Tag - textile design
22Sep

Textile Designers & What They Know

Textile design is a complex, fascinating, and ancient field of study. Every human on this planet is intimately involved with textiles, yet very few people consider textiles much at all. For thousands of years, all over the world, textiles protected us, comforted us, and gave us a way to communicate information about ourselves with the world. Textiles influenced our current banking system and were integral in putting humans into space. So, who are textile designers, and what information are...

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Colorful squares in background. On top reads The Life Cycle of a Trend.
21Jul

The Life Cycle of a Trend

Trends impact every aspect of our lives. At Design Pool, we are endlessly fascinated by them and their impact on the culture at large. Yet, as the speed of our daily lives has gotten faster, trends seem to be cycling faster too. It got us thinking, how much energy do we need to put into staying up on trends if they move that quickly? Does it still matter? We think that no matter the speed, understanding what is trending...

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Looking over the shoulder of a person reading. You can see the brim of a straw hat, an open book, and someone's legs.
28Jun

Summer Reading, Textile Edition

Summer is officially here, NeoCon 2022 is officially over. We all deserve a little downtime, right? As I stare down the huge pile of books begging to be read, I'm thinking back to a few favorites that have been inspiring the Design Pool team lately. In unique ways, each of these five books offered a seed of inspiration in the creation of our latest collection, Invisible Threads. If you're looking for something to read, especially if you're a textile...

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16Dec

Color Riot! at the Montclair Art Museum

Textile lovers in the northeast should absolutely add a visit to the Montclair Museum of Art to their holiday break to-do list. Their featured exhibit, Color Riot! How Color Changed Navajo Textiles closes on January 2, 2022. This exhibit, which originally opened at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, is a breathtaking collection of Navajo (Diné) textiles. It features the work of contemporary artists weaving in traditional techniques alongside work from the period of time known as the Transitional Period...

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10May

The Rabbit Hole Where Interior & Textile Designers Intersect

Designers Today is a digital and print magazine that promotes itself as the link between interior designers and the home furnishings industry. As part of their goal in pushing the envelope to make the interior design profession stronger and more transparent, they are hosting a yearlong webinar series that interviews experts on their business practices. I urge everyone to check out their upcoming editions. I was lucky to come across their April 21st webinar entitled “Soft Focus: How to Create...

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22Feb

Inca Insistence, the Relevance of Symmetries

What could possibly be meant by the term The Inca Insistence? I will get to this! First, I have to explain how patterns are categorized and how this is culturally relevant. Previously in this blog, we have discussed basic pattern repeats. An ogee, such as this image below (and which we defined here), is an example of a half-drop pattern repeat. The motif moves a half step over in each subsequent horizontal line. Ikat Ogee Pattern P468 But if you look...

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28Jan

Luise Stromberg’s Plain Weave Challenge

“I have to find a light somewhere,” thought Luise Stromberg as spring turned to summer in 2020. Like most of us, Luise was spending most of her time home and was searching for a creative spark to get her through the dark time we were all experiencing. So, she turned to a passion of hers, textiles, and started a quarantine project she named the Plain Weave Challenge. Throughout her 30+ year career in commercial textiles, she moved further away from...

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20Jul

A Look at Manufactured & Synthetic Fibers

Humans have been turning fibers into materials with which to clothe themselves, warm themselves and express themselves for millennia. Still, there are certain moments in time we can point to as having made huge impacts on the way textiles are made. The invention of the cotton gin and then of the spinning jenny are two such moments. So too is the invention of synthetic fibers. When we talk about human manufactured fiber, we're talking about fiber that doesn't exist as...

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10Jul

Create Your Own Texture Library

As a textile designer, one of the best tools in my designer toolbox is my texture library. Designing patterns digitally, I sometimes felt the patterns looked a little flat. To breathe life into a pattern, I add texture to a design instead of a flat color. This technique optimizes a pattern by adding depth and dimension. Where it previously felt flat or sterile, the pattern now has the illusion of a woven fabric, regardless of the material on which...

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25May

A Closer Look at Natural Fibers & Materials

Picking the right material to use for digital printing is an important one. If you're working with print-on-demand companies or thinking about customizing materials for your next project, you know there are a lot of options out there. That's the fun of customizing! Still, it's a lot to take in if you're new to materials and not comfortable with the lingo yet. What type of material do you want to print on? Can you print on natural fibers? If...

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