Meet our print designers
Our team of artists and illustrators sketch in the landscape, carve woodblocks and paint fluid watercolours to create the distinct, hand-rendered feel of our prints
“Ever since I could hold a pencil, I’ve been creating and drawing”
“Growing up I was toying with the idea of jewellery, scenery or costume design. I finally decided on print design because I see patterns, shapes and colour everywhere. I live in a textile bubble. It’s a nice place to be.
It doesn’t seem long ago when it was just me creating all Seasalt’s designs. Occasionally my mum would do a piece to help. There’s now five of us and everybody’s got a different speciality that they bring to the party.” – Sophie
“Living in Cornwall, we’re never short of ideas.”
“We’ve got the sea and the coast all around us, the rugged north coast and the calmer south coast, all the woodland walks and beautiful Cornish gardens.
We look at all the patterns in nature and the bark and the textures.” – Sophie
“We look to where we live for inspiration, which is just completely endless. Flowers, the landscape, seaweed, rock formations. A floral print can make you feel joyful when you wear it. It can lift you and brighten your mood.” – Kathryn
“We’ve been brought up with flowers.”
“Both my mum and Kathryn’s mum are florists. Having that real knowledge of flowers is important because we create so many floral prints. I always remember my mum explaining how she’d create a bouquet; ‘All the flowers need to feed into the centre and come from the centre.’
That’s how I think when I’m building a print design as well, and how things work in odd numbers. In threes and fives, it always looks better.” – Sophie
“We’re quite collaborative. We’ll often work on each other’s print designs, pick up something and edit it.”
“We work on mood boards and colour palettes together, then we work on our designs independently. But you’ll always ask a team member, ‘how do you think this is going?’ or ‘what do you like about this?’
They might say ‘actually, I’ve got a leaf to help you out with that…” – Kathryn
“One of my favourite prints is Mark Making Sprig”
It’s a free, lovely, flowing print created by Karen. She paints standing up, to get movement into her work. I love the version of it on the modal fabric, which is soft and drapey.
My top’s quite geometric which I love. This colour combination is very easy to wear.” – Sophie
“We’re really passionate about colour.”
“I love the part where we get to use colours and see how different a design can be. It can look positive, negative, two colour, multi-coloured. I can get a bit carried away.
We spend a lot of time creating beautiful colour combinations. We will be specifically thinking of a print that will look fantastic on a top, scarf or a Larissa Shirt. Quite often, in the summer, we think ‘oh, that would be amazing on a real ‘50s fit-and-flare shape or a long, slim tunic’.
Then we also have core colours that go throughout a season, so that you can buy trousers and they’ll work nicely with the different tops and pieces that come in the months afterwards.” – Sophie
“You can see all the love that’s gone into the prints.”
“My favourite print from this month is the one Sophie’s wearing today. It’s called Segment Floral and was inspired by the amazing work of St. Ives artists, like Ben Nicholson, who painted lots of intersecting shapes.
It’s a large-scale floral, with simple leaves, that are around at this time of year. I overlaid them and used the granite greys of the landscape where he was painting. So it’s got a lot behind it.” – Kathryn