If you’ve started created collections of designs you may know that you need to include a hero design as well coordinate designs. But, what are hero and coordinate designs?

Hero design

When you are creating a design collection, you will have a design in the collection that will be stand out as being the main design and that design is known as your hero design. It will be the main design in your collection and you will base all the other designs around this her design. It will be the one that stands out in your collection as being the wow factor. It generally will contain the most complex design motifs, usually use most of the colours from your palette and it will tell the story or theme of your collection.

Coordinate designs

Coordinate designs are those designs that go with and work alongside your main hero design. They should compliment and work cohesively with your main design. Some really simple examples of coordinate designs are simple spot or stripe designs.

How many designs in your collection?

The number of designs in your collection will vary according to who you are designing for and the design brief. You can have a small collection of only a handful of designs or a large collection with lots of designs. If for example, you were designing mini-collection of four designs, you would generally include your hero design and then three designs that coordinate back with it. But if you were designing a much larger collection, you might have multiple designs that have more complex design elements so some secondary hero designs along with your hero design. The most important thing you need to consider though is that the whole range is cohesive and goes together to form a strong collection.

If you have your wow factor main design with lots of beautiful, complex elements on it then you can pair it back with some simpler, complimentary coordinate designs. If we look at the example of a cushion. You may have the hero design on the front that is really complex and then on the reverse you could have a really simple design to pair it back with. When you’re designing your collection, you want to think about how the designs can work together.

The most important thing to think about though when you’re creating your collection of designs is that all of the designs work together and are cohesive. You need to think about the elements that you using, the colour and the look and feel. Make sure that your hero design stands out as being the wow factor and your coordinating designs go with it cohesively.