The Design Process: How We Turn Our Art Into Home Goods

The Design Process Explained:

Here at HuttonianDesigns, we pride ourselves on being more than just a home goods store – we’re a family of creators who work together to turn beautiful art into high-quality, uniquely creative products.

The journey from concept to product starts with a blank canvas and ends with a cozy blanket, a uniquely designed mug, or a piece of wall art that brightens up someone’s day. In between, there’s a lot of heart, soul, and hard work that goes into turning watercolor paintings and fine art into home goods that you’ll love.

Keep reading to learn more about our design process and how we turn our art into products that you can enjoy in your home!

The Sketch

When I'm inspired to paint, I start out with a series of loose sketches. With the sketches, I get an idea of the composition and color palette of my final painting, but it’s not totally set in stone – I'll often change things in the painting as I go along. After a couple of sketches, the painting begins.

The Painting

I love to work with watercolor paint and gouache, depending on the project. I usually start out with a light layer and build up the color in stages, letting the previous layers of paint dry between stages. Every painting is unique, and all the different layers of color and texture make the painting come alive. As I work, I’ll often switch up my brush types, use a sponge to create interesting patterns, or add some splatter paint to give the painting some extra oomph. Once I'm satisfied with the painting, I'll take a high-resolution digital scan. The image is uploaded to my computer and ready to be edited.

Digital Touch-up and Revisions

In the digital revision process, I add small touch-ups to the painting to clean up any imperfections and to straighten and brighten the scan. Photoshop touches are used to ensure true colors, and to get just the right crop. For some designs, the paper background is removed, and the image is converted to support transparency. Then the painting is converted from RGB to CMYK so it can be printed.

Artwork Placement and Cropping for Each Product

Each of our products offers a unique way to display the artwork. I take the base image and create a variety of shapes, sizes, and cropping positions so that the design fits beautifully onto each of the products we offer. Between home goods, apparel, drinkware, and more, we want each product to show off the artwork in the best possible way. After all, the artwork is the star of the show! Once the artwork is placed and sized correctly, it's Jon's turn to jump in and order a sample, write a description, and get images up into our online store.

Print-on-Demand Production

When you place an order from HuttonianDesigns, the order is processed through our store and sent directly to our print production partners. This is a network of print shops where we've sourced the highest-quality items, considering print time, product quality, print quality, and reliability. We won't work with any shop that doesn't meet our high standards. The print shop springs to work, taking the digital template for that product and printing the design of your choice directly onto either a finished product or bolts of material that are then used to create a finished product. Finally, the item ships directly from our print production partners to your home.

Conclusion

As you can see, there’s a lot of love and hard work that goes into each and every one of the products we make. We hope you love them as much as we do! Thank you for learning about our design process at HuttonianDesigns. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We can’t wait to show you what we have in store!