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The Seasons (Vuodenajat) pattern family on Serla’s new Design kitchen paper has been designed by students Pilvi Waitinen, Jessica Bucci, Jiayi Ma and Taija Lammi on Aalto University’s PatternLab course. This year was the second time Serla and PatternLab cooperated in the design of patterns.

‘The theme we gave to PatternLab for designing the kitchen papers was Finland’s next one hundred years. Five different beautiful pattern families were created and what they all have in common is nature, which is important to us Finns. Finnish consumers were then given the opportunity to vote for their favourite from these five alternatives’, says Hanna Hirvonen, Brand Manager of Serla.

The six natural elements in the Seasons pattern family depict cliffs, coast, islands and snow. Closeness to nature can traditionally be seen in the forms and the choice of colours in modern Scandinavian design. This has also been noticed abroad: Finnish design is experiencing an international boom.

‘Right now, Nordic aesthetics is popular in North America, for example. Finnish design and design heritage is one of the reasons I originally came to study in Finland’, says Jessica Bucci, an American designer at PatternLab.

The PatternLab course at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture has since 1999 polished students’ skills, turning them into surface and textile design professionals. Students have designed patterns for companies across the world through the project.

‘Projects like this are very useful and important. Seeing that the things we do and learn here really do make it onto store shelves is extremely important for students’, says Professor Maarit Salolainen, who is responsible for the PatternLab course.

The new design kitchen papers will be on sale in May 2017, celebrating Finland’s one hundred years of independence.