Alternative Pattern Design
By artist Kieran Flynn.
My Inspiration
Here at Needle and Capp things are done differently. My patterns are digitally designed, but the starting point is never a computer. Based in Kelham Island, in the post-industrial city of Sheffield, I’m inspired by the urban world immediately around me. So, The first place I look, is the street. The chipped paint of a rusty sign, the runny paint on a graffiti covered door or a derelict building. I love looking in the places others wouldn’t.
What I Do
I make bold and beautiful designs you won’t have seen the like of anywhere else.
For my Studio designs I start with drip pens, markers, stencils, spray paint and anything else you might associate with graffiti. I get a piece of paper, start making a mess, and go from there.
My Wall Street designs are made by digitally manipulating graffiti tags. Initially these were tags found in Sheffield, I’ve added designs from Manchester and London. Leeds is being designed as you read this. More cities are on the way.
The shadow collection is just that. Whole designs made by digitally manipulating pictures of shadows.
A Bit About Me.
I love the idea of taking something disregarded, derided or forgotten and turning it into an elegant composition. One you would happily decorate your home or yourself with.
The Wall Street collection epitomises this, it was born out of the idea of making something beautiful out of the forgotten. Change your perspective and a vandalised phone box is a treasure trove of interesting marks, drips and abstract patterns. The other collections were born as the idea evolved. The Studio Collection gives me full control over the marks made and the palette used. The Shadow Collection is an extension of the idea that beautiful design can be found anywhere if you’re willing to look, even in the shadows.
I hope you love them as much as I do.
What’s in a name?
I wanted a name which both reflected the urban settings from which I take my inspiration and the concept of elevating something forgotten. I looked at other famous brands and noticed that having two names created a sense of grandeur. Fortnum and Masons, Faber and Faber, Tate and Lyle, Goldman Sachs, etc. Of course, plenty of brands only use one word, or one name, but using two words helped the idea of being two things at once. Something vandalised now seen as decoration, once derided now the centre of attention. I started to look around my studio for inspiration. I noticed a paint encrusted needle cap. A needle cap is something widely used in the street art world. It looks similar to a normal spray cap, except it has a long thin tube attached as a nozzle. So, I simply inserted an ‘and’ and added an extra ‘p’, Needle and Capp. A nod to the graffiti and street art that is such a huge part of my designs, but also sounding like two distinguished designers. Mr Needle and Mrs Capp perhaps? It is a name that is simultaneously two things at once, like my designs.
From The Streets To Your Home
Needle And Capp by Kieran Flynn© 2023