When completed, a Gantt chart shows the flow of activities in a sequence, as well as those that can be under way at the same time. See Appendix A. Gantt charts can also be used to chart actual progress, by drawing lines in different colours to show the start and end dates of each step.
This allows easy assessment of whether or not a project is on schedule. These are more sophisticated forms of planning than Gantt charts and are appropriate for projects with many interactive steps. The progress of a project should be monitored and measured against the plan. When deviations occur, corrective action should be taken.
Time management is simply making the best use of time to achieve what is necessary. To effectively manage time, goals and time limits need to be set. What is required? What has to be achieved and when?
How efficiently do these goals have to be met? It is only against set targets that success can be measured. The way any individual uses time is unique to that individual. Some people use time as chunks into which they can fit certain activities, all neatly stacked.
Others have no clear view of time, selecting activities at random or changing priorities to suit the current crisis. There are strengths and weaknesses in both ways and it is of value to consider both because many people will alternate between the two, depending on the jobs in hand.
The way designers use their time will be different, since everyone has their own pace of work and their own rhythms, with different peaks for different activities. Managing time costs time.
To sit down and plan the best use of time is an investment. It takes time to learn to use software packages for word processing and database management but their use is a huge investment for future time management.
The time spent on any activities should be considered afterwards and evaluated. Can any lessons be learnt to plan more effective use of time in the future? Targets that will result in a high pay-off should be identified. Constructive avoidance is when time is spent on work that is neither important nor urgent in preference to urgent and important work. Having the right products in a range is very important in terms of how well that range will sell.
Brief Research Design work Range Fig. Good design adds value to a product. With products of equal quality and price, the design will be what differentiates. What does the designer need to know or make decisions about when planning a range?
Or, put at its most simplistic, how does a designer decide what to design? All designers are designing for the future and are influenced by trends in their product area. As well as needing to understand forecasting, a designer needs to know other informa- tion when planning a range.
It is usually the job of the design manager or stylist in a studio to plan the ranges. There will have been some discussion with sales, marketing and production about all or some of the factors listed above — essentially to build up a full picture of what criteria the range must answer. The type of designs depends on the products being designed for, the customer profile, price points for sales, manufacturing plant availability and quality.
The number of designs and colourways in a range is controlled by several commercial factors including the amount of capital the company wishes to tie up in the range, the raw materials that are needed, the amount of stock that can be carried, and the production capacity, i. The textile design function 25 3. This is unsatisfactory if there is any form of time limit on when the answer is required. This is appropriate if it is known who to ask and what to ask.
Known as primary research or field research, this is where designers find information directly for themselves; by going out and looking at the shops and visiting trade fairs and exhibitions, by asking relevant individuals and groups, by using mailed questionnaires, by setting up focus groups and by interviewing people.
This is appropriate if it is known where to look, how to look it up and what exactly is being looked for. Known as secondary or desk research, this is where information is gleaned from work already carried out by other individuals or groups. Such research might include looking at market research information obtained through government censuses and large market research programmes.
The aim should be to find key information. Identify what is not known. The questions that need to be answered should be identified and listed. The level of answer required should be established there is a balance between the importance of what is being looked for and the time and effort spent looking and a checklist of likely sources of reliable answers to questions can be prepared. It is sensible to keep control over any search for information by setting limits and deadlines and by using expert opinions and expert literature searchers to identify the most promising sources.
It is important to stop as soon as there is enough information to move forward and it is essential to keep accurate references. Sometimes, the information sought may have to be bought, sometimes it may be free — part of a marketing strategy on behalf of the supplier. However, whether visiting a new supplier to source yarn or buttons, or telephoning to check prices of fabrics, it is important that designers know exactly what they want so as not to waste time.
Before any visit, the information required should be clearly identified. It is essential for any designer to be prepared, and establishing a checklist of questions that need to be answered is a good way of making sure that all relevant information is obtained. When seeking information about market areas and products, it would be usual to employ professional market researchers.
However, sometimes designers may prefer to carry out some market research themselves. A busy company director or buyer is much more likely to complete and return a questionnaire if it is clear to read, to the point and does not take up too much of their valuable time. Formulating questions in such a way that they can be answered by ticking boxes is much more likely to elicit a positive response than having questions that require written replies. Design ideas can come from almost any source, but sometimes designers may find difficulty in thinking of suitable sources and themes for work.
In its most formal sense, it is a group participation technique for generating a wide range of ideas in order to tackle a stated problem. In a less formalised way, an individual or pair can use a brainstorming session to generate ideas. What follows is a description of brainstorming at its most formalised; such a rigid approach, however, may well inhibit ideas.
