Rachel Goodchild | Design

(Portrait by Rosa Fay Photography)

Rachel

Rachel is a pattern designer who creates pattern for products, home interiors and textile. She provides pattern in the form of commissions, licensing and collaborations. She is also a Prince2 trained Project Manager and has overseen many projects in the field of design over the years. Rachel has been fortunate enough to have worked with a wide range of companies including Charbonnel et Walker, The Art Fund, Warner Textile Archive and Paul Smith for Leica. Her designs have been featured in The Sunday Times, Homes and Antiques, Country Living, The Telegraph, Country Homes & Interiors, to name a few.

Rachel has created a vast collection of pattern design over the years and has overseen many print-runs, managed projects, worked on collaborations, secured licensing deals, designed to commission, organised design events, built websites, and has exhibited at trade and retail shows from London to San Francisco.

Starting out as a designer of high-end packaging in 2001. Rachel had regular clients in the U.K., Europe, America and Australia. She became interested in branding and marketing (seeing this as another form of packaging), and in 2012 she designed a series of workshops known as the "The Art Of" series , where she ran courses for companies on marketing and branding for several years.

More recently Rachel has been concentrating on Pattern, and less on running a business with staff and organising workshops. She wanted to spend more time working quietly and creatively to develop her skills.

Rachel lives in Bristol, England, and has been married to William, a composer for film, since 1990. They have two daughters, Rosa and Eleanor.

ABOUT

Upbringing

Rachel sites her parents as being her inspiration. her parents met at art school in the 1950s and they both are creative with a wonderful eye for beautiful things. Her mother went on to become a dress-maker and an avid collector of textiles and vintage clothing, Her vast collection ranges from the Victorian period right up to the 1960s, and beyond.

Rachel's father is an artist, who was a Lecturer of Fine Art, whilst Rachel was growing up. His studio was (and still is) in the family home. He has painted all of her life and is always there to hand her the right art book at just the right time. Rachel grew up (with her five siblings) in a large Georgian house that was (still is) full of paintings, art books, antique furniture, Vintage China, textiles and lots of colour!

She holds her parents and her upbringing responsible for her love of art and design and the desire to create pattern!

(Rachel's parents)

Maxmo Blue 04 Textile Sample © Rachel Goodchild.jpg

Designs

Rachel has always had a love of pattern, and this varies from intricate ornamental designs from the 1700's, right through to the clean lines and graphic shapes in muted tones, used in Mid Century design.

Rachel's approach is to use a slightly rough, hand-drawn, or hand-cut woodblock style of pattern, together with incorporating simple motifs, as often used in the Arts and Crafts movement.

The frustration of Rachel not being able to find fabrics that she particularly liked, led her into designing her own. She is recreating the style of fabrics she loves, but with a modern twist. All her patterns are created by hand, and she loves using bold colours.

She designs predominantly for herself, and if anyone else happens to like her designs too, then that makes her happy.

(Maxmo Blue Textile sample 2022)

Products

In lockdown Rachel became almost obsessed with creating new illustrations for pattern repeat. She hid herself away and secretly started working on various new illustrations. Although lockdown is now over, the obsessive creating of new patterns is not!

Alongside designing a series of new pattern ranges, Rachel also studied for her Prince2 Project Management qualification, which she gained in 2021. She then set about formulating her own new creative project: A new online shop that could run alongside her design work, where she could sell her designs on various products.

(Maxmo Blue Cushions (Boom Folk) 2022)

BOOM CARD

Rachel originally designed her first e-cards in 2010, with the style of the old fashioned postcard. This was originally attached to the Rachel Goodchild website. In 2018 she updated the ecards and rebranded them to a new site with the name of Boom-Card.

Boom-Card is a fun and eco-friendly way to send greetings online. Subscription cost is £5 per year and they are quick and easy to send to anywhere in the world within a minutes.

To subscribe to Rachel's e-cards:

www.boom-card.com

features

Over the years Rachel has featured in various magazine and press.