Thinking of designing your own swimwear print for the Mosmann Australia X UNiDAYS competition? Awesome! To help get your creative juices flowing, the UNiDAYS Creative Team are sharing their pro tips for creating a swimwear print.

Everyone gets creative in different ways, try a few things to find your style and work out which approach works best for you. Some prefer to get stuck in straight away, some might prefer to do some research first. Here’s how the UNiDAYS Creative Team decided to get started with creating their own swimwear!

Get inspired

Write a word cloud of all the things that make your summer unforgettable. What reflects a playful yet sophisticated beach lifestyle? What memories do you have of awesome summers with your mates?

Create a moodboard

This will really help you to organise your creative ideas and see some design themes come together. Chuck in anything and everything you love, from colour swatches to words and photographs. You might want to create a digital moodboard but we secretly love the old skool cutting and sticking method! Raid fashion mags and cut up old clothes - nothing is off limits.

Sam created his digital moodboard in Adobe Photoshop:

Crafty apps we love

Pantone app Designsperation My tumblr is better than yours Adobe color Pinterest

Also, check out our Mosmann Australia swimwear Pinterest board - we’ve filled it with ideas and inspo to help you get started!

How to create a repeating pattern

Here are a few insider hacks for creating a pattern for your swimwear:

Got an old eraser? Grab a craft knife and (carefully!) carve your pattern elements to make a stamp. Roll it in paint and stamp your way to victory, with your kitsch, handmade effect. Or, go foraging for natural materials and paint them to make the coolest textured effect inspired by the great outdoors. Mollie used a selection of leaves to design her swimwear print:

The paper hack

Do you do your best work on paper? There’s a great paper hack that can help you easily design a repeating pattern, learn how to do it over at Skillshare.

Digital tools

If you have the software, Adobe Illustrator has a super handy pattern tool where you can play around with your image and make it repeat with the click of a button.

Some tips from the team:

“Don’t restrict yourself by thinking about the shorts or bikini template at first - just create a pattern on paper and let your imagination run wild!” Jess, junior designer

“I got sooo much inspiration from going back over my holiday snaps. A cheeky cockatoo from Bali made it onto my design!” Emily, copy lead

“Don’t go for the obvious, play with scale to create something unexpected - be true to your style and your personality will come through.” Frances, creative lead

“Never throw a design away - ideas can spiral off each other and you could end up reworking it later. Can’t decide between two designs? Combine them together into a colour or pattern clash.” Ellis, junior designer

Enter the competition HERE