It is time for another designer appreciation, and this month I had the pleasure of interviewing talented Encrede. I hope you enjoy reading their story, and learning more about their design process! 

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Sure! My name is Embla, I'm currently 19, and I’m from northern Sweden. I’ve always liked doing all kinds of creative things, drawing and painting and sculpting and writing etc etc. I also love reading, music, video games hehe. I’m quite an introvert but i love talking to my friends and I’m so happy to have them.

How long have you been designing for vp?

I started designing for vp basically as soon as I joined. I actually had an old account from 2012... but when gsm closed is when I joined for real, in 2015, and I made my first design:

Which i never sent in haha, but i used the shirt for this set:

Which I then emailed to Kaj, old fashioned style, and he liked it and said he would use it for dm! I kept designing after that, and made a few requested designs (the Melanie Martinez, Halsey, and Winnie Harlow one), and designing for ET for a bit while Eli was admin, since I was friends with her and Leash aka Ale,  who was also on ET at the time. I also ended up designing a lot for SMT since my friend Mice aka Lise was on there hehe. Then on september 8th 2016 I got the designer badge, after a certain thread was made petitioning me to be put on the team LOL. I never actually applied to DT as I don’t like competitions. 

Then in february 2017 I was invited to join SMT as their team designer, and was there for just over a year before I quit both my teams in march 2018. I quit together with a few of my designer friends in some kind of Kaj protest at the time lol. After that the designerteam got a lot more power in choosing what sets would be used as.

I was gone from vp for about a year while I was struggling in school and irl. Then I randomly got back into vp and started wanting to design again. My friends had also gotten back into designing so I wanted to design with them, and I rejoined DT in december 2019. (Unfortunately, soon after that most of my friends quit LOL). 

What program do you use for designing? And do you use a mouse or a drawing tablet? 

For most of my designing career I used Paint Tool Sai exclusively. I've always had a tablet and I use it a lot, but i also… often end up just using my mouse even when my tablet is right in front of me. For some reason using the tablet takes more effort lol. 

Nowadays I use Clip Studio Paint, and still a tablet/mouse combo hehe.

How long do you approximately spend on designing one set? 

This is such a hard question to answer, since I very very rarely design a whole set in one setting, but… a very very long time LOL. I have year-old wips I just finished… I'm very bad at concentrating so I can spend hours upon hours just designing some shoes or shading a jacket hehe. I know I'm known as one of the slowest designers on vp lol, but I hope I make up for it with quality over quantity :-[

How much time do you spend designing on a weekly/monthly basis? 

This is another hard one as I don't really track my designing, but if I'm in a period of designing a particular set, surely like a few hours a day. 

Where do you get your inspiration?

I think I get a lot of inspiration from my friends, for some reason almost if not all of my closest friends do art, and that's very inspiring to me! Like everyone else I'm sure, I also look to pinterest if I'm looking for references or inspiration for what kinds of items to make. I think most of my items are made up though, so don't look too closely or you might realise that's just not how clothes work. I often also look up several different references and end up with an item that isn't exactly a copy of either of them, just… a made up item using references. Fellow artists know what I mean. References are GOOD!

Do you have a set that means something special to you or that had a special story behind it when you created it?

I struggled answering this question at first, but then my friend Callum reminded me of this set! 

Back in the day, me and my friends used to stream a lot using join.me, and this is one of the designs I made during streams! It was just very special and nice cos I got suggestions during the stream on what to make for him, and one person even named him and wrote a bit about him 😳 His name is Akoni! He’s still one of my favourite designs I think!

< See design to the left

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Thank you so much to Encrede for this inspiring interview!

Click the design on the right hand side of the layout to see a comparison between one of Encrede’s very first and one of their latest designs! And if you want to have a look at more of their designs, check out their design blogs here.

And lastly,
if you made it all the way through this interview, 

Encrede have prepared a little gift for you…

LE female: lilgift4thegirlies

LE male: gift4daboys