Cath Kidston Conversational Prints...

The Cath Kidston brief specifies that any print created must be conversational. The examples of conversational prints given were: Garden Birds, Cowboys and the Guards of London so it made sense to look into these examples.

I prefer these prints to the generic Cath Kidston designs already looked into because theres more to look at, a sense of story that makes the prints more visually interesting and engaging. I'm not a massive fan of the garden birds option because unlike the cowboy design below there is only one form really in the pattern. Having said this the birds themselves design wise adhere to a more realistic style. The mix of colours used on the birds help to instigate a physicality and a softness that actually helps to create a sense of texture. 

The cowboys print is one of my favourites- although I'm not entirely sure how this references Britain (Britishness as a key inspirator to Kidstons prints). I like the face that theres more to look at, the horse running have a great sense of movement which is once again provided through shapes of colour. Even the faces remain incredibly colour shape based something to consider if I incorporate any people. I mostly really like the background details, the cactus's help to fill up the negative space and really exemplify the cowboy wild west theme of the print.

The Guards of London is probably my favourite out of all the Cath Kidston prints researched, I love the hints of red within the black and white detailed world (an aspect I plan on considering within my own design), I actually prefer the detail introduced through the buildings, complicated line drawings that are contradicted by the simplistic and bold shapes that create the guards.  Its important to note that each building is its own self contained design so it doesn't matter how they are put together since we have to put our designs into a repeating tile it would be wise to generate small self contained designs as well. 

I am actually surprised by the cartoony nature of the guards in the print above, a black outline has been introduced which changes the whole style. Although I like the repeating  guard character because of the bold block colours the simple faces.I think that this print is an outlier to the Cath Kidston style so I don't plan on using this as a basis for my own design.