February 07, 2025
11 11 11 AM

Surface Pattern Design – Finding Your Unique Style

One of the most rewarding aspects of being a designer is finding your unique creative style. Whether you’re an illustrator, a fashion designer, or a digital artist, your style is the visual language through which you communicate with your audience. It reflects your personality, your inspirations, and your artistic vision. However, the path to discovering your unique style isn’t always straightforward. It takes time, reflection, experimentation, and a deep understanding of both current trends and your preferences.

In this post, we will explore the process of finding your unique style as a designer. We will cover practical steps, tools, and resources to help you hone in on your identity, from staying updated with trends to the importance of experimentation, all while providing actionable tips to accelerate your creative growth.

1. The Foundation of Your Design Style

Before diving into techniques and resources, it’s essential to understand the foundation of what makes up your design style. Your style is an expression of who you are. It’s influenced by many factors, such as your experiences, the culture around you, the art and designers that inspire you, and the techniques or materials you enjoy working with.

It’s not simply about being different for the sake of it; it’s about embracing what feels natural and authentic to you. The more you explore and embrace your own influences, the more your style will begin to emerge.

Key Factors That Influence Your Design Style:

  • Your Background: Your cultural heritage, personal experiences, and surroundings can deeply impact your style. For example, if you were raised in a coastal city, your design may be naturally influenced by the colors of the sea, the textures of the shore, and the feeling of calm associated with the ocean.
  • Your Medium: The materials or tools you work with, whether digital or physical, can also shape your style. If you primarily design with watercolors, your style may have a fluid, organic, and soft feel. If you’re a digital designer working with geometric shapes, your style might gravitate towards a more minimalist or structured look.
  • Inspiration: The artists, designers, and movements you admire play a role in shaping your style. While it’s crucial not to copy others, drawing inspiration from their work can guide you toward your own artistic evolution.

Recognizing these influences is the first step to understanding what truly drives you as a designer and can guide your journey toward defining your style.

2. Understanding Trends and Staying Relevant

As a designer, it’s important to stay informed about the latest trends in the design world. While trends shouldn’t dictate your entire creative process, they can provide valuable insights and inspiration.

Why Understanding Trends is Important:

  • Relevance: Staying updated with trends helps you keep your designs fresh and relevant to current tastes. Trends often reflect cultural shifts, technological advancements, or global events, and tapping into them can make your work feel timely and connected to the world around you.
  • Inspiration: Trends can spark new ideas and challenge you to explore new design possibilities. Sometimes, you may not be directly influenced by a trend, but it could inspire you to try something different or push the boundaries of your work.
  • Networking and Collaboration: Following trends can also keep you engaged in the larger design community. It’s a great conversation starter and can help you network with other designers or collaborate on projects.

Where to Find Trend Inspiration:

  • Pantone’s Color of the Year: Pantone’s Color of the Year is a yearly event in the design world, influencing everything from fashion to interiors to branding. Pantone’s selection often reflects the mood of the year, cultural shifts, or environmental considerations. For instance, “Classic Blue” in 2020 was chosen because of its calming, dependable qualities, a response to the global uncertainty during that time.
  • Spoonflower Design Contests: Spoonflower is an online marketplace for custom fabric, wallpaper, and home décor designs. Their design contests are a great way to explore trends and gain inspiration. Many of their contests revolve around specific themes, often tapping into current pop culture trends, which can serve as a starting point for your own designs.
  • Design Websites and Blogs: Websites like Design Milk, The Dieline, and It’s Nice That showcase the latest trends in graphic design, product design, architecture, and illustration. These platforms curate work from top designers around the world, allowing you to see what’s popular and what’s pushing the boundaries in the design community.

However, it’s important to remember that trends should be incorporated into your work only if they align with your design sensibility. Trend-chasing for the sake of it can dilute your unique style and make your work feel temporary. The goal is to integrate trends in ways that complement your design voice, not overshadow it.

3. Experimentation: The Key to Discovery

One of the most effective ways to find your unique style is through experimentation. This is where you start testing different approaches and techniques, allowing your intuition to guide you toward what feels right. Experimentation is essential for creative growth and can lead you to unexpected breakthroughs.

