Developing the concept

The Green Garden wallpaper was originally inspired by natural shapes and forms used in wall art to inspire environmental conservation, developing this concept for children, and incorporating an interactive aspect. Exploring a variety of ideas and using recycled wallpaper and different hand drawn plant designs which promote the simple beauty of nature. A huge influence on my final design has been the Puff and Flock design, ‘Eco Highway’ which encourages young children to think about their carbon footprint with featured futuristic cars which run on milk instead of petrol.

I wanted to consider the physiological potential of wallpaper on children. Researching the affects of imagery and how this can be used in subconscious learning. Dream boards are used by people and businesses to focus their goals and reflect this into their daily lives using subconscious learning and the law of attraction. This can also be a useful tool for parents to bond with their children helping them understand more about their dreams and aspirations, even at young ages. I thought this concept could be used within wallpaper, and this inspired the idea of a ‘dream tree’ whereby children decorate their dream tree with images and their own creations, to reflect their wants and dreams. Other wallpapers caters for children’s creative input, but not the physiological potential with ‘colour in wallpapers’ such as, The Absolute degrees range and Graham and Brown range which both have an environmentally friendly, colour me in wallpapers.

Designing a tree which could be coloured in or have the ability to add children’s pictures and drawings would be simple with this colour in concept. However I felt a design which could change as often as children’s wants and dreams do, would be more suitable. Therefore I explored materials such as fuzzy felt which would offer a tactile child friendly option, which is also more environmentally friendly, compared to other more intrusive materials. I also discovered a metal based paint called Marabu Magnetico, which creates a magnetic surface which children could use to attach magnetic images and creations too.