Textile Print Designer — Mood Boards & Repeats in London

Zoe is a freelance fashion and textile print designer, with over twenty years experience in the fashion and textiles industry. Based in Essex, she is available to hire from her own printing studios, or to work in-house when required.

A textile designer needs a good eye for colour and detail. They create two-dimensional designs to be used as repeats in the fashion industry as well as interior design and furnishings.

Zoe offers a multi-product textile print, design, and development service for designers, fashion startups, small businesses, high street brands, retailers, and individual clients.

Multiple Products: Zoe's work covers surface pattern design for various products, including rugs, throws, towels, curtains, upholstery, bespoke wall hangings, soft furnishings, and custom textiles for clothing brands.

Fashion Prints: Zoe has a solid background in the fashion and textiles industry, having worked on fabric printing for womenswear, childrenswear, and menswear. She has a highly distinctive commercial handwriting across florals, animal prints, abstracts, and vintage pieces.

Mood Board Creation: Clients are encouraged to create a mood board to help provide inspiration, focus, and direction, as well as to convey their ideas to colleagues and buyers. Mood boards are essential if you are unsure of what direction to develop the prints for your product, or need your ideas focused. Zoe can help you create a customised mood board based on the client's brief.

Research: In order to create an effective mood board, it is necessary to collect useful information over time. The best textile designers and creative entrepreneurs need to be constantly collecting examples of interesting and unusual designs from various sources. Researching design trends is an essential part of the job.

Designs: Once you have created your mood board and discussed your thoughts with Zoe, you should have a clear idea of what you want and the direction you want to take. Zoe will then create a production-ready print for you, based on your ideas and inspirations.

Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop: Computer-aided design (CAD) enables textile designers to use their creativity to the fullest. Zoe creates all her print designs on either Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, coming in repeat and colour-separated layers where possible.

Creating A Repeat Design: For a large piece of fabric to be printed continuously and smoothly, the design must be printed using a series of identical repeat tiles that form a seamless overall design. Each tile edge flows into each other tile edge.

All Over Print Design: All-Over-Prints (AOP) are widely used for different types of products, especially in streetwear products such as T-shirts, hoodies, and sweatshirts, where both front and back are printed.

Direct To Garment Printing: Direct-To-Garment printing (DTG) is not limited to specific print areas.

Print Direction: Zoe can discuss with you and advise on print direction and layout, which will affect the look of the garment and the fabric costing.

Colour Separated Layers: For ease of colour change, most prints have each colour separated, making it easy to play around with colour ways.

Using Pantone Colour References: Colours can look very different onscreen to real life, so it is important to ensure that printers have a good reference for the colours you choose. This is where Pantone is essential.

Scale: Scale is crucial for prints, and very easy to get wrong. Zoe will help you decide on the right scale for your product and ensure that the print files reflect this.

Development Of Bought Prints: Zoe can also help you develop a print you have bought as an idea or a vintage find into a workable commercial print.

Using Vintage Sample Prints: You may have a lovely vintage print that you have bought or sourced and want this developed into a print you can use.

Textile Printing Tuition: Zoe offers one-to-one tuition for anyone interested in learning textile print design. Classes can be face-to-face in Essex or online via Zoom.

How do I become a fabric print designer? The long way would be to obtain a degree, as most positions require a degree in textile design. However, you don't need a degree to become a textile designer; you just need some design talent and a willingness to learn.