In Search of a Formula for Making Patterns: Analyzing Mercedes Cortés Award-Winning Pattern

Episode 497: October 12, 2025
This is a new podcast series called: In Search of a Formula for Making Patterns.

I have been a little MIA. I released my first podcast in a WHILE today and I wanted to tell you about it. 

I’ve been on a journey to figure out surface pattern design. I have taken classes, read books, watched a lot of videos. In doing these things I’ve found certain areas that keep eluding me. 

Sometimes in the past this has been fear and I do think there is some of that here. Fear of making something ugly, fear of getting overwhelmed, fear of success, and fear of failure. 

But really as a 52 year-old I am tired of letting fear hold me back. Are you there with me?

I know as a designer, whether I am designing brands and creating systems for the brand or if I’m designing websites I am looking for patterns (not surface patterns) but patterns in the system. I’m looking for things I can create to help my process and the project. 

I’ve asked people about a formula for a pattern collection. I’ve asked people about their system for creating hero patterns. The hero pattern is the main pattern in a collection, it drives the story. 

I’ve wondered if maybe I don’t know how to tell stories. As a result of this discovery I’ll be digging into that as I continue to practice and hone my illustration skills and my surface pattern design skills. 

We are all (hopefully) always improving. Right?

So this week I started a digging in series to uncover what makes a good collection and what makes a good hero pattern. 

I have a lot of tabs open on my computer. Actually multiple window of hundreds of tabs. It stresses my students out. It stresses many of my friends out. 

This weekend I attacked the tabs and decided to stop putting off this more formal investigation of this hurdle for me. I have a feeling it is going to start the unlock portion, and I’m excited.

This new series is 10 min or less analyzing of collections from Spoonflower that have caught my eye and that I think are successful. 

Listen here

I am diane gibbs, a budding surface pattern designer and host of the Creatives Ignite Podcast. As I am learning Surface Pattern Design, I’ve some encountered some hurdles. Because of these challenges, I want to analyze many successful surface pattern designers, what attracts me to their work, and analyze their collections and patterns to see if I can create the formula I’ve been needing so that the hero pattern stops eluding me.

In this series, I am digging into what makes their collections successful and try to reverse-engineer their collections, mini-collections, and specifically how they construct their hero patterns.

This week I am analyzing designer, Mercedes Cortés’ Whimsical Boho Garden Mini Collection which was an award-winner in one of Spoonflower’s bi-monthly challenges.

I do not personally know Mercedes but am a fan of her work and love that she has different styles. I am trying to keep these analyses under ten minutes and take you along as I look at some of my favorite surface pattern designers.

Links

Find it at https://www.spoonflower.com/en/collections/1348617-whimsical-boho-garden-by-garabateo
Find Mercedes Cortés at: https://www.garabateo.com
On instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/garabateoprints/
On Spoonflower at: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/garabateo

Transcript

diane: [00:00:00] Hey, it’s diane gibbs here with Creatives Ignite, and it may have been a minute since I saw you. I’m taking 2025 to work on surface pattern design. A new pivot for me and this new series is going to be me looking into trying to come up with something that will help me in one of my biggest hurdles in the world of surface pattern design for me.

I think of myself as a budding surface pattern designer, although I’ve been a designer for over 25 years and done web design, done print, done, all kinds of things. I really don’t think of myself as an illustrator until about 2018, so a budding illustrator and now a budding surface pattern designer. And as I’m learning surface pattern design, looking at history and looking at other designs.

And just then continually trying to create, I continue to come across hurdles for myself. and [00:01:00] it really focuses around the hero pattern. I know other people struggle with coordinates or other people struggle with the ditzy or the blenders, but for me it really is how does this whole thing come together as a collection or a mini collection.

And then specifically the hero. The hero pattern. So I’m gonna analyze some what I think are successful designers. They’re award-winning in spoonflower challenges, or they have, a lot of licensing and they create their own products, and we’re gonna analyze some of those. These will be shorter little niblets.

I guess these are niblets, whatever. All right, so in this series, I am digging into what makes these people’s collections successful to me, and I’m gonna try to reverse engineer their collections, their mini collections, MINI, collections and [00:02:00] MANY. But really, we’re just really looking at one collection at a time, and really mainly one pattern.

And specifically how they, these people are constructing their hero patterns. I may dig in. More to the whole collection as a whole later, but I know I do talk about that a little bit in this episode today. So to this week, I am analyzing a designer. I do not know. I hope she is happy and pleased that she’s my first one because I love her work.

Her work is fantastic and I am really inspired by her. She has a couple different styles, which I also really because I don’t wanna just be. I don’t know. Only have to choose one thing. So this is Mercedes Cortez. She is in Madrid, Spain. And we are gonna be looking at her whimsical boho garden mini collection, MINI, which was an award winner in one of the spoon [00:03:00] flowers, bimonthly challenges.

