Way back in January 2021 I joined a 6 week surface pattern design course called Winter School with Make It In Design. We were back in lockdown after Covid and I was longing for community and something new to spark my imagination for my portfolio.

There are three levels available (tracks) and I took the intermediate and advanced tracks. Because I’d been a designer for quite some time I decided the beginner track may not be challenging enough. Little did I know how intriguing the beginner track would be and all the way through, I wish I’d taken that one too. I also knew very little about surface pattern design and was learning as I designed each pattern so the beginner track was probably more suitable than I thought. Thankfully I managed to design something for the four briefs I signed up for and absolutely loved the challenge.

Winter School was such a great experience I then joined Summer School when it came up later that year. Obviously the FOMO of my first Winter School meant that I did all three tracks. Since then, I’ve joined every Winter and Summer School and always look forward to seeing my designer friends back in class (online). I’ve even won places on some tracks with my designs from previous Winter and Summer Schools.

We are three weeks into this year’s Summer School and currently have 6 trend briefs to work on and 3 creative briefs with another 3 to follow next week (more of that to come in a future blog post).

At the beginning of each ‘school’, we are set a typography challenge and I’ve been wanting to do something tennis themed for quite some time. Wimbledon always feels like the start of summer so I knew that’s what I’d be drawing for this challenge. Not that we’ve had much of a summer in the UK this year.

Once all the designing is done, we get another typography challenge about our experience. In the past I’ve also won things with those. I’m about to order some fabric from Maake with my designs on that I won during Winter School 2024 back in January and February.

Before the next typography challenge though, there’s a lot of drawing and designing to be done. I’ve gone from designing one pattern to fit each brief in my first Winter School to designing whole collections ready to pitch to potential licensing partners. I’ve learned so much along the way and will continue to go back to school each term to see my creative friends and make lovely surface patterns.