I've been fortunate to take several workshops at Pattern Observer: The Sellable Sketch, The Ultimate Guide to Repeats, and Mastering Your Market. One of the most helpful things I've learned is to create a "backbeat" story as I'm developing a new suite of prints.

There are three components: Trends, the Customer, and My Style. The intention is to think about a particular person that would buy something made with the print. Then, thinking to the future, find what trend would most interest them. And finally, look to your own work and find things that sort of describe those two things. It's a great way to get you out of your own head and think about future trends while maintaining your artistic integrity. It gets you to look at your work in a new way, and somehow, what you end up with looks fresh and maintains your voice. The Pattern Observer team has come up with great lessons that guide you through the process and excellent tutorials that focus Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials on the specific things you need in print and pattern development.

This is the newest group I'm working on, in response to a prompt in "Chelsea's Challenge" at Pattern Observer. Every two weeks, Chelsea comes up with a new design brief and you've got one week to come up with a Backbeat, and then a week to come up with prints inspired by the prompt. This challenge is to look to the work of a runway designer and create a series of prints that would be at home in their collection. These challenges are a great way to get outside of your usual rut, so I chose Mara Hoffman, a swimwear designer. As you can see from my work to date, this is not what I usually do. It'll be interesting to see what appears....