Celebrate the Patterns, 2018

This series of illustrations was generated by the inspirations I got while carving rubber stamps. During the process of creating rubber stamps, I was driven by a desire of ‘making things emotionless’, that's why I chose the pattern. One thing really impressive was that I’ve noticed the importance of scale and repetition. Initially, I finished a rubber stamp with the pattern I didn’t really like, I kind of hate the curves when they appear on a single stamp. But after printing it for a larger scale-with repetition of 16 times-I was surprised and totally changed my idea. This stamp really subverted my thoughts about scale, repetition, and patterns.

Before that I knew that scale could influence my work, repetition was a classic design method, and patterns could be applied to your work as a background. These things are more of cognitions, rather than something I’ve really considered or researched. I’ve already got used to these cognitions, I knew them and that was all, I’ve never thought of getting deeper interpretations of them.

However, this tiny stamp taught me the lesson, don’t ever treat the basic element of the pattern as nothing. And this really leads me to a new direction: learn to appreciate patterns and interpreting them from a different scale or even dimension.

Patterns are always one of the elements we ignore the most while designing, but even the background can be the protagonist on the day, and I want to jump out of carving rubber stamps, try to play with patterns and find a new perspective to present them.

Through this project, I’ve not only learned the basic knowledge of rubber stamp carving, but also developed a new perspective on patterns, repetitions, and scale. The project made me rethink about the basic rules of graphic design and reverted my traditional cognition. I really had fun through the whole process, and I’m forward to the next chance to enjoy something new.