Why Experimentation is Important:

  • Learning and Growth: Experimenting with different techniques helps you learn new skills and refine your craft. Whether it’s experimenting with new software tools, color palettes, or pattern styles, each new approach broadens your design capabilities.
  • Discovery: Experimentation often reveals hidden strengths and preferences. For instance, you might start experimenting with vibrant colors only to discover that you’re naturally drawn to muted tones or that you prefer working with symmetrical patterns over organic shapes.
  • Innovation: By stepping out of your comfort zone, you might stumble upon something truly innovative that becomes part of your signature style.

How to Experiment:

  • Try Different Themes: You may have a clear sense of what you like, but experimenting with a variety of themes can expand your creative horizons. For example, if you usually create minimalist designs, try experimenting with maximalist approaches, incorporating more details, textures, and colors.
  • Vary Your Color Palettes: Colors are one of the most impactful aspects of design. If you typically use neutral tones, experiment with bold, vibrant colors. Similarly, if you favor bright colors, try working with a muted or monochromatic palette.
  • Scale and Proportion: Changing the scale of elements within your design can dramatically affect its impact. Play with larger-than-life patterns or tiny intricate details to see what resonates with your creative instincts.
  • Mix Media: If you typically design digitally, try incorporating traditional media like hand-drawn illustrations, watercolor textures, or even photography into your designs. Mixing media can lead to exciting new outcomes and reveal untapped aspects of your style.

Give Yourself Permission to Fail: One of the key aspects of experimentation is the freedom to fail. Not every experiment will be successful, and that’s okay. Each “failure” is just another step toward discovering what works for you. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes or explore ideas that might seem unconventional. Over time, you’ll begin to see patterns emerge in what resonates with you most.

4. Actionable Tip: Create a Mini-Collection to Explore Your Identity

A great way to start synthesizing everything you’ve learned through experimentation is to create a mini-collection of three patterns or designs that represent your current creative direction. This will help you narrow down your focus and refine your style.

Why Create a Mini-Collection:

  • Refinement: By working on a small, cohesive collection, you can begin to see how your design elements interact with one another. This is an excellent opportunity to refine the elements that feel most authentic to you and eliminate those that don’t resonate.
  • Cohesion: A mini-collection will give you a clearer sense of cohesion in your work. How do the colors, textures, and themes you’ve been experimenting with come together when presented as a set? Creating a mini-collection helps you visualize how your designs can coexist as part of a larger aesthetic.
  • Confidence: Sharing your mini-collection with others can boost your confidence. Whether you share it on social media, your website, or in portfolio presentations, having a tangible collection of work can reinforce your growing style and attract potential clients or collaborators.

How to Create a Mini-Collection:

  • Pick a Theme or Concept: Start by choosing a unifying theme or concept for your mini-collection. It could be a specific color palette, a design technique (like hand lettering or geometric patterns), or a visual element (like nature-inspired designs).
  • Develop Three Designs: Create three different designs that fit your chosen theme. These could be patterns, illustrations, or even full layouts, depending on your medium. The key is to make sure that these designs work together cohesively while still showcasing the diversity of your creative approach.
  • Test Different Variations: Don’t be afraid to create multiple versions of each design. For example, try adjusting the scale or color scheme, or incorporate different textures to see how each design evolves. This iterative process will help you identify the strongest version of each design.
  • Get Feedback: Share your mini-collection with trusted peers, mentors, or even your audience. Feedback can help you fine-tune your work and see how others perceive your style. It’s an invaluable step in your creative process that will help you grow.

5. Evolving Your Style Over Time

As you continue to experiment and create, your style will naturally evolve. It’s important to recognize that your unique style isn’t a fixed endpoint—it’s a fluid process. Your style will change as you grow, learn new skills, and adapt to new trends and influences.

Embrace Evolution: Don’t be afraid to let your style evolve over time. As you gain experience, you may find that certain elements that once felt important to your style no longer resonate with you, and that’s perfectly okay. It’s part of the growth process. The key is to stay open to change and always be learning.

Stay True to Yourself: While it’s important to evolve, make sure that the core essence of your style remains authentic to you. Don’t feel pressured to conform to what’s popular at any given moment. Trust that your style will resonate with the right audience if you remain true to your creative voice.

Conclusion

Finding your unique style as a designer is a rewarding but ongoing journey. By understanding trends, embracing experimentation, and creating mini-collections, you can discover and refine your design identity. Remember, the most important thing is to trust your instincts and allow your style to grow organically over time. Keep exploring, experimenting, and learning—your unique design voice will reveal itself when the time is right.

Happy designing!