Behind the design: Wild Wonders

This year we launched the Wild Wonders collection, a bright and bold new print featuring fun animal characters in a jungle scene. We caught up with our in-house designer Nadia Taylor to discover how this fun design came to be. Plus, we have a behind the scenes video of her creative process. Have a look!

What inspired the design?

I was asked to design a memory game with round pieces for quite young children. So I decided to do bright, colourful animals that would fit easily in a circle shape. 

I chose colourful animals that I could add patterns to and tried to draw the animals with rounded curves and pleasing shapes. 

Watch how the Wild Wonders print came to life in this behind the scenes video:

What was the next step in the design process?

Then I was asked to design a long puzzle, so I wanted to use some of my characters that I’d already designed from the memory game. 

I put the animals into a jungle scene, and I just wanted it to be really bright and colourful. I wanted there to be something going on in every part of it, so that it would work well as a puzzle. 

Early digital sketches of Wild Wonders print

The next stage was that we were asked to come up with some new designs for notebooks and I thought this design might work quite well. 

Product shown: Wild Wonders A5 notebook, £2.95

How did you nail down the colours and style?

I was aiming the print for quite young children, so I chose animals that had lots of colour and pattern and took that on throughout the whole picture. I just love how the colours and shapes sit together.

What was the most interesting part about the creative process?

The balancing game was a challenge, because I had to make it work as a 3D object. And I had to balance just enough to make it a fun game.

I took again some of my characters, but I gave them very flat backs and lots of flat surfaces, so hopefully they would connect with each other when they’re on top of each other. 

Product shown: Wild Wonders balance game, £16.95

What I liked about this was because they were round shapes, I made all the animals sort of the same size and curved, and it’s given a nice weight to them. And they all sort of match and look nice together. And I think it works well because it’s just quite simple and bold. 

Wild Wonders collection

Thank you to Nadia for taking us behind the Wild Wonders design! If you love this print as much as we do, have a look at the full collection and share with us your favourite Wild Wonders products on social media @RexLondonUK.