Contract Magazine - July 2020 - 43

Shannon Cochran
Vice President of
Creative and Design
Patcraft

Can you describe the new collections from Patcraft?
Our observations and experiences shape how we see design, and the heart of a
product comes from exploration and perspective. Our newest collections have all
been created considering market insights that we've gathered over the past year
or so. They include Inspired Connection, a colorpoint carpet tile and broadloom
collection designed for connected, cohesive spaces that feel like home. Anew,
which features modern wood visuals and the incorporation of a stone look for
unique installations, is a 7.75-inch-by-48-inch resilient collection directly inspired
by designers' requests for a widened plank format. Crafted Surface, inspired by
the distressed visuals of overdyed vintage rugs, is a three-style collection of
18-inch-by-36-inch carpet tiles. Gemscape, inspired by the surface formation of
gems and minerals, is a carpet tile and broadloom collection that embraces pure
structural form accentuated with brightly lit hues. Natural State, boasting a
versatile color line with both wood and stone visuals, is a rigid core flooring
collection of floating and glue down resilient planks.

beautiful, natural patterns. It goes to show that we can find inspiration
everywhere, even in the things we have seen a thousand times and likely would
have overlooked before.
Are there any books that you are reading or rereading this summer?
I've taken this time to explore many of the webinars and CEUs that have become
available recently. I'm currently reading Radical Candor, and I've also immersed
myself in podcasts. I have a pretty long list of those that I love, but some of my
current favorites related to design are Creative Confidence, Clever, and 99%
Invisible.

What was the inspiration for the collections?
When we develop a new collection, we think about customer needs and current
trends, consumer drivers, and market influences. Our recent collections are
driven by this process, and while each collection has a different inspiration-
either inspired by an artistic process or a market-driven need-at the core, they
were all inspired by a connection to our customers, market insights, and our
focus on a collaborative design process. Listening to the market is so important
and gathering these insights helps shape our creative vision. We think about the
impact of our physical space and its role in creating connections, sparking
collaboration, evoking a sense of comfort, or enhancing wellbeing.

Designed to expand SPC
(Solid Polymer Composite)
platform offerings, Natural
State (top) is a high-performance, resilient collection. It
features an innovative, highdensity core construction
with dimensional stability, no
telegraphing, and resistance
against indentation.
Anew (middle) features
modern wood visuals and the
incorporation of a stone look.

Color and texture are an important part of developing a new collection,
what's your thinking behind this?
This is a great question that directly relates to our Inspired Connection collection,
where the aesthetic is reminiscent of home and designed for comfort and
connection-a trend that will be accelerated within the coming months. Within
design, a desire for connectivity and a prioritization of wellness, mindfulness and
balance will be increasingly important as we embrace our changing situations
and design both existing spaces and the spaces of the future.
When we think about new collections, from the start we consider scale,
contrast, texture, pattern, and color and how these elements will influence the
feel and aesthetic of the final design. Biophilic design, for example, is familiar to
all of us. It's an important part of our process, as there is great power in
connecting people with nature. The patterns and textures that are rooted in
nature ground the space and create a natural sense of place for the people who
use these environments.

Patcraft's Inspired Collection (bottom) includes
bold patterns with textural,
luxe-inspired creative design
to enhance connectivity and
enliven the spaces that surround us.
Patcraft's other new collections include: Crafted
Surface, which features
textural patterns and a variety
of colors with neutral and
bright accents that can aid in
branding, wayfinding, and colorblocking, and the Gemscape
collection, which features texture and abstract geometrics
with vibrant accent stripes
for further customization of
space.

While working from home, what has inspired you that might find its way into
a future collection?
One of my favorite ideas to come out of working from home was a recent creative
project from one of our designers. She started using her own home for inspiration,
looking at her surroundings for interesting textures and surfaces. She decided to
create pencil rubbings from these textures, leading her to design these really
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Contract Magazine - July 2020

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