Tracy Kendall and Tal Rosner are two practitioners I wish to compare and contrast their processes and practices. Both visited our college and gave excellent lectures and giving us a good insight into their working process.
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I am particularly interested in the work of wallpaper designer Tracy Kendall. It is sophisticated and has a textural quality. She works on a large scale using simple elements that fit into a room space rather than dominate it. The images are graphic but refined down to their purest form. These are pigeon feathers, flowers and cutlery. They are 2.5m in height. She first began designing wallpaper when she needed some for her own kitchen. This led to her large fork and spoon designs. From these cutlery wallpapers she went on to design images of flowers, feathers and grass. They are 2.5m tall. Tracy Kendall has also produced digital images of stacked books, magazines and plates. She believes you do not have to cover every inch of the wallpaper but, for example, your design could be one simple stripe done digitally in the middle or to one side of the paper. I will consider this advice for my next designs as sometimes I feel I try to cover the paper completely whereas space could enhance or make the design.
Screen-printing is the main technique she uses to produce her wallpapers although she uses digital technology to explore and produce some designs which include stacked books/magazines/plates and also images of text. I would like to design wallpapers myself that combine both of these techniques being printed digitally and then worked onto using a screen print. I will carry out these techniques in the future.
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The textural wallpapers are 3 dimensional having various things attached to them e.g. sequins, buttons, jigsaw pieces and paper. They are usually attached by stitch or plastic tags. This is an idea I had not thought of before, attaching things to the paper which I will try out. Her designs are unique because they are not mass produced. She treats paper as if it is a textile, manipulating it in different ways which has not been done before. She works with her clients to create bespoke wallpaper that enhances a room perfectly. She is pre-occupied with pushing boundaries and never plays it safe!
Her inspiration comes from anything she is attracted to visually e.g. cracks in a pavement, magazines, interiors of shops, films and the world around her. Most of her research is recorded by taking photographs which are then thrown into a bag to be used on design days at a later date. I too take photographs for my research and then later sketch from them in my sketchbook. From these images she will produce designs and then sometimes she will re-visit them and push and change them further.
She tends not to work to a colour palette using only black and white because they are more masculine and attract male buyers, therefore, sell well.
Visitors at trade fairs like to touch and feel textures and this is why it is important for her designs to have a tactile quality drawing people in. I will apply texture in my own designs as it something I have always liked but have not really experimented a lot with and it could add another dimension.
To have a stand in trade fair it would cost £2,500. I had not realised how expensive it is to hire a stand! Again something I will ahve to think about for my own work.
She once did a show in a gallery where there was not enough room inside it so had to make use of the space outside. This worked to her advantage as she hung Christmas trees from the roof, creating a forest like effect, enhancing the way in which her wallpapers were exhibited making the space she was given work for her, a success!
Tracy Kendall has also created designs for lampshades and once covered a Robin Day Polyprop chair in sequins for a gallery. She likes the challenge of designing for different things producing one simple, clean, pure idea and pushing it to its limit.
She advised us to use a professional photographer to take pictures of our work to show it at its best. Even though this is costly it will be well worth it in the long run. This is then useful for editorials etc as Tracy says your phone will never stops ringing after it! I will definitely hire a professional photographer to show my designs off to their best.
Tal Rosner is a filmmaker, director and graphic designer. I am attracted to his work because of the amazing graphic patterns he creates which are blended together and animated with music. He works in a different way to Tracy Kendall as he concentrates on film but he too gathers his inspiration and imagery from his surroundings. He processes his research into something amazing and beautiful. One of his films he showed us is called Doppelganger. He created this by travelling around on a train with a video camera capturing all the urban sights along the way. This information was then edited and mixed together in such a way creating fantastic imagery and patterns that flow beautifully with his chosen music.
I contacted Tal Rosner to ask him a few further questions about his design process and how it could relate to textiles .
He says he thinks he has always been interested in pattern, especially the translation of patterns onto screen (where they can move, transform and have rhythm). I seem to include rhythm and movement a lot in my own designs and music has always been important to me so his films are an inspiration to me.
His BA was in graphic design and grid/patterns/page division and hierarchy were, he says, a great push in that direction.
Doppelganger is actually the oldest film he presented in the lecture and he thinks this is why it has the strongest link to print-based design. He tries not to always work with music nowadays, but believes that working closely with music at the beginning was very helpful for him and initiated the ’spark’ of the process - translating thoughts and design ideas into moving images.
He thinks that doing textiles is actually a great starting point for moving image and tells me that I should definitely try and experiment with ’stuff’. Whether if it is scanning sketches in and animating them, or building them in illustrator and then bringing them to After Effects, or even printing actual fabrics and filming them in various environments and then editing between - the sky is your limit!
Both Tracy Kendall and Tal Rosner work in ways that are unique to their industry and use techniques that have not been done before. Tracy Kendall concentrates on one, mainly organic, element, whereas Tal Rosner uses many images to create his animated patterns. Tracy's designs are beautiful, simplistic, a style that I wish to aspire to. Tal's are edgy and are based around urban images/buildings. His style too is relevent to my work as I am attracted to the urban city and patterns that buildings make. I also love music, another aspect in some of Tal Rosners work. They both keep pushing boundaries and are always thinking outside the box which has worked for them. Both are very successful in their market place and are in demand as they show new ways of working, a freshness. They are also passionate about what they are doing and it shows in their work, a key element in design.
I think that in order to be different from everyone else and become an accomplished designer within the industry you must adapt all of these qualities. It is clear that you must experiment all the time with ideas and techniques, by hand and cad and not be afraid to try new/different things. I probably would not have thought about scanning sketches in , and animating them because it never seemed relevant to my work but it seems anything is possible and could enable me to come up with some great/new design ideas. I will experiment with this technique. It is also evident that you must always think about what the client needs/wants and what they are attracted to because you obviously want to sell it e.g. Tracy Kendall only works to a black and white palette because this attracts the male buyers at shows. This is something I must consider and apply to my own dsigns when exhibiting at shows if I wish to have good sales.
