French Curvy Chairs Pattern Design
Spotting The Chairs
The moment I saw these chairs in a children’s playground in Lille, I knew they would make a lovely pattern design.
Creating Reference Images
I shot one of the chairs in a series of different angles, so that I had plenty of references. When I shot the chairs for my pattern Mid Century Chairs I was able to revolve the chair in my studio, but for these I had to make do with taking different angles and hoping for the best.
Choosing a Series of Chairs
I wanted to give the impression of jumbled up chairs – as if people had moved them around to talk to people. This sounds easy but to make it into a pattern without making obvious repeats has taken days. Even now I can see elements I could perhaps change.
Background Colours
Most of the early designs had a dark emerald background which I still like. Surprisingly the black background looks really strong too. Which do you prefer?
Colouring The Seats
I found using white seats to match the chair frames makes the chairs look a bit plastic, so I made the seats pale grey instead. For later designs I used a variety of fun coloured seats.
Finally I tried the dark grey chair frames and simple white seats. I really like the simplicity of these. Which do you prefer?
Testing The Pattern Repeat
The full-screen versions use actual pattern repeats, set to repeat using my style sheet (CSS). Meaning I don’t need large images taking up extra time to download. The computer repeats the pattern itself! The scale of the patterns can be altered too, again using the CSS style sheet. I find it a useful way to check the pattern repeat works and that there aren’t any odd glitches at the joins. This pattern took days of adjusting to get the pattern repeat to work properly without any odd spaces.
