Zoe Benjamin Design at Caroline Gardner
Following my winning entry to The Paper Library's Student Stationery Competition 2018 I am delighted to be joining the design team at Caroline Gardner for two weeks, this section will follow my time as part of that.
First Experiences
Anyone that knows me will know that although I appreciate technology, I am, at heart, a paper person, I mean I have a Filofax...I love the tactility of a sheet of watercolour paper, having a physical copy of a book, having beautiful stationery, and seeing art in the flesh. So it’s been a refreshing first day for me to experience the design process at Caroline Gardner. There is an emphasis on the hand-painted and hand collected imagery. The digital is used nearer the end of the design process and is used as an enhancement and manipulation of the physical.
It’s been insightful to see how similar my design process and designing in a company are. There is the balance of looking to trends without letting the trends dictate your handwriting. Picking details, phrasing and continuing your style so that it is both recognisable and yet fresh.
Caroline’s lines often last for around two years due to their timeless, classic and yet fresh looking designs.
It has been interesting as always to see how other designers work - and to be around both creatives and the rest of the team is refreshing.
For my time at Caroline Gardner I am working closely with their product designer as well as dipping in and out of some other areas. I have been given briefs to work on during my time here but will be bouncing ideas with the other designers.
I've also got to take a look at the new ceramics samples (my lips are sealed!) and been looking at the conversation which takes place between suppliers, designers and buyers.
Design Process
Over the past couple of days I've been getting to know a bit more about the company and how it works. This has looked like meeting with members of different departments to get a feel for what they do as well.
I've seen the whole card process in a nutshell including the design, make and manufacturing of greetings cards at CG. This has opened my eyes to a sector of design I didn't know a huge amount about. As it transpires card proofs involve lots of layering up acetates to check they're in the right place. Very interesting to see that card design can be both a team or partnership or very much solo depending on the designer and the brief, the designers at CG try to keep that recognisable style whilst still being fresh. They recognise their own and each other's strengths in order to produce around 500 card designs per year!!!
I've also been given the opportunity to share a bit of my ceramics knowledge with the team and provide a fresh input for their Autumn Winter 19 range but you'll have to wait and see for that one!
Designers and makers will tell you they prefer different parts of the process, and it's always interesting to find out what they say. For some it's seeing the final outcome, for others it's coming up with print, for others it's collaboration. Personally I love the idea generation stage, when everything is possible and your mood boards expand and change and morph, it's the blue sky thinking part where anything is possible, it's been fantastic to get to share in that journey in the past couple of days
Colour
So the first week is drawing to a close and today I've been spending some time looking at colour and picking out ribbon colours for a new notebook with one of the designers. We spent so long looking at the colours I'm not even sure what pink is anymore! Picking colours for notebooks is very different to picking stain colours in ceramics, with print you can pretty easily achieve any colour you're after, trying to get the right pink in ceramics proved much more difficult.
This afternoon we will be designing the new shop window and installing it later in the week.
NEW IN!
In larger companies the role of window designer is often a separate role however in a slightly smaller company such as Caroline Gardner there is a more hands on approach with all elements.
Alongside the other designers we have been working on creating a window display for the Marylebone shop front.
The priority for this new display has been that it reminisces or compliments the new range.
Shop window designs
