Transform Your Portfolio With This Design Critique

In this behind-the-scenes look at a student critique session, creative heads at Longina Phillips Designs, Bec and Sara, share their expert insights to refine and elevate a design. They discuss everything from scale and balance to adding character and cohesion, offering practical tips to push the work closer to industry standards.

This session showcases the type of transformative feedback you’ll receive in our Print Design Accelerator. Designed for dedicated surface designers, the course equips you with:

• Expert guidance to create portfolio-ready designs.
• Real-world market insights to help you focus your work.
• Tailored critiques to sharpen your technical and creative skills.

If you’re ready to take your designs to the next level, don’t miss the opportunity to learn from industry leaders. This is your chance to grow, refine, and create with purpose. Register your interest in The Print Design Accelerator, which opens it's doors Tuesday, January 28th!

Bec: Like it's a little bit busy here whereas I feel like or perhaps it's the scale in the garment it feels less busy.

Sara: The silhouette in the background is less obvious. It's giving you a bit of relief. I also would like to see a mix of scale and...

Bec: it feels like there's more scale like when it's larger but here they feel it feels like they're all the same, perhaps because they've all got the same center too? That might be sort of making it fairly repetitive. Maybe you could think about doing a different type of center on one of the flowers.

Sara: Or using liquify to shrink one of the centers so it's not all the same.

Bec: This little flower here is really cute and I love that you've taken on board from that lesson where each petal has it's own sort of little personality and that is the perfect example, well done. It's really nice that you've got that different bit of negative space happening around your flower. I think that's great and each petal is different from the next one. You've really taken that lesson on board so well done with that and if anything with me nitpicking I don't love the leaves they just feel a little bit, I don't know, like you've drawn them at the last minute. They weren't as important as the flowers. So you know, just a little bit more stylized, just a little bit funky but definitely looks great here and those colours are really pretty with the pink coming through, too.

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For more design advice from Bec, check out the links below!

Studio Critiques What's Wrong With This Tropical Floral?
Swim Design Dos and Donts
Print Design Pearlers: How to Draw Fast, Excel at Your Job and Avoid Doing This!
Best Composition Tips for Surface Designers