The design team was tasked with coming up with new print concepts for our Cloth Diaper Collectors Club which ultimately became the Doodles Collection. While we love creating artwork to represent a particular person or group of people for the Genius Series, and learn a whole bunch doing so, we were excited to have the creative freedom to explore any topic we liked. As with any creative process, we started brainstorming ideas, taking inspiration from our pets, internet memes, and windowsill gardens, then took those ideas to some initial sketches.

Step 1 – Sketch

Every designer approaches pattern-making differently based on their unique creative style. Usually, I start with the sketches in pencil and do a bunch of options to refine the look.

Step 2 – Sharpie

Once I’m happy with the sketches, I scan them in, refine shapes and add color in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. Since I wanted these particular prints to have more of a hand-drawn look, first I photocopied my pencil sketches and then drew over the copies with a black sharpie.

Step 3 – Scan

Then, I scanned those final drawings and refined in Illustrator. Once in Illustrator, I have fun arranging the illustrations as a repeating pattern and play with scale, color and placement. For the Doodles Collection, I kept the majority of the artwork black and white with more negative space around the shapes and added color in small pops.

Step 4 – Mock-Ups

Once the pattern is at a place the designer is happy with, we do a quick mock-up on a diaper at scale with tab and snap combos and submit the proposed pattern for review.

Step 5 – Doodles Collection

For the Doodles Collection, we proposed a whole bunch of ideas in various styles and subject matter. When the team narrowed down our favorites, we started to see a fun theme of plant and animal doodles. We decided that would be a fun direction for our first edition of doodles and added a few more ideas to round out the collection.

We had so much fun creating each of the prints and hope you have fun putting our doodles on your little bums. Stay tuned for the second edition of Doodles coming in 2018, but for now, make sure you sign up to receive TREEmendous!