Lotta Jansdotter
62 // Lotta Jansdotter is originally from Sweden but now lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is a self-taught designer who started her own company in 1996, hand-printing her designs onto linen. She finds inspiration in people, food, places, travel, street signs, magazines, shop windows, parks – ‘everywhere and everything’. Lotta finds patterns and motifs all around her: ‘I simply have to “look” and then draw it my way,’ she says. Lotta also loves poring over her notebooks filled with magazine clippings that she has saved over the years. She usually creates her print designs with pens, paper, India ink, scissors and rubber cement. She never works on a computer, preferring to feel things with her hands. Lotta’s style is simple, clean and very much influenced by her childhood summers spent outdoors in Scandinavia. Her designs can be purchased on fabrics, cushions, porcelain and more.
Design Heroes: Stig Lindberg, Josef Frank, Lucienne Day
Design 2
A abstracted zigzag with castellated shapes. The rectangles have rounded corners and an infill of stripes in pale blue and white, which have an air of sophistication.
Kita
Ribbons on a kite string inspired this simple, fresh and dynamic design.
Choma
Inspired by Lotta’s Scandinavian background, this design uses very simple motifs, reminiscent of pebbles.
Pav
A delicate design with a random, organic arrangement of dots.
Ranka
Delicate leaf stems wind their way up this light and airy composition, showing how the simplest shapes can be used to represent nature.
Ruta
Simple cross-hatching makes for a great alternative to a check in this design, created for coordinating on fabrics.