm looking at one and two and three as these are like monotone photographic florals that look a bit more put together. So maybe more for women's wear or race wear, also spring races. Also bridal and everything when everyone's going to a wedding. I love these tonal photographic florals in a mid-scale and even this one has exploded so large but just that it all uses the one color. I think it is really easy to wear that could even be like a third small set of prints. 

Left and Center: Erdem, Right: Roberto Cavalli

Ellen: It kind of looks like special occasion wear 

Yeah, that's where I'm feeling like, for special occasion wear. That's just off the top of my head, I would go probably with those three but even with each of those smaller print stories. If I was still freelancing, I would still probably pull three to four different prints to work for each of those stories so there's quite a lot of options. 

And then we can go to the next trend board that we've got which is ‘hyper skins’. The first thing that I see when I look at it, obviously it's skins, but it's really graphic. Mostly neutral with some warm colors so that's kind of giving me some more information about this individual trend. But what I'm really taken by is how graphic a lot of these skins are. 

L-R: Sportmax, Roberto Cavalli, Jacquemus 

So when I'm looking at three and eight and two, they feel mostly kind of black and white or black and cream. And the animal skins are almost doing something geometric, so they might be doing more of a stripe or a chevron. So I would probably explore a print trend that is animal skin but that borders on something really geometric and bold so it'd be a bit more ambiguous. Is it a geo? Is it animal skin? Just something really bold that could even be printed with two colors, so our customers and clients like that's maybe a cheaper print for them with just two colors which makes it an easy buy.

What kind of market would you design the animal skins for?

Definitely apparel and women's wear, kind of Youth but it will also look great on swim and even intimates. I can see our reference six and ten on the smaller scale. So again you could do a whole nother story of much smaller animal prints and these guys both look almost like a texture. So while we'd have a couple of prints that feel really bold and geo and simplified, maybe a couple of other prints in a second story that are much smaller and that look like an overall texture. They're also really easy to wear. So even if it's like work wear, a small like a ditzy animal print that just looks like a texture, like animal skin and like a ‘non-print’ print- that is probably something.  They're both really beautiful warm colors so I'd probably pull some of those warmer dusty colors from the main color palette to explore a few prints there.

L-R: Arthur Arbesser, Massimo Dutti

And then I've noticed too in this 11 and 5, those references are actually a little bit blurry or watercolor-like to hide dye. I think that would be worth exploring like in another couple of prints. Maybe some that are hand-painted. I really like the idea of the tie-dye animal skin and even some that are more of that like digital blur. I feel like they would sit nicely together as a little print story. So again here, I feel like that's a lot of options.

So just looking at the third print trend, we've got this Hyper Weave. Just looking at that, the first thing that I'm taken by is this image in the middle that looks like a massive exploded kind of tartan check and I just think that's really beautiful. I think that's where that hyper comes from. The hyper scale just exploded. I think that's really beautiful and again worth exploring in a couple of different prints with a scale. I like that this one's got a twill. Maybe not everyone's into this kind of twill texture. So you could do another one that's not like this. If I look at this skirt, there's some little detail there but it does kind of look like a micro check or some kind of weave. So then you could even include one or two that have some really large scale like check or tartan but then print mixed with something smaller. And then your customers are going to feel like they're getting twice as much. Also it just looks really cool in the garment especially I mentioned something by its cut with really large and then there's something small. If you want the first one to feel lighter ground but then your second one to balance off those darker colors. I really like to put it all together. I would definitely play with that and even looking at image one, that's also quite spaced out to me at the moment. I feel like there's really spaced out checks and tartans to feel more contemporary.

L-R: Stine Goya, Sacai, Rolf Ekroth

So even if it's larger, it also contains a lot of negative space but that would be kind of one idea. You can totally see it, like a kind of contemporary workwear. Something a good way to work but also if it was cut in a really cool way, you can wear it differently. I love that but then I'm also seeing here there's quite a few kinds of intarsia that feel really contemporary. So that's something that I would feel more like it's quite winter. I wouldn't necessarily do the intarsia for a Spring-Summer collection but I do love that they feel contemporary. They're not fully traditional because they're in contemporary colors and even some of them like number six here, that cute little conversational element, I think it’s very christmas-y even if it's really subtle. You don't notice it until you do. I think contemporary versions of an integer are another couple of prints or small print story that I would take from this. I'm looking at for now the way that that's obviously printed and it looks like it's almost hand painted to look like an intarsia. So may be using different styles to create the intarsia could be really cool.

Watch Charis turn the Hyper Flower board into a stunning, large scale digital floral design from 12:25 here. Link here!

And don't forget to download the free trend boards we've discussed, so you can put some of the ideas into action, and get the ball rolling on your next collection.

----