Annie O
Many of you will know Annie Deloffre from her days as the Home Furnishing stylist at Sublistatic and more recently at Miroglio. I have been asked by our Furnishing clients for trend direction so contacted my old friend who reveals that she has a Pinterest account. Whether you be a print enthusiast in Decoