LCF Print students take on Liberty competition using AVA
- Written byUna Andzane
- Published date 04 November 2026
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London College of Fashion (LCF), UAL students from BA (Hons) Fashion Textiles: Print recently took part in an in-course competition using AVA, a specialist design, colour and print CAD software used to produce decorative print products. In partnership with Liberty, students were asked to use the AVA software to develop print designs in response to specific briefs.
As part of the competition, industry specialists from Liberty visited LCF to meet the students, hear about their work and announce the winners. The winning students got the chance to enjoy a Liberty Experience Day where they received certificates and goody bags.
Congratulations to Luther Hewett, Joanna Cox, Mingxi Yang, and Ziqing Zheng, who were named the competition winners. We recently spoke with the winning students to find out more about their creative process and design inspiration.
What did the competition involve, and what was the brief you were given?
Luther: The competition with Liberty was an amazing opportunity to develop my design skills. Inspired by the Women in Print exhibition, the brief focused on how our unique everyday lives as designers can translate into our work.
Joanna: The brief was introduced at Liberty’s head office, where we were given an insight into the pillars of Liberty and the brand's heritage. For the competition, we had to align ourselves to one of these pillars and design three 32x32cm repeat tiles, each in three colourways, using AVA. As the brief was open-ended conceptually, I was able to link it to my Final Major Project (FMP) and carry out further research to create a series of artworks which I could develop in AVA.
Mingxi: We needed to create three complete print designs and experiment with different colour schemes for each design. The colours had to be chosen from one of the Liberty colour schemes selected by each participant.
Ziqing: At the beginning of the project, when we were taken to visit a Liberty print exhibition, we had the opportunity to explore the Liberty building. This gave us an initial understanding of Liberty’s print heritage and visual language before we started developing our own work.
How did you use AVA to develop and create your print design?
Joanna: I used a variety of tools in AVA to help develop my prints. The advanced colour separation tool is essential in recolouring designs, and being able to drop in the 'Brights' Coloursys swatches allowed me to easily test many colourways.
For Oma's Cabinet, I created a brush from a section of one of my avocado ink paintings to add texture into the background.
In Malerei, the partial images tool allowed me to experiment with the composition and add multiple motifs into the design. I also used the repeat popover with half drop and the carbon copy from crop box tools to create a seamless repeat.
Mingxi: AVA offers a wide range of colours to choose from. I used the ‘Brights’ from the Liberty colour palette; this set of colours fits the theme of my project perfectly and allows me to achieve the colour contrast required. AVA has been a great help to me; its various tools have made my print designs look more harmonious and rich, ensuring they do not appear monotonous or dull.
Ziqing: I created a large number of hand-drawn elements and experimented with combining different drawings into collages. I then scanned the original drawings and imported them into AVA, where I experimented with colour changes, layering, and combining different elements to develop the final print compositions. This allowed me to keep the expressive and organic quality of my hand drawings while having much more control over colour and composition digitally.
What inspired your print design, and how did this influence the final outcome?
Luther: I drew inspiration from the swimming communities in my hometown of Penzance, which are a meaningful part of my everyday life.
Joanna: My print designs were inspired by my German heritage and my Oma's (grandma's) home in Bavaria. I was interested in contrasting the way we 'curate' nature in London with the more free, rural, slower-paced setting of her life. This led me to a slow textiles approach to my work with traditional folk-art influence.
I was also inspired by the Bloomsbury group at Charleston house, and I wanted to retain a strong sense of the human hand within my designs such as leaving brush strokes, scanning in my textured block print and mirroring motifs. I aligned myself with Liberty's Arts and Crafts pillar, as this reflected my designer identity the most.
Mingxi: My project is called Floral Mushroom. My print designs are inspired by the hallucinations I experienced after accidentally eating mushrooms. The work centres on plants; I wanted to create a sense of a collective botanical revelry, a theme I am particularly fond of. I have combined mushrooms with bizarrely shaped flowers to create a rich and intricate composition, whilst incorporating twisted lines to evoke a dizzying, bewildering sensation. Visualising these indescribable hallucinations is both particularly fascinating and highly challenging for me.
Ziqing: My print design was inspired by Hitchcock’s Vertigo and the process of flowers blooming. The blooming of a flower represents the most intense and beautiful moment of life. After reaching this moment of splendour, however, the flower inevitably begins to decay. In this sense, life reaches its peak and then begins to decline, which makes the moment of blooming contain a particularly powerful expression of the essence and tension of life.
I wanted to express this tension through hand-drawn forms and a strong emphasis on colour. For my final sample, I chose to work with a variety of different silks because the characteristics of silk reminded me of flowers. On one hand, the lustrous surface of silk resembles the delicate surface of petals; on the other hand, silk is a precious and fragile material that can easily be damaged, much like a flower itself. This connection between beauty and fragility became an important part of the final outcome.
What was it like meeting the Liberty team and hearing their feedback on your work?
Luther: It significantly increased my confidence in communicating my ideas and presenting my work, while giving me valuable insight into the creative industry. The experience has helped me grow both creatively and professionally, equipping me with the skills, knowledge and confidence to progress further in my future career.
Joanna: The Liberty team gave invaluable advice throughout the process and really helped me to strengthen not just my competition work but also my FMP. They provided feedback on my concept development and encouraged me to reconsider certain aspects of my prints, such as which artworks to combine, colourways and scale. It was such a great opportunity to have received feedback directly from industry professionals and there are many skills that I learnt throughout this process that I will continue to apply to my print practice.
Mingxi: When I met with the Liberty team, I was actually quite nervous. I was always afraid of making mistakes in my presentation. But they were very nice and listened carefully to each of our work presentations, giving us a lot of positive feedback. The suggestions they made were very clear. For example, they suggested that I change the black lines to other colors, so that the picture would be more harmonious. This communication session allowed me to see my strengths and helped me regain confidence in my work.
Ziqing: I found the meeting with the Liberty team extremely helpful. They looked through my extensive collection of hand drawings and collages with me and helped me think about how I could organise and develop the project towards a more resolved final outcome. Their feedback helped me see new possibilities within the work rather than simply selecting what I had already created. I also received a lot of encouragement from the Liberty team, which gave me a great deal of motivation and confidence to continue experimenting and developing the project further.