I don’t know Mercedes, but I am a fan, so I hope you guys enjoy her work too. You can buy, if you love it, you can get some stuff on Spoonflower. You will see there’s, I’m specifically have a link to this mini collection. I have a link to her website and her Instagram and just her whole shop on Spoonflower.

It’s all underneath. So I hope that you enjoy this. Let’s get started. And I just want to talk about this award winner for a Boho Garden challenge at Spoonflower and talk about the number of different illustrations in this, which I think is pretty phenomenal. I am always trying to figure out a formula for creating the best hero.

So let’s go. So there’s a blue bunny and I don’t see the blue bunny. Repeated exactly. it’s similar to [00:04:00] the dark. This one, this dark gray bunny, but it’s not exact. His face is, different. The, this bunny isn’t just rotated and we see it in another, so that’s 1, 2, 3 bunnies. Then we have this guy, this dark charcoal.

It’s a fourth bunny. We see five here, and then we see the white bunny. So six. We have six bunnies, and then we have multiple different flowers. I know these are repeated, but let’s count this as 1, 2, 3. We have four, which is. Also here, so we’re just gonna do it once. So that’s four. Then if we’re talking about ferns or whatever, we have 5, 6, 7, 8.[00:05:00] 

We do have this shape, which is maybe nine. So nine plus.

Six bunnies. That’s a lot. And then a lot of little dots and, elements. So I’m just gonna go back to this person. I guess there’s the boho garden. I just wanna see if there’s a collection. Sometimes they would show it, but sometimes I don’t. So she does have a very, a style that feel of historical possibly, but then these kind of have a Mel Armstrong a feel.

I really love the graphic nature that she has. All right, so I’m gonna go in here. She just, I [00:06:00] love her work. All right, so this is Mercedes Cortés, and I’m just gonna go here. This is where you would see about her. This is all her designs. her Instagram, her website, and then you can go to design collections and all collections.

I’m just gonna go to design collections. I don’t really know what the difference is, to be honest, but look, here are the bunnies and here’s that one graphic thing that I absolutely love. And obviously you have sets and then you have different colorways and maybe that’s, those are, this is a great thing about.

Spoonflower. So this is a collection that says there’s five designs. Let’s see that. There’s just this one colorway, but it could be that she only chose a. To do one, and I guess it is just this one. That is the only one. So very simple, but look at how cool it looks. Terrific when it’s, big. It definitely [00:07:00] has a different look than what you were looking at when it’s zoomed in, but this really looks, goes great with this.

This is the hero. I would say coordinate. Coordinate and then maybe a ditzy. It’s also a coordinate as well. These are a little wavy of stripes, so neat. Wanna look at those up close. They’re just a little wobbly, which it does make a really nice, just different than just your typical A five.

Portion. Now, if I’m looking at this and I’m seeing things that are here, this flower here is the same as this one, and this one is the same as this one, but that big one here, I guess that one is the same. The differences that the dots are a different color. And then these ferns, and I think [00:08:00] maybe I missed a fern.

Maybe this, these two are different. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, maybe nine, maybe 10 again. There’s so many, right? There’s feel like sometimes my student, or even me, I guess I’ve had to push through this. I’ve designed one of these branches. Do I really need 10? But you really do so that it looks more unique.

I didn’t notice this little flower before, so it’s probably 11 and it’s here. And then she changes the color. So there are a lot. Again, it’s a, for me, what that tells me is that I need to create a lot of other elements that will go together, and [00:09:00] those aren’t necessarily in the exact same scene.

I do really think that her. Gingham and her plaid. As I look at them close and the stripe are also unique, makes me just think, okay, it’s not just about creating squares, it’s creating these other elements that create this other texture that’s just this little extra, and this is what I’m trying to figure out.

So this. Mercedes does a, an excellent job at teaching. She’s showing me how to go the extra mile by, instead of just doing a plane stripe overlay, she has these, I can’t even think of what they’re called now, but whatever that stripy thing that is zigzagged. Oh, doesn’t matter. But what a neat little five thing.

Taking the colors. She has pink. A light pink, dark [00:10:00] pink. She has these gray, ’cause the grays are in here. There’s the lighter gray, the darker grays. Now in the background, she has the bunny. Color, which is some of these white dots and then the teal and the yellow. So terrific. Absolutely terrific. The gray really starts looking more brown over here.

I guess. It, to me looks gray, but this is also really nice. a really nice collection teaches me a lot, so thank you Mercedes. And if you like learning about these, little bits are just helping me to understand how to better design a collection. And I hope you have a great week.