Sandra Hutter’s Bright, Joyful Patterns

Sandra Hutter is an illustrator, surface pattern designer, and Adobe Stock contributor with a gift for creating joyful, vintage-inspired images. We talked to her about the creative life, how nature and baby clothes inspired her work, and what it’s like to be one of our newest Adobe Stock contributors.

Image source: Sandra Hutter / Adobe Stock.

Hi Sandra! Can you tell us about yourself and your creative background?

From an early age I had a passion for all things creative. I graduated from art and design school in Austria, where I was technically trained in the areas of color theory, composition, and history of art and architecture.

Because life happens when you are making other plans, my career took a few turns to include nursing and, eventually, motherhood. In 2014, my family and I moved to the Bay Area, California, and I was able to focus more on arts and design again while staying home with my daughter. I began sewing baby clothes and became especially inspired by different kinds of patterns and fabrics. I decided that I wanted to create my own fabrics. I took a couple of online classes and instantly fell in love with surface pattern design.

Image source: Sandra Hutter / Adobe Stock.

How would you describe your style?

My style is playful, colorful, and bold. I love to experiment with different styles, which is what I really enjoy about designing for the stock market. You can design whatever you want — there are no guidelines from a client, there are no limits. Most of my work is inspired by vintage and Scandinavian style and is focusing on seasonal art and designs for kids.

Your illustrations incorporate lots of natural elements. Why is that? What mood do you want to create?

I love to draw flowers and all different kinds of plants. They are not only very colorful but also appear in various shapes and structures. For me it is a great joy to see my designs being used on products people use in their everyday lives. I hope that it will make their day a little more colorful and enjoyable.

Image source: Sandra Hutter / Adobe Stock.

Which Adobe tools are your favorites, and why?

Most of my work is created using Adobe Illustrator because vector images have the advantage that they can be changed and resized without a loss of quality. This is important for many customers buying designs from the stock market. In particular, I love the recolor artwork tool. It allows you to experiment with different colors in your design quickly and saves a lot of time when creating new variations of a certain pattern.

I also work with Adobe Photoshop, which is a great tool that offers a lot of possibilities. I regularly create mock-ups from my designs to get an idea of what the design can look like in a real-world context.

Another tool that I am using is Adobe Draw. I use the app on my tablet for digital painting. It is amazing how easy and fast you can convert your hand drawings into vector graphics. Recently, I also started to experiment with Adobe Capture and want to use it in future projects.

Image source: Sandra Hutter / Adobe Stock.

You’re fairly new to Adobe Stock – what motivated you to start a stock portfolio? What are the biggest challenges so far?

There are two main reasons why I started building up a stock portfolio. First, I wanted to create an income while working from home as a mother of a young child. I was looking for an opportunity to work in a highly flexible and independent environment.

Second, I wanted to reach as many customers as possible in a fast, easy, and convenient way. Adobe Stock is a perfect way to present your own designs to customers quickly, generating income without the need to spend time advertising the portfolio, spending money for an agent, or looking for customers that are potentially interested in the work.

One of the biggest challenges is to be patient and consistent with building up your portfolio. In my first three to four months I regularly uploaded my designs but did not make many sales. It is important to stay on the course. If you are consistent and your patterns are of good quality, you will see your work being used and sold more regularly.

Image source: Sandra Hutter / Adobe Stock.

Check out more of Sandra’s illustrations on Adobe Stock and on her Portfolio. If you’d like to sell your vectors and illustrations to millions of designers around the world, get started as an Adobe Stock contributor.

You can also read more about how images of the natural world are changing the visual landscape and discover the most important visual trends we’re predicting for stock this year.