An insight into my Idott live brief with Cole & Son 'A Captivating Conversational Design'

In my final year of university we were given the opportunity to respond to a live brief competition. We were given a wide range of options to choose from, although I do not specialise in interior design I felt that the Idott 2020 wallpaper brief with Cole and Son was the best suited to me. The brief was entitled 'A Captivating Conversational Design' I was really drawn to this brief in particular because I thought it would give me plenty of scope to show off my drawing and painting skills. I found it a very enjoyable experience working for a client and it gave me a taste of the work I may be doing in the future as a designer.

I spent a long time researching a possible theme for this brief because I wanted to make sure that my work carried a strong narrative in order to fulfil the brief specifications. In the end I decided to choose a theme which I was passionate about and close to my heart. As a child I lived in a small village on the Gower Peninsula of Swansea called Port Eynon. It is a place in which I have very fond childhood memories and it is somewhere which I still visit on a regular basis. Port Eynon is full of cute little cottages, beautiful gardens and wildlife. I thought it would be the perfect place to base my work off because not only is it personal to me but it has an abundance of picturesque spots in which I can extract imagery from. To create a conversational design I needed a broad range of elements in order to create a narrative. I took a lot of inspiration from British country gardens, typical ornaments found in a country cottage, animals and wildlife. Alongside this I researched the brand Cole & Son to uncover their brand identity.

The colour inspiration for this project came from a range of different sources, the main ones being my primary imagery and artist research. I was really inspired by the colours used in William Moriss' Strawberry Thief wallpaper design. I loved the more muted colours of blue combined with a bold colour pop, this is something that I tried to introduce into my own colour palette for this project. I did some research into interior colour trends for 2020/2021 and found a similarity in colours between my primary research and the Dulux colour trends for 2020. This research really helped me confirm a final colour palette for the project.

Below are the four final designs that I submitted into the Idott competition for Category 1:

I was very lucky to be selected by the judges to be included on the Idott 2020 shortlist for 'A Captivating Conversational Design'.