How I got started in surface design
If we haven’t met, hi, I am Darnay Suzanne. I am a self taught artist, a graphic designer, and a year into expanding my creativity through surface pattern design. I am a wife and mom to three boys. I currently live along the Gulf Coast of Florida. I grew up in Virginia and still ache for the seasons we don’t get here - but I am learning to love it here and enjoy where I’m currently planted.
I have spent the past 12+ years as a graphic designer helping other entrepreneurs launch their businesses through branding and web. Through the chaos of 2020 and 2021 I was trying to navigate the world - like everyone else - with 3 kids under 5 in tow. Our days began to fill with art and creativity to pass the time and my three sons’ desire to make art daily really inspired and gave me a stirring to get back to my childhood love of painting and drawing. I quickly found that this slowed me down to see the beauty in the world around me, something I desperately wanted during the those years.
The start.
At the end of 2021, during that lull between Christmas and New Years, I stumbled across Bonnie Christine while I was looking for a planner for the year - thank you social media algorithms! I had been trying to figure out what my next move was in my career after I didn’t get the position at a job that I thought, at the time, was the PERFECT fit - little tip, sometimes when one door closes better ones open! After getting emails from Bonnie about planning out your goals in small attainable ways - which believe me I needed - I decided to see who she was.
Enter the beautiful world of surface pattern design.
Surprisingly, I had never heard of the term surface design before and immediately wanted to learn more! In case you don’t know what it is; surface design is where you take your art, marks, or findings and create patterns or beautiful work and digitize it. that can then be applied to just about ANY surface you can imagine! Curtains? Yep! Floor tiles? Yeah! Wallpaper, fabric, wall art? You got it! The list goes on!
This past year has been the most fun and fulfilling adding to my creative experience by learning a new skill of taking my artwork, creating patterns, and then turning them in to things like fabric, wallpaper, and prints.
SO what did i do to get started?
I decided to dive in and invest in learning the ins and outs of surface design and happened to stumble onto Bonnie’s Immersion Course as the doors were open! As a graphic designer I was very familiar with Illustrator yet the course taught me so much more not only in Illustrator but also in application and running a small business. I started creating consistently and practicing what I learned. I took small steps towards creating collections - you can view two of my collections here - and eventually opened my Spoonflower shop and Etsy shop. In comparison to some, I’m still very much at the beginning phase of my business and growing, but I hope that in reading this you see how you too can begin something new that has the potential to give you a beautifully creative life with endless possibilities to grow!
Thinking about getting started in surface design?
