How Will You Dress Yours?

This Friday, ten new Great British Floral prints will be the public domain in the form of beautiful bespoke garment ideas created by ten emerging textile designers. 

There'll be a very special guest appearance too! Watch this space! 

Week Three - The Great British Floral x The Union Jack

How will The People's Print dress the Union Jack this Friday ?

Week Two - The Great British Floral - How to design a signature Liberty Print

    Designs - Melanie Bowles & Kazusa Takamura

Week Two! How to design a Paintbrush Floral inspired by Liberty's prints! Don't worry if you can't join us an e-book on this tutorial will be out this summer!

Week One - The Great British Floral

Cut and paste, paint and trace, scan and play, we had fun, we worked so hard and began to produce some Great British Florals!

Watch this space! 

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