Floral Collage - The Great British Floral

The People's Print starts preparing for The Great British Floral at The V&A museum 3 day workshop as part of the British Design season. We celebrate The British Floral in parallel with The Chelsea Flower Show to create beautiful florals ready to print. We use methods of hand craft combined with digital techniques to create unique bespoke designs. Guiding you through the process of design to production and offer a design 'Toolbox' of several techniques which enable you to design your own bespoke fabrics, ready to print - ready to wear for Summer!

If you can't join us, don't worry we will be producing an The Great British Floral e-book in June!

Prep!

The Peoples' Print are getting ready for The Great British Floral workshop creating three tutorials easy to follow for you to create your own glorious designs ready to print. At the end of the workshop in June you will be able to buy our e-book The Great British Floral and follow our easy DIY steps if you can't make the workshop.

Consumer - Curator

Lidwwij Edelkoorts recent article Handmade ‘When Design and Craft meet’ examines our changing world of design. How design has evolved from function to décor, through to innovation and finally global branding. Now we find ourselves drowning in a world of stuff, and an over saturated world of design. It presents the question ‘what is the role of the designer today’?

‘Today, we experience a need for reflection and we feel a need to rethink the (non)sense of design’ (Edelkoorts)

Globalisation has brought about uniformity and boredom of product and brand. We now long and seek for an individual and community identity, localised product and craft. A great example of this is my local market in Brixton, South London, which has been regenerated back to colourful, thriving, artistic bustling market that locals have had a major input in. Full of small run businesses with food places and individual craft shops that give’s the market a lively identity and a model for other inner cities communities. When you spend your money (The Brixton pound!) you feel like you are investing back into your community and not a globalised chain, it feels good too!

Edelkoort concludes with the future of design being the consumer becoming the ‘curator’ of their products. This made me reflect on my project ‘Slow Grow’ where I invite the consumer to be central to the design process. In this case it was Mary, an old age pensioner who is passionate about her allotment in Fulham which in turn contributes to her wellbeing and happiness, the flowers she grows become a print for her own shirt to wear.

Surely this is ‘consumer curated design’? Reflecting over the last 5 years my role as a designer has now changed immensely with the needs of design. I act more as a facilitator to enable consumer center design with the aim to create a more sustainable design approach. For me this is the future of design, to work and create together local design identities by sharing skills.

The People’s Print is a unique platform that explores and tests new textile ideas through collaboration, participatory design, slow & fast, new and old techniques and process’s. It is the voice of change that Edelkoort speaks about.

To experience The People’s Print philosophy join us at our next workshop at the V&A ‘The Great British Floral’ to create your own unique floral ready to print and ready to wear.

Melanie Bowles - The People's Print

The Great British Floral!

Were getting ready for The People's print 'The Great british Floral' at the V&A, watch this space!

The People's Print Vision !

The People’s Print is a pioneering design enterprise that aims to create and enable communities of people all over the world with a passion for designing and creating their own textiles. 

The People’s Print specialise in promoting and publishing new making concepts for textiles combining traditional and digital technologies, open source, co-design, centralised print bureaux and participatory design. An example of their publications is co-director, Melanie Bowles’ book Digital Textile Design (co-authored by Ceri Isaac, Laurence King 2007), a tome in the digital design field for its step by step tutorials for generating high-end DIY prints for fashion. 

The People’s Print co-directors, Melanie Bowles and Dr Emma Neuberg, came together in 2011 to combine their skills and expertise in traditional textiles practice, technical innovation, digital media and pedagogy. They run co-design print seminars and workshops for both private and public sector clients, the most recent being the V&A during the exhibition Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970-1990. Clients are given the tools and skills for developing print designs and co-creating a design identity for a specific product or theme. 

In the public sector, participants enter a project agreeing to group ownership of the co-created product at the outset. This means the incentive is there to create something that works for the group and represents it in a cohesive fashion. This is a powerful tool pioneered and honed by The People’s Print to offer significant social and cultural benefits to those who engage in the process. This is making for social good but in a cool, fun, real life kind of way! The group gains exclusive rights to the co-created designs and can forever develop their community’s design identity autonomously.

In the private sector, The People’s Print toolbox offers new methods for envisioning future products and co-design identities. In a world where participatory design is becoming increasingly important to consumers, addressing methods of co-design as an integral part of product development is key to brand survival. It’s also central to a brand’s sustainable development strategy. The People’s Print give brands an edge on the competition with their expertise in co-design processes and thereby enable customer bases to expand exponentially.

The recent V&A group of “postmodernism” participants, named the Born To Be Wild group, developed the first ever co-created, co-owned swatch book of digital fabric designs outside of a corporation. Each member of the group owns the rights to the digital files to print on demand whenever and wherever they wish. This swatch book pioneers a new methodology for digital textile print identity development, community generation, cultural and social identity and a springboard for entrepreneurship. Melanie and Emma are excited by this prospect in light of globalisation and the sense of community confusion that it can bring – remember the summer riots across Britain (2011) where global brands offered the only sense of cohesive community symbol? By harnessing new technologies and new working methods, the People’s Print pioneer ways to counter the negative effects of mass consumerism, fast fashion and globalisation.

The People’s Print is about investing in people’s innate creativity and giving them the confidence, vision and tools to create bespoke products for themselves and their communities. Melanie and Emma aim to promote their methodologies internationally to empower individuals whilst simultaneously harnessing the power of their social networks and communities. The People’s Print methodology offers a platform to stimulate emotionally durable design and maker’s autonomy while reducing the omnipotence and environmental destruction of fast fashion and fast culture.

Using playful methods of DIY, handmade and traditional techniques re-mixed with digital medium, The Peoples Print offers an exciting new toolbox for designing for and with the people: Ready to Share, Ready to Print, Ready to Wear!

The People's Print attends the Makers Guild

The People's Print attended The Makers Guild event at the V&A last week. The evening   explored relationships between maker culture and textiles with speakers Alexandra Deschamps and Alexandra Jarup from Curious Scarves , Elena Corchero talking about her buisness Lost Values and our close colleague Jen Ballie whose presented her Phd research which focuses on co-design and engaging the consumer to be part of the design process. The People's Print were invited to do a guest blog post for The Makers' Guild and give an over view of recent work and future vision The Makers Guild

The Born To Be Wild Swatchbooks Begin Their Co-Owned Lives!!

Silk print designed by Maria Genco, Born To Be Wild group, 2011.

This year sees the Born To Be Wild's silk Swatchbooks become an unique reference point for each of the co-owning designers. They can browse through the group's collection (both silk and extended digital versions) to find new material to work with, adjust, improvise and build upon.

The 'postmodern' starting point of the Born To Be Wild project is central to this exciting and unique process of reflection, reference and inspiration bound by and within the group. This is a cultural and experiential value that they will have forever that takes root in memory and psyche to inform and stimulate creativity, plans and action.

The People's Print have seeded a creative agency in light of critical thinker, Ivan Illich's 'life of action'!

Silk print designed by Pamela Schwartz, Born To Be Wild group, 2011.

Silk print designed by Alice Joubert, Born To Be Wild group, 2011.

Silk print designed by Katie Faddy, Born To Be Wild group, 2011.

Silk print designed by Melanie Bowles, Born To Be Wild group, 2011.