The Story Behind the Studio
I'm Jo, a surface pattern designer based on the Humber Estuary in northern England. This is where I work, where I find stillness, and where the patterns begin.
My studio lives at the top of the house, tucked into the roof with skylights that frame nothing but sky. On a clear evening, I can watch the sunset turn the whole room gold. It's a space built entirely for making things; my painting desk sits right beneath the light, and more often than not there's worship music playing softly in the background, or a podcast on if I'm in a more methodical mood.
It's also, frequently, my daughter's studio. Her craft supplies live up here too, and she has a habit of appearing whether I'm working or not, which, honestly, is one of my favourite things about it. Creativity in this house has never really been a solitary pursuit.
Becoming
For a long time, I knew something needed to change. Dolly and Fred had been my creative home for seven years, built with love, grown with purpose, and deeply meaningful. But somewhere along the way I had outgrown it, and I spent two years wrestling with what that meant before I finally found the courage to make the leap.
This year changed everything. We relocated to the Humber Estuary, a move that felt less like a decision and more like an arrival, and something in me settled. I began a deep personal development journey, learning to tune into how I was really feeling and what I genuinely wanted. For years my creative inspiration had followed my children's world, their interests, their wonder, their way of seeing things. But as they grow into their own independence, I realised it was finally time to ask: what does creativity mean for me now?
The answer was outside. In the garden, on the coastline, in the hedgerows, the shoreline and the sky. Weekends spent with my hands in the soil or walking somewhere wild. A deep conviction that the natural world matters, that beauty matters, that making things that connect people to the world around them matters.
Jo Froud Design Studio is what happens when you finally stop fighting who you're becoming.
Where It All Begins
The estuary is where everything slows down.
I walk alongside it most days, a habit of gratitude that has become as essential as breathing. There is something about standing beside that vast open water that makes everything feel both very small and very possible at the same time. The light changes constantly. The water shifts. And every single time, I am overwhelmed by the same thought: I cannot believe this is our life now.
We were placed here. I feel that with absolute certainty. And the estuary reminds me of it daily, of the faithfulness that brought us here, of the creativity that was waiting for me on this shoreline, of the endless possibilities that open up when you finally arrive somewhere you were always meant to be.
It finds its way into everything I make.
From Sketchbook to Pattern
Every collection starts with observation. A walk, an outing, a quiet moment in the garden, and my camera roll filling up with things that caught my eye. Back home, those images find their way into my sketchbook, lightly sketched in pencil before I go over them with fineliners, letting the detail emerge slowly.
From there, the path branches depending on the project. Sometimes the linework gets scanned and vectorised straight away. Other times it goes into Procreate first, where I paint and add texture using my favourite brushes, building depth before it moves into vector form. Either way, the magic happens in Affinity Designer, where motifs become patterns, placements, or collections, and everything starts to feel like a cohesive world.
The final step is always colour. It's my favourite part. One of the things I love most about working in vectors is the freedom to play, shifting a palette entirely, creating the same pattern in three different colourways, watching something transform with a single change. That's where a collection truly comes alive.
My Anchor Through it All
God is my anchor. My rock. And my life is one testimony after another, evidence, over and over again, that the plans for my life are not my own.
Earlier this year, I was striving, searching, looking for what was next. The book that found me was Believe Bigger by Marshawn Evans Daniels, and it became the final turning point. The thing that gave me the courage to close Dolly and Fred and go all in with the studio. I don't always trust myself. My confidence wobbles. But I have learned to draw deep and let God fill in what I lack, through the challenges, through the difficult moments, and through the good ones too.
My work is ultimately His. I am called to create in a way that restores me, from a place of joy and gratitude, as an act of healing, and as a way of shining a light on everything He is doing in the natural world around us. We live in a world full of noise and pain and heaviness. I hope that through Him, my work can offer a little escape from that. A moment of stillness. A reminder of beauty.
For whoever lands here, I hope you find it.
With love, Jo
