Highlands – inspired by Martiros Saryan

How to create a new design pattern, when your inspiration is a conjunction of the legendary art of Martiros Saryan and our admiration of the Armenian highlands?

“Failures” are the important part of creative process.

How to create a new design pattern when your inspiration is a conjunction of an artistic legend such as Martiros Saryan and love of the Armenian highlands? Martiros Saryan’s art is so deep and evocative, that it inspires hundreds of creative ideas. At the beginning of our creative process we had to think about our vision and main purpose – to create a wallpaper, inspired by Saryan’s highlands, a wallpaper that would give a feeling of peace and height, just like being in the highlands

Saryan is a renowned master of colour. His phenomenal use of colour, light and shade work together to evoke joy and hope. For our project we looked deeper; we tried to see beyond the colours and look into his shapes and compositions, in particular the brush strokes used in his paintings of the highlands. Then we worked through a lot of trial and error (plenty of errors!) but always returning to the main questions: “How do we want this wallpaper to make you feel when you are in the room?” “What atmosphere do we want to create?” We want to make you feel as if you are in front of something very tall, which, like the mountains, goes up and up and up, rising to the heavens and where you feel small by comparison. Our design combines the grandeur of the highlands with the delicacy of Saryan’s brush strokes. We wanted it to be minimalistic and subtle, to allow the use of colourful artwork on the walls in the same space

Here are some of the paths that we followed in the process of creating this impressive wall mural.

As you can see, many options did not work to achieve what we were aiming for. So, back to the drawing board. We narrowed the criteria, redefined the vision for the space by identifying its characteristics and dynamics, as well as the interior design we envisaged, in the following way:

Elongated pattern that rises upwards making the space feel taller.
Calming repeat pattern to represent the natural unstoppable views of Armenian highlands.
Minimalistic, to provide a background texture to allow the space to be filled with colourful artwork and personality.

Few trials later things started coming together.