Too vague or too restrictive a statement should be avoided. The group should ideally include some people familiar with the problem area. Small groups of about 4—8 people are best. The session rules are: a No criticism is allowed of any idea.
Once a basic colour palette has been decided, this will help the ideas being developed to work together as a total package. Colour co-ordination does not mean that every design has to be in exactly the same colourway, but colours should be related.
New fashion colours should be looked at alongside any existing palette to make sure that these work as part of the range. If a design was well received and is still selling well, it makes commercial sense to carry it on. It is hard to argue with sales figures. Re-colouring can add to the sales of a proven design. Areas and themes will have been identified according to the customer requirements, as will the appropriate number of products to fall within them.
Having established the number of products and colourways for each, initial ideas for the range can be put together. At this development stage it is very necessary to maintain an overview of the whole range. If it is a range of apparel fabrics that is being developed, then there might be part of the range aimed at menswear and part at womenswear. An important existing customer may be a pyjama manufacturer and so designs suitable for that customer must be included. Designs may be developed in-house or bought in, or a mixture of both.
Designs may come from archives of designs that have already been developed and sampled. A few designs can be assembled around each theme or group and any areas where it is felt designs are missing will prompt more sampling. Production capabilities and machine loading must be considered.
For example, there is no point when designing a range of knitted fabrics to produce all the fabrics for this on one specific machine type if the manufacturing company owns several different types of machines, producing quite different fabrics. It is only when all such considerations have been taken into account that the final selection of the designs to be included in the range will be made.
Once fabric designs are chosen, suitable colourways will be selected, and if necessary, sampled. Colourways may be balanced or not. Balanced colourways are when the colours change but the relationships of the colours within the design stay the same. Unbalanced colourways are when there are no similar colour relationships between colourways.
For example, a three-colour print design has a dark blue ground, large flowers in mid- blue and small flowers in light blue. A balanced colourway of this would be one that had a dark green ground, large flowers in mid-green and small flowers in light green. An unbalanced colourway would be one that had a bright yellow ground, pink large flowers and dark blue small flowers.
For a range to work as a total package, themes and concepts can also be used as well as colour and colour co-ordination. For example, Dorma, a UK bedding manufacturer, produced a very successful range of bedlinen based on the illustrations in the book The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. This range was so successful for Dorma that several seasons later a further bedding range was developed from the same book, but this time using a different colour story.
Themes can be used as a base for designs and colour co-ordination. Themes and concepts can also help with publicity, being taken through to brochures and in-store presentations. Many fabric ranges will include plain colours.
In most product ranges there are basics that have to continue, and decisions have to be made as to which colours will be carried on and which will be dropped. Often, these plain colours are related to other products in the same area; for example, towels relate to bathroom fittings, telephones to paints and wall coverings.
There should be some co-ordination between plain and patterned ranges. This allows customers to buy from both and thereby increases sales. Range planning and development is very important. The brand range is what a company sells itself on.
The image created with the range will be the image of the company for the next twelve months or so until the next range. Designers will usually try out different ideas, taking the best of these through into fabric or, in the case of print design, through to designs painted-out to size and in repeat.
Computer-aided design CAD systems can be very helpful at the sampling stage, allowing different ideas to be tried and fabrics to be simulated without the expense of fabric sampling. Very often, machinery has to be taken out of production for sampling, and time that is not being used to make saleable products on expensive machinery is costly. Money tied up in sample stocks is also money that cannot be recouped. In the early s however, things began to change.
Many companies closed due to world-wide recession. Those that survived had to work harder to maintain a place in the market. Ranges had to be well presented, with marketing becoming increasingly important. For example, for yarn manufacturers and spinners it was no longer sufficient to show new yarns just on cones.
Ranges had to be carefully planned, the presentation of the range to the customer became very important and the presentations began to include how a range might be used.
Spinners started to employ designers to put together trend ideas. Different yarn qualities within a range would often be colour co-ordinated to help the customer maximise use, and fabrics that illustrated the current trends would be made up from the yarns in the range.
Presentations of a range are often both written and oral. There will normally also be drawings and photographs illustrating how fabrics from the range work together, how fabrics work when made up into or incorporated into products and how these products work with other, related products. Presentations often reflect the theme used for the design work. For a presentation to be successful, the designer must have answered the brief.
If the brief is not clear, it is difficult to solve the design problem. At a briefing meeting, the designer is trying to get as much information as possible. It is therefore important that presentations should be made to the person who gave the briefing. Presentation of the final range to the person who asked for the work to be undertaken is, however, not the only type of presentation a designer will be called upon to contribute to or to make.
