Around the beginning of October, we visited Print Tank’s studio in London where we met Rose and Sian to talk about the brief they had set us; to design 10 samples that they would possibly buy off us if they liked them.
It was dead exciting to get a glimpse into my possible future. Rose and Sian started Print Tank in 2004. All their designs are hand drawn and manipulated using the computer which is a way I enjoy working too. It was a cute little studio with a friendly atmosphere and they had their own fabric printer! I wish I had one.
They showed us their work; they had like tons of beautiful printed fabric samples to show us, which they sold to both high street stores and fashion designers.
I learned a lot of really important stuff during our meeting with Print Tank, here are a few things and tips I have found essential that I should know:
- When designing a print, rotate images and play with scale to create flow.
- When designing for the high street don’t use too many colours, the more colours the more it costs to print the fabric!
- When designing a sample give an impression of repeat and make sure that any images used in the print are in some place in the print a complete image (e.g. in a floral print make sure both halves of a flower are somewhere on the sample)
- Once you have sold the sample, you have sold the copywrite of the sample and all images with-in the sample; the same image can not be sold twice!
The final point in that list made me question weather this was where I wanted to go with my career. I don’t like the anonymity involved, the way you sell your design and someone else gets the credit, and also the copywrite laws sound all scary and confusing to me!
So, I chose to work with a ‘Psychedelic’ colour way, one of the 4 themes the class had to choose from. And off I went to college to design my 10 textiles samples.
The Result
Here are a few of my 10 designs I thought were most successful and a couple of pieces of embroidery I did during the project.
The Feedback
On October 24th, Sian from Print Tank and Esther set up an interview type setting for us to present our textile samples. I’d had a couple of problems with not being able to print on fabric and not being able to find a Pantone calibrated A3 printer at short notice and id missed a couple of days with not being well so I didn’t have my full collection of 10 completed, but what I had done I was pleased with.
This is what they said:
- My work was professional looking.
- The images in my prints should be rotated more and I need to play with scale and add more excitement by using more images per print.
- They liked my embroidery work best especially my peacocks.
- My work lost a little bit of its charm when manipulated on Photoshop.
- Although they might be able to sell some of my work it isn’t really what their clients would want.
- That my work would be good on stationary, one off bags and children’s wear.
I’m pretty pleased with the feedback I got and I’m pretty proud of the work I’ve produced but most importantly the whole experience of the project has helped me decide what I want to do after university which I will talk about in a future blog when I have got some plans together…
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