CITY Issue 56

trying to phase out digital illustration. I’m tired of it. [Ed.’s note: So are we. In fact, we’ve asked Julia to adapt her new style for next issue’s Icon page!] It’s really of that 2x-000 era, and I feel like stepping away from the computer, especially now that everyone knows how to use computers. I’m going back to the hand-drawn look and getting my ﬁngers a little dirty. My illustrations are not all perfectly straight lines and crisp. I had been painting all along in this same style that I do now. I knew I’d come back to it eventually. In the last year you’ve translated your work into patterns. How did that begin? I did work for Hasbro and created style guides for My Little Pony and Littlest Pet Shop. A style guide is the go-to for when licensees want to do bedding or T-shirts or an umbrella with My Little Pony. So I created patterns that integrated the ponies and other characters. My contact there said, “You’re really good at patterns, you should do your own.” And one day I decided, I’m going to do SURTEX [the annual art and design licensing trade show in New York] and last year I brought more than 100 patterns. Unfortunately, when you sell your designs, you loose the rights to them. But I don’t want to do that anymore. Patterns are really a design-driven medium because you need to be savvy with coloration, repeat, and scale, and not just illustration. Was it a big transition? It came pretty naturally to me since my paintings and drawings — my non-commercial work — always seemed to contain pattern in some way or another. The process is pretty simple. First I draw the elements using straight ink, never pencil ﬁrst. If I mess a drawing up I just draw it again. Then they’re scanned into Illustrator where I turn them into vectors, which I can manipulate with color or Pen and ink seem to be your primary medium but the Icon page is digital illustration. Are you segueing out of the digital? My ﬁrst illustration job was actually from CITY. It’s where I learned to use Adobe Illustrator! But I’m scale. I arrange a grouping and then repeat. I do a lot of rearranging to get it right, but I don’t usually have an idea of how I want it to look until I start playing. I think anyone has the ability to ﬁgure out the logistics of getting a design to repeat, but it’s the choices the designer makes about color, shapes, and composition that makes a design work or not work. Is there a dialogue between you and the companies that buy your patterns? Do you get any input once the deal is done? For the ones for sale, I’ll just sell outright and they can do what they want. But the licensed ones I want control over. Those are the ones people come to know as Julia Rothman patterns. For example, I use Bavaria, which has timber-wood houses, on my packing materials, like masking tape and labels. If I license that, the company would have to keep it brown, I wouldn’t let them make it blue or something. I do this with the patterns I care about the most. That way I don’t have to cry later. Do you get commissions for patterns? Yes. I did a bedspread for Urban Outﬁtters. Or, for their artist series, they said: design three pillows. The only stipulation was that they wanted them to have forest creatures, or be forest-related, because that’s what sells. And you’re now doing a line of gift wrap and letterpress cards, too. I’m working with Hello Lucky on eight cards and four gift-wrap patterns. The themes were fancy things and nature things. They liked my chandelier pattern, but they wanted it fancier, so I did a version of crystal chandeliers instead of brass ones. I had never seen my work in letterpress. It picks up the ﬁnest lines and they’re crisp and perfect. You run your ﬁngers over it and feel all the tiny lines. It’s so satisfying. Speaking of woodland creatures, it seems like owls and deer took over the market last year. Are there motifs you’re ready to put to bed? Birds! I love birds, and it’s hard to say I don’t want to draw birds again, but everyone puts them on everything. I drew this crazy bird pattern and people loved it. I made a print of it and it sold out, like a year ago, and I get e-mails all the time about it: “Are you ever going to re-release it?” I have other prints available. I could make a lot of money to reprint it, but it’s like, enough with the birds already. How do you work? I wake up and say, what should I make a pattern of today? I’ll ask my boyfriend and he’ll say, “What about keys? What about bottles?” And I’ll say, “YES!” I’ll draw them and then scan them in and then arrange them into a pattern. The drawing part takes the longest. Then on the computer it’s like, dup dup, click, click, it’s a pattern! GO TO WWW.JULIAROTHMAN.COM, WWW.ALSO-ONLINE. COM, AND WWW.BOOK-BY-ITS-COVER.COM MEET THE TALENT: JULIA ROTHMAN If your free time occasionally leads you down a rabbit hole of design- and interiors-obsessed blogs like it does us, then you already know JULIA ROTHMAN. Of course, we at CITY know Rothman as the design force behind the Icon page. The Brooklyn-based artist’s idiosyncratic drawings now emblazon everything from wallpaper and handbags to stationery and milk bottles. She somehow ﬁts in time for daily updates to her own blog about book illustration (how meta!), and is one-third of the design ﬁrm “Also,” which recently rejiggered the DesignSponge website. CITY’s Sophie Donelson tore Julia away from her sketchbook to hear how her illustrations are bringing her back to nature. 64 CITY TY http://www.juliarothman.com http://www.also-online.com http://www.also-online.com http://WWW.BOOK-BY-ITS-COVER.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CITY Issue 56

City Issue 56 Contents Letter from City: Re: Design Our Friends: The Faces Behind the Stories Action: What's New, What's Hot, What's Now Wanted: Olympic Bound? Button Up City Moment: The Writing’s on the Wall How We Live: Concrete Jungle Fast Food: Bites of Spring The Amused Bouche: Blueprint Special In Rouge: Hero Worship Fashion: Welcome to the Boys’ Club Travel: My Pod Architecture: Out of the Blue Design: Home Remedies Tokyo Rising Zen and the Art of Catholicism Think Big Face Value Runaways Intimate Relations Where to Buy It: Store Locations Icon: The Infinity Pool

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