As a freelance print designer and creative, I often work primarily on my own from my home. Which has a lot of perks but I've found in order to stay creative and to be able to come up with original ideas and to keep up to date on trends, for clients and my own collections, it's important to get out and about for inspiration. If you've been following my blog or instagram for a while, you'll know I like to find inspiration in many ways. One of these is comp shops (competitive/competitor shopping) which I've always done seasonally as a designer working within the fashion industry. I now cover homeware and paper goods on these shops too, as I work on a broader spectrum on designs since becoming a freelancer (see my next post for some home finds!).
This summer a fellow designer friend and I decided to take a comp shop trip abroad, to see what Paris had to offer. We visited independent shops and larger department stores like Le Bon Marché and Gallerie Lafayette. For fashion print inspiration I looked at higher end brands, many of which were French or European. I found prints for these brands were creative, stylised, with textures and an organic 'by hand' feel to them. Prints and clothing collections seemed less trend led, in comparison to what you might see in similar shops in the UK, with the artistic value of the print more of a focus.
We also spotted many window displays and visual merchandising within stores that caught our eye. Again, I was really drawn to how creative and artistic these displays were. I love looking to these for design inspiration, great for any graphic design projects, with layouts or products or even just some inspo for mixing prints and colours.
If you are a brand interested in commissioning any prints inspired by mood boards shared on my blog or would like to work together on building your own design concept, I would love to hear from you. You can get in touch via email: harrietruscoe@gmail.com