The Textile Industry is
the fourth largest U.K. industry and yet it would appear that fabric
designers have a comparatively low status (i.e. in contrast to fashion
or graphic designers). Textile designers are very rarely credited
with an impact in the sales of clothing or soft furnishings. Is the
industry losing a sales opportunity here ? Is it delivering what the
public demands of them in the way of design ? How important are the
trends ? How do designers inform themselves as to new movements in
the market ?
The average cost of a fabric
design has not kept up with inflation - a design still sells for the
same price that it did 15 years ago. Fashion textiles are considerably
lower in price than furnishings. Why is this ? Do designers and industry
talk the same language? Are designers undervalued ? Could this situation
improve if it were possible to communicate more by visual means ?
What negotiating skills do designers or agents need? How do they deal
with invoicing, terms and contracts and what happens when they run
into difficulties over copyright infringement or royalties?
The T3 team were aware
both from personal and anecdotal experience that working as a freelance
designer can be an isolating experience. Many designers work alone
and from home.This market is in a sense a hidden micro-economy. Being
a freelance designer and/or setting up a design agency is a hazardous
practice. The designer is essentially self-employed and responsible
for their own national insurance payments and tax returns and unable
to rely on the benefits of sickness pay, maternity pay or pension
contributions available through employment schemes. Yet many designers
are successful and content to work in this way and find that in terms
of design standards and freedom of operation this livelihood is a
creative and effective one. We were interested in testing the truth
of these impressions and in finding out if there were any unifying
features or profiles that would indicate aids or limitations to success.
What positive aspects balance these negatives?
The exploration of the
creative use of CAD/CAM in the first phase of the T3 project centred
on the changing inter-relationship of the three textile disciplines.
This was both through the expedition of new computer technology and
the relationship of the designers to the totality of the production
process ( e.g. from fibre to final presentation.) The designers working
within their own fields found it very useful to come together and
discuss methodologies, both the similarities and differences of approach
and resolution from the inspirational to the practical.
Each was generous with
their time and observations, lending new insights and approaches,
both in the traditional sense of teaching and learning but also through
the creative medium of the computer. Inevitably this led to a fruitful
cross-fertilisation of ideas and a very satisfactory sense of team-work
in some instances. The team agreed that it would be helpful to freelance
practitioners to have this sort of advice and support more readily
to hand. Working in this open and transparent way also revealed opportunities
for design collaborations or co-ordination of fabric types within
a range amongst practitioners who do not necessarily meet or speak
frequently. How this advantage could be ‘captured ‘ became a requisite
aspect of the portfolio software.
During the later stages
of the T3 project the team began to consider the presentation of textile
design works as fabric in all its forms and sizes from unfinished
swatch to exhibition hangings. We made a deliberate decision not to
take the fabrics through to the further stage of fabric as fashion
or furnishing products but to leave them at an open and ambiguous
stage. However we did experiment at considerable length with their
potential in these areas through the use of 2D and 3D mapping on the
computer. This brought us in to contact with a variety of presentation
software packages and opened up the possibility of expanding the designers
range and potential for exploiting and presenting their own designs
to a client- without damage or cost to the fabric. Again this is a
further skill that a designer could polish and market. It was conjectured
that the marketing of fabric design through digital portfolios was
not far off and that it would be an instructive exercise to present
our own designs and findings as an interactive CD-ROM.( t3m2
) This has allowed us to test whether the medium was appropriate and
sensitive to the display or marketing of textiles. We were interested
in knowing to what extent the industry was using presentation software
and if designers were taking it on as part of their range of techniques.
One of the most successful
outcomes of the project has been the high level of interaction achieved
with the textile machinery/ technology industry and the textile design
professionals. It has been possible to discuss, test and be a part
of the development of useful new tools and processes. To continue
and realise the potential of such exchanges it was felt by the team
that a logical development would be to improve the communications
between interested parties through the development of design and communication
software. It was necessary to gauge the possible requirements of a
program that could incorporate both design and marketing features
with communication tools and whether there was any interest from the
textile design community in this next stage in the deployment of new
technology. What do designers need to know about technical processes
available to them through industry ? Are designers afraid of the new
technologies ? Is the textile industry lagging behind in the information
technology revolution ? Which methods of communication were the designers
using and were they interested in the Internet as a marketing or presentation
aid ?
These and similar questions
were compiled and set into a series of questionnaires. It is hoped
that the responses to this phase will provoke discussion and change
.
