IN THE STUDIO WITH HP SPROUT

When I’m in the studio working on collections, designing and just day-to-day admin it’s important I have a computer that can keep up and contend with all my needs. Until now my desk has been filled with desktops, scanners and pan and paper. The new HP Sprout seems to have made all these obsolete with the world first immersive computer. I won’t bore you with explaining how the computer itself works – it has all the functions of a standard desktop but with so many extras! So much more than just a creative tool. First of all, it’s touch screen as well as compatible with mouse and keyboard. You can use either or, although once you start using your hands I find it addictive and a lot of fun (It’s also chicer cleaner without all those extras in my humble op). So then you have the giant mousemat that attaches magnetically to the screen, again easily detachable for a chicer workspace. This matte acts as a scanner deck, a drawing pad, a keyboard.. the list goes on! A light shines down from the scanner above, allowing you to scan in objects, even 3D scanning which is a lot of fun. I found the idea that you can pull and slide the screen around really great, you can swipe projects down onto the matte with ease and even split the screens so you can be working on two things at once – for me having my emails up in case something important comes through, drawing on the matte whilst catching up with my favourite programs on the web was a real plus! I created two projects with the HP Sprout, first wanted to scan in my fabrics from the current collection, creating a linesheet to send to buyers. Scanning fabrics can be really annoying as you just don’t get the colours right, and more importantly it squishes the fabric down so if you have a shearling or textured wool, the effect becomes quite different. With the scanning on this it captures it exactly as you see it with the naked eye. Making my sheets immediately more professional. Secondly I used the stylus pen to draw my designs straight into the document, I can then use the fabrics I scanned from earlier to create collections to send to clients as well as for my own personal use. 

All in all the beautiful design of HP Sprout has blown me away. Every day I’ve been using it I’ve discovered new ways to work in an intuitive and exciting way. It seems insane that something this great hasn’t been invented up until now but I’m so excited to be one of the first ones to try it!

Thanks to HP Sprout