Tracy Kendall came to talk about her work. In the lecture theatre she discussed her educational background and working experience so far.
She studied a BA in Fine Arts and specialized in screen printing. She then worked in technical support at the Royal college for 18 years and practiced digital printing during that time. In 1996 she left the Royal College to design wallpaper and went to the contemporary fair in New York.
Tracy Kendall gets her inspirations from magazines, photographs and random findings in the street. She is constantly with a camera and takes photographs of things she finds interesting, she said it could be a stack of books or a pavement. She keeps all of her inspirational findings in a large bag and when she feels like it she will have a rummage through and be sure to find something exciting to help her with a design or idea. She is inspired by fashion all of the time, this continues to be her main inspiration.
Her career took off quite naturally and out of the blue. It all came about through her wanting to redecorate her kitchen, all of the wallpapers she liked were much too expensive so she decided to design her own pattern since she had the printing skills! She designed a simple pattern where she enlarged a knife, fork and spoon. Her design soon became noticed by some of her friends who came to her home and where involved with the creative profession. Her designs began to be noticed by Habitat and they bought the rights to apply her design elements onto lampshades. She is now very much involved with dealing with the trade.
During her presentation she talked about the importance of asking questions all of the time when you are a designer, she works with organic things a lot of the time for instance, if she sees a feather she likes she wouldn't just pick one, she would pick hundreds of feathers because each one is different and unique in its own right. Then she would look at the feathers and ask questions about them. For a wallpaper that is white with a one single feather print on it, the feather needs to strong, it needs to be beautiful....
She is used to doing trade shows on a regular basis in Milan, London and new York, this is how she mainly promotes her work.
She raised an interesting point about the fact that male designers dominate the interior design and architect industry, the reason for this is they are attracted to a more masculine colour palette, she is very clever in the way that she uses black and white and minimalism most of the time in order to appeal to the male designers at the shows, and for that reason she does well. minimalism makes the impact in her designs.
Another good piece of information was regarding the quality of a photograph. If you give a journalist a really good quality photograph, they can use it in a magazine to help promote your work. She was also talking about the importance of editorial spreads because they can bring in serious money, you can receive thousands of pounds for just one spread! She never pays for advertising, so the quality is very important. Through these magazine spreads she gained a lot of interest a couple being Whistles and she designed the changing room interior for Frost French. Obviously this is just a small example.
As she has become more and more successful, this has enabled her to employ an agent in New York to sell her work.
