Behind the Scenes at Work

 

Behind the Scenes at Work | Sara Miller London

My ultimate aim has always been to create beautiful products that our customers love. It’s amazing hearing all your positive feedback, and it’s wonderful to think that you might be wearing our Flamingo Apron to cook your dinner tonight or jotting down your weekly to-do list in our Ostrich Notebook. But, behind the scenes, it is a meticulous process ensuring our products are as functional (and beautiful!) as possible. Over the last few years, many of you have asked about our design process and so I thought I’d give a little insight of what goes on behind the scenes.

Behind the Scenes at Work | Sara Miller London

Once the initial line-up of products is decided, the factories send us ‘white samples’ to review. As the name suggests, this is a plain white version of the product we’re working on. Acting almost like a blank canvas, this sample is useful because it allows me to evaluate the overall construction of the product from a practical perspective rather than a creative one. Without taking print and pattern into account, I need to ensure that the product’s attributes – the dimensions, the finish, the shape, and the quality – are all as I’d imagined.Behind the Scenes at Work | Sara Miller London

Once the white sample has been approved, we start testing the print quality on the relevant surface. This could be fabric, paper, ceramic or glass. These tests are essential to the design process as they help determine certain variables. With fabric swatches I can figure out which fabric would best suit the product, but also how different materials and colours will look on different fabrics. As for paper swatches, I will often test different paper stock. Colour reacts differently on different paper stock so this will be a key consideration. We provide pantone references for all colours within the design which the factories use as a benchmark to match to – pantone is basically the standard language for colours.

Pantone | Sara Miller London

When these have been approved, we can go about putting each print into a cutter guide for that specific product. This involves positioning each motif and element so that the design ‘flows’ in the same way it was originally designed. After this is complete and everything looks good to go, we’ll do a paper mock-up of the product to check that the scale and proportion of the design is correct against the product’s dimensions. We have paper print-outs for everything from our watches to our luggage; we even did the same for our flamingo-wrapped taxi!

Coffee Cups | Sara Miller London

Left image shows paper mock-ups of our coffee cups and the Right hand image shows the finished product!

Once all has been finished, our designs are ready to be made into physical items. A month or so later and we’ll receive the first finished sample. This is possibly the most exciting stage of the whole process! There are always lots of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhhs’ as the products arrive in the studio. From here we’ll then start to plan our photoshoot… but there is probably a whole different blog I can write on that!

Final Product | Sara Miller London

Left to Right shows the initial fabric swatches to the finished product

So I hope this gives you a little insight into the detail (and labour of love) that goes into our design process! I’m always really proud of what we manage to create and hope you love the end results as much as I do.