Once the range has the approval of the relevant directors or company board members, the designer may well be asked to make presentations to sales teams, agents and customers. Designers are called upon all the time to give presentations of their work and so an ability to present themselves and their work well is very important. The best presentations are simple and to the point; this is as true of visual presentations as of written and oral presentations.
Their work will often need little verbal explanation, clearly communicating the intention by virtue of visual impact.
The way such work is presented is very important because good presentation can show a design solution to advantage while poor presentation can hide and distract from good design. Presentation is itself an exercise in design. Good presentation should be suitable and professional. It should be suitable in that the presentation style and techniques should show whatever is being shown be it fabrics, yarns, artwork or drawings to its best advantage; it should look as good as it possibly can.
All presentations should be professional in that they should look neat and tidy, deliberate, considered, planned, well designed, appropriate, consistent, related and reflect the work presented. Poor presentation is chaotic, messy, dirty, disorganised and inappropriate. See Appendix B for tips on presenting work. The ideas may come from magazines, postcards, colour swatches, yarn or fabric pieces.
Presentation of mood boards should be simple and suitable; the style of presentation should reflect the mood. A sporty mood board will be presented differently from a mood board reflecting luxury and wealth. This will allow the client to feel that they have some input and also should prevent unsuitable work being done. The client may be in-house or external. An external presentation may be more formal than an in-house presentation, but the presentation should in both cases be appropriate and show the ideas to their best advantage.
It will often show the development of ideas through to the final design work. It should be neat and tidy, and presented in a coherent manner. It should be easy to look at. What will they expect to see?
Publicity can contain photographs of furnishing products in room settings, emphasising the importance of colour co-ordination and pattern co-ordination. It can be seen how the range is related to other products in the same room area. Publicity for fashion garments will show how the garments in the range can be used with other garments.
If the range has a name or theme this can be emphasised, for example through publicity with a distinctive logo. A logo can be used on packaging and on any labels. If the product is not fully visible when packaged, then a photograph will be needed. This technique is often used for duvet packaging; the folded duvet will be packaged with a photograph of the duvet in situ, allowing an appreciation of the full design.
Such photographs may well also be used for in-store displays. If the product is targeted as a gift then the packaging should be especially attractive. Soap may be sold with a towel. Products sold in a basket mean that the packaging becomes a product in its own right. Concept selling offers many related products in an area, and bedding, curtains, lampshades and other items for the bedroom may be displayed together, co-ordinated by colour and a common or linked theme.
Such selling techniques make it easier for the designer to get across the message of co-ordination and for the customers to see how the product will work in their home. However, presenting merchandise in this way is not always easy for department stores, where buying systems have been traditionally broken down into product areas.
The designs may be either the work of the designer doing the presentation or the result of several designers and others, such as technicians and sales personnel, who have all had an input.
Design is very much a team activity with the designer co-ordinating the design development, whether this is for one fabric or a range of fabrics. They have to try to identify gaps in product and colour ranges and their ultimate design work should be to fill these gaps.
Designers need to try to identify new directions for their customers. It is important that new ranges lead the way rather than follow so that customers come back for new ideas. Storyboards are frequently used to illustrate points in such presentations. Feedback from the customer on designs and directions should be encouraged to ensure that the customer is involved and has a degree of ownership, and that the brief is answered. This also helps establish good working relationships.
The textile design function 31 3. The design process is investigative, creative and rational, and involves decisions being made. The design process starts with a need, involves research, ideas generation and design development, and ends with a new design.
Design projects have to be completed to schedules and within set budgets, so efficient project management and time management are important. Planning is about managing and controlling events to achieve a goal or goals.
The aims and objectives of any project require to be identified. This is usually done at the briefing meeting, and here checklists can be a helpful tool. There are different methods that can be used to help in planning projects. These include backwards planning, Gantt charts and network analysis. How an individual uses time is unique to that individual. Planning how to best use time is crucial.
Research is important to the designer — both primary and secondary research. Information can be gathered from a variety of sources and in different ways. Generation of ideas can be aided by brainstorming and this can be carried out formally or very informally. Range planning, range development and presentation are vital functions of the textile design process. References 1. Potter, N. Things, Places, Messages 3rd rev. Bibliography Adair, J.
Bond, W. Davidson, J. The designers responsible for such textiles have to balance many factors when answering a design brief. What is the fabric for? How must it perform? What are the economic restraints? How is the fabric to be produced? Research into how people select products shows that colour and appearance are two of the most significant factors, with handle, performance and price coming lower down in terms of importance.
