Customer Reviews

New Fashion Print

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Pattern has become so popular over the past few years, with a ludicrous number of books on pattern designers, that this book no longer stands out. When it was released in 2008 I bought it because there wasn't as much available. Many recent books have copied the format, so if you have almost any other book on pattern design (Victionary etc) this one will feel very familiar to you.

The book is specifically on prints for fashion, however disappointingly none of the patterns are shown on their actual substrate (fabric), nor are the fashion items these were used for pictured. The images are instead just reproductions of the digital artwork/drawing. This is a shame as the foreword specifically discusses textile development: a pattern looks quite different on fabric, as small details become blurred by the weave or texture. The scale of the prints also has a lot to do with how effective patterns look, and the book gives no hint about the scale the designers intended. For this reason I prefer "Textile Designers at the Cutting Edge" by Quinn, as this shows the textiles in their final intended use.

The two-page introduction very briefly summarizes the history of print in fashion in the 20th century.

The 39 designers or design teams are grouped geographically into sections titled Europe, Americas and Asia. For each there is a one-page artist's statement, covering their personal motivation and philosophy, formal training, working methods, etc, then between three and six pages of their artwork with very brief captions.

The production qualities are high, and this is an enjoyable book to look through, with glossy pages, large images, and a good binding. There is a very wide variety of pattern styles included, from geometric to organic, computer generated fractals to cute illustrative styles.

This book is not designed to help you make your own patterns, or to learn to use any design software. If this is what you are looking for I recommend Chopin's "Adobe Photoshop for Textile Designers", or "Digital Textile Design" by Bowles and Isaac.

So overall, a nice book to flip through if you want to get inspiration for your own designs, but by no means an essential to add to the library.

See title...Says it all. This topic was flat without the aid of some CD or DVD to bring out the topic's modernity.