pattern play

We often like to explore options beyond of what our clients ask us. We had a client who was remodeling a hair salon and asked us for help with the flooring. In her mind, she saw a traditional black and white checkerboard pattern. In our minds, that option was of course classic, but also kind of predictable. Especially because the space was neither traditional, nor predictable.
​

So, we headed for one of our favorite flooring stores and spent some time playing with the large scale porcelain tiles and creating charcoal and white patterns on the floor, to scale (we are lucky we get to do that without getting kicked out of the store, he he)

The pattern below is very dynamic and lets one's eye wander. It is still dense with the dark color, without the eye-jittering effect of the checkerboard.

---

The next pattern is a lot calmer than the previous one, with the abundance of the light and an occasional dark. It is very orderly and organized, one may even say boring. While we may restrain from calling it boring, we would definitely qualify this as more on the traditional side and "safe". We liked it, but it didn't make our hearts beat faster. 

Ooh, what do you think about this one? In our minds, this pattern pays homage to Art Deco. One of us (whose name somewhat rhymes with "vanilla"), loves the traditional Art Deco chevron pattern and tries to use it in every project. She usually gets shut down by someone (whose name does not rhyme with "fun killah"), because "you can't use chevron in every project!". But this time all was fair in our explorations, so this pattern saw the light of day, even if only long enough for a picture.

We took the chevron and tweaked it by adding the charcoal grey square in the corner. It definitely has more life that the sad squares above. 

In the end, the project switched gears and it had no room for a black and white combination anymore, checkerboard or otherwise. We however, had a fun hour playing with patterns and concepts and snapped a few honest "a day in a life of the designer" pictures to share.