Textile designers therefore need to have a good understanding and sensitivity to colour and aesthetics. The same design elements and principles apply to design as to fine art, and an under- standing of and an ability to use these are as vital to the designer as to the fine artist. Shapes, forms, colours and texture all combine to become a unified whole which is commonly called a design.
In the first instance it may seem impossible to objectively analyse works of art. In different cultures and at different times, styles of art and even the media used to express art have varied enormously. There are, however, certain basic design features that appear to be natural and common to all art. Pick up one of the many books on design and these elements and principles will be there, although they may be detailed slightly differently in each. This is, in part, due to the way that in any one work of art no one element or principle can exist in isolation.
Designing can be defined as relating and visually arranging components or elements to create effects. Space, line, shape, form, colour, value and texture are the design elements with which artists and designers work to create a design. The design principles of balance, movement, repetition, emphasis, contrast and unity are what artists and designers do with the design elements to make the art form or design. The principles and elements of textile design 33 4.
A line moves, and as it does so it indicates direction. A straight line leads the eye swiftly across the picture plane but the eye travels more slowly when following the path of a jagged line. Lines appear in different ways. There are curved lines and straight lines. These can be long or short, thick or thin, ragged, sharp, light, dark, simple or complex. Lines can be broken and yet have direction.
Lines can be textured and can be coloured. Lines can be made from repeating similar elements, as diverse as dots or people, in a lengthways direction. Lines can be used to create form, to give depth. Lines can be carefully controlled to create optical sensations and can be used to project feelings of sensitivity and strength. When someone looks at lines they try to fit them into something related to their previous experiences; for example, scribbled spirals may be interpreted as seashells, and a few lines can easily suggest an apple to someone who is familiar with this fruit.
Skilful artists and designers play with this tendency to see familiar forms in everything by using only a minimum of visual clues to evoke a far more elaborate response. Care must be taken, however, that abstract designs and patterns do not unintentionally suggest unpleasant or ugly forms to the viewer.
A shape or figure is a positive thing and occupies positive space. The area surrounding a shape is called the background or ground. It is a negative thing and occupies negative space. Shapes can be clearly defined with hard edges but often they are not clearly defined, which means that it is more difficult to see where shape ends and background begins. There are a great variety of shapes to be found in nature.
Many artists have drawn creative inspiration from natural shapes. Through their imagination, artists have invented new ways to use shape and communicate ideas. Shapes can be solid or opaque, linear, textured, coloured and outlined. Shapes can be transparent, revealing other shapes behind them. Similar shapes need not be identical, yet they can have a common relationship, which visually ties them together. Some shapes will command more attention than others, depending on their size, colour, value, texture, detail or their location in relation to other shapes.
Tall shapes are elevating, long flat shapes express calmness, downward- pointing shapes activate the sense of falling. In art and design, form is the illusion of three-dimensional volume or mass seen in two dimensions. Careful observation of the forms around reveals that, in nature and in man-made objects, many forms can be described as combinations of the basic geometric structures; spheres, cylinders, cones, cubes and pyramids. Line, shape, colour, value and texture can all be used to suggest form by the artist on a picture plane, and by the textile designer within fabric.
A flat surface has only two-dimensional space. This means that it has length and width but no depth. It is impossible to create actual depth or space on a flat surface but an illusion of space, distance or depth is possible.
There are many methods used by artists and designers to create this sense of space, and to convince the observer that there is space and depth when, in fact, they are victims of a type of visual deception.
Objects placed higher up can create the feeling of depth or distance. Overlapping shapes can also create the feeling of depth, as can converging lines. If, in two-dimensional art and design, space exists purely as an idea or concept, it leaves the artist or designer free to compress or stretch it as they wish, to portray the particular feeling that is desired. Colours have an effect on space. Colours that are warm and bright appear closer, while dull or cool colours recede into the distance.
A flat surface that is covered only with pattern can eliminate any feeling of space. Throughout history, the study of colour and the development of colour theories were frequently undertaken by artists and designers, and many artists have spent their lives attempting to understand colour.
Seurat wanted to apply a scientific system to the methods of the Impressionists, and his Pointillist theories, where dots of colour from a restricted colour palette were used to create the impression of a wide range of colour, clearly show his fascination with analysing colours. Colours communicate; some colours are associated with cold blues and greys and some with warmth reds and oranges.
Colour can convey the time of day, weather conditions and temperature, and even the time of year. Colours can be designed to blend in with the environment or to stand out. In art and design work, the colour can be used in a natural or abstract way. Maps make use of both abstract and natural colour; natural colours are used when illustrating mountains, deserts and seas while maps showing political boundaries will use abstract colour. Colour is a crucial part of all branches of design and design-based industries.
