Module 6 / Lesson 6.2: The Pattern Paper
The Pattern Paper
In this lesson, I’d like to tell you a bit more about The Pattern Paper and how it all unfolded. When I hosted the second Pattern Challenge, I had no idea I would end up publishing the Pattern Paper…but it organically happened because the work created was too good not to be shown outside of social media. The real aim of The Pattern Paper has always been to shine a light on illustrators and their work, as well as raising money for causes close to our heart. I haven’t mentioned it before: The Pattern Paper is a non-profit initiative. Nobody makes a penny except for the charity of our choice. But first, let’s rewind a little and see how it all came about…
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Getting it wrong to get it right
If I’m being honest, The Pattern Paper was a bit of a nightmare project before it became a dream one. Let me rewind a little. When the summer edition of the Pattern Challenge ended in 2021, I thought to myself “I have to do something to show how amazing all these patterns are” and I immediately thought it would be awesome to publish them in some sort of book. Yes, you heard it right…I originally wanted to make a book. A hardcover, beautiful, case bound book. I knew I could do it because I had published two Spellbound magazines in the past, and although they’re not books, I didn’t think the process would be so different.
The first thing I had to do was select the patterns and illustrators I wanted to feature in the book. I decided I would choose 50 of them. It sounded like a good number and I knew I could easily find 50 that I absolutely loved. The next steps was reaching out to the 50 illustrators and ask them all if they’d want to be published in the book. Of course, all of them said yes but who doesn’t want to be published in a bloody book? I added all of them on a Discord chat and set up to explain what I wanted to do…
Here’s an extract of what I originally planned to do, as written in Discord to all of the illustrators.
“The idea:
So my idea is for the book to be square, not too big (14x14mm) and accessible. I’m currently in discussion with my printers to see how we can print it sustainably (maybe use recycled paper from coffee cups which would be great). I obviously want the colours to look amazing, so we’ll have to find the perfect paper. Each of you will be featured on a spread. On the right, your pattern and on the left, your name and a few bits about you. I will be sending you a few questions to answer so I can put these in the book as well. People will be curious and want to know more about you once they see your patterns! The whole design will be quite simple but striking and very colourful. Your patterns need to shine.
The printing & the Kickstarter campaign:
As I explained before in the DMs, this isn’t a project for profit. I won’t be paying myself for the time designing (it’s more of a passion project and it’s about community, not money). I’ll be creating a Kickstarter page where people will be able to buy their copy of the book. We will all have to buy a copy if we want one. That’s the way we’ll be making this book come true. My aim is to make sure the book isn’t too expensive though. I also want it to be a limited edition (maybe 200? or more? Not sure yet). Depending on what my printers say, we’ll see if we can sell it for £10 or £15. This will probably mean we need to sell quite a lot on Kickstarter to reach our goal to be able to print. I hope this makes sense? I haven’t worked out all the little details yet, but wanted to keep you all the loop already. I will get one copy printed once it’s all designed and ready. I know it’s going to be expensive to do it, but I really believe it’s essential for us to have beautiful pictures of what the book will look like on the Kickstarter page. So people know what they’re buying and get excited about it. In terms of timeline, I’d love to launch the kickstarter at the beginning of September and make it last a month or maybe a little less. I reckon it would be nice to create a sense of urgency to make sure we reach our goal. I’ll create beautiful imagery for us all to share in the lead up to the campaign to make some noise and get people excited about it!
The Charity bit:
If we raise more money than needed to print, we will donate it to a charity. I haven’t chosen the charity yet, but I’m hoping we will be able to discuss it all together! I was originally thinking of donating to some of my favourite ocean-related charities, but then I realised it would make more sense to donate to maybe an art related charity? I don’t know any though! I’m sure there are plenty... Don’t hesitate to share here if you know one.”
These are mock ups of what I wanted the Book of Patterns to look like…Kinda dreamy right?
If you know a little bit about The Pattern Paper, you can tell that a LOT changed in the course of the few months after that. The charity bit didn’t really change but the whole idea for the book and kickstarter was completely scrapped. Why, you ask? Well, what happened is that it became clear very quickly it would be too expensive to self-publish a book. Completely unsustainable for me as well because I would have had to pay for printing in advance, which was close to £5000 for 300 copies if I remember correctly. The worst part of it all though was the shipping and the arranging the kickstarter. It was giving me headaches for MONTHS. It was lovely to have the Discord chat and the whole community of illustrators help me out and trying to figure things out…but I came really, really close to giving this project up.
The thing is, I didn’t want to give up. So much had already been done and all my fellow illustrators deserved to have their work published one way or another. So what happened next? Well, it’s going to sound a bit cliché, but I came up with the idea of the newspaper just before going to sleep, one night (I told you it’d be cliché!).
I had been struggling with this project so much and it was driving me nuts…so when I thought about the newspaper, I realised it was IT! It was fun, accessible, it would be cheaper (£5 was always what I wanted) and more easily shipped. I could do pre-orders easily as well. It would look awesome and it could be playful. It could also be reused and spark more creative projects. The newspaper was the perfect medium for this! And that’s how The Pattern Paper was born…Crazy, eh?
Moral of the story, sometimes, when things get really hard and the headache is ongoing, please don’t give up, keep going just a little bit…and then, maybe then, the perfect idea will come to you and hit you just before sleep, when you’re expecting it the least!
Doing it for charity
I was quite annoyed that I couldn’t pay each illustrator a fee for their work to be published, but there was no budget for it and no money would come in as we were going to do it for charity. I would have liked to do a project for profit so all the illustrators would get paid, but this was way too complicated for me to set up (imagine giving 50 illustrators royalties on a published book/paper! I wouldn’t even know how to do this. I’m only one human). So we decided together that no one would be paid, which works for all of them because they had created the patterns for fun before the Pattern Paper, so it was fun to have them published anyway. All the illustrators especially loved that we were going to raise money for a charity. For the first Pattern Paper, we voted to raise money for Arthouse Unlimited, a UK based charity. We raised £300 for them which isn’t bad at all for a first issue. Next time, another charity will get picked and hopefully we can raise more money! (The more we print, the more money we can raise).
What’s next
Well, the next Pattern Challenge starts on the 1st of February and it’s going to be awesome, I can tell! This one is a winter edition with wintery prompts. At the end of the challenge, I will select 50 of my favourite patterns to be published in the next Pattern Paper. My dream is to keep this going for as long as I can! Make sure to join in if you can :)