Advertising agencies know that graphic information in colour will have a more profound effect than that in black and white. Colour grabs the attention span because memory recall from colour is quite pronounced.
Colour is used to promote corporate identity. Blue is used by many banks to give the suggestion of reliability, while the appetite colours of red and yellow are used by fast food chains. Green is frequently used to denote environmental friendliness while more subtle greens convey a feeling of upmarket status.
The green livery of Harrods, the world-famous upmarket store in London, epitomises good taste and sophistication. Forecasting colour trends is itself an industry, and fashion colours change with the seasons. Underlying these cyclical trends, however, are some basic colour preferences. In colour popularity tests, blue is frequently placed first, with red second.
Blue ties are most popular, with red ties in second place, and blue and red cars regularly occupy top positions, only being outdone by silver, a colour symbolising luxury and wealth. The colour of a product influences the perception of it, and this is used extensively in marketing.
Many people believe a red car will drive faster than a white one. Tests with coffee showed that coffee served in a red mug was preferred to the same coffee served in a yellow mug considered too weak and in a brown mug too strong. Foodstuffs claiming to be pure and unadulterated often use blue and white packaging to communicate purity.
However, in this age of environmental awareness it is predicted that more earthy colours will symbolise a natural product while white will be associated with chlorine and all that is environmentally unfriendly. Products communicating strength adopt vibrant and contrasting colours; the greater the contrast, the stronger the associated power. Colour can be used to represent a product, with some colours idealising a product, and some using biological signals to communicate function.
Yellow and black are used in nature as a warning symbol for reptiles and insects that have poisonous bites or stings and this colour combination is therefore often used to represent danger. Yellow and black is used on signs when the desire is to signal caution. Colour mixing. Additive colour is the mixture of coloured lights. The three primary colours of red, green and blue when mixed together in equal colours produce white light.
Mixing the three additive primaries in differing amounts of coloured light can create any colour in the rainbow. Colour televisions use the principle of additive colour mixing. In subtractive colour mixing the principle is exactly the opposite. The subtractive primary colours are cyan, yellow and magenta. When mixed together they subtract from the light producing black. When different pairs of the subtractive primaries are mixed, the colours red, green and blue are produced.
These principles are used when we paint and in photography and colour printing. Colour systems. As the human eye can distinguish between 10 million colours, it is clear that to describe colour experiences by name is imprecise. While everyone knows what is meant by tomato red, different people have different ideas as to exactly what colours are meant by beige and sand; mauve and lilac. In order to accurately describe or pinpoint colours, a reference or colour system is required.
All the attempts to notate colour can be traced back to the work of Sir Isaac Newton. In he re-created a spectrum by directing a narrow beam of white light through a prism; he went on to develop a colour wheel by taking the two ends and bending the spectrum into a circle.
In Williem Ostwald devised his double-cone colour solid; also in , Albert Munsell developed another system of colour notation that added steps to the constituent hues.
Munsell allowed his three-dimensional colour solid to respond in shape to the different potential strengths between hues, creating an asymmetrical colour solid. In textiles and clothing, the Pantone system is probably the most commonly used, and a whole range of products is available in its defined colours. These include ranges of marker pens, paper and even fabric samples.
Colour psychology. There is a commonly held belief that red is exciting and green calming. But which red and which green? Research has shown that strong greens, yellows and blues are all seen to be as exciting as strong red. The same research also showed that pale and dark versions of the same hues have quite the reverse effect. Pink has a calming effect on violent people. A common belief is that blue increases the size of a room while red has the opposite effect.
Recent research, however, has shown that it is not the colour itself that has this effect but rather its value, the amount of whiteness or blackness. However, with regard to temperature, colour does have a very definite effect.
Red and yellow rooms are perceived to be warmer than blue and green rooms. Value is important to the designer.
Shapes that are close in value or tone appear to merge together. Visually dark values appear to come forward and light values tend to recede, but the reverse can occur. Sharply contrasting values attract attention and the use of light against dark or dark against light can create the illusion of size difference.
It takes the reader on a visual odyssey spanning years, tracing the images created on cloth for India'. Traditional Indian Handcrafted Textiles.
A ready reference for students, research scholars, and academicians in the field of clothing, textiles, and design A comprehensive text, written in a structured. This dazzling array of Indian textiles from one of the world's most important and eclectic private collections contains many images never before published. SMEs in Indian Textiles. SMEs in Indian Textiles examines how globalisation in its transformative influence affects both firms and workers in the developing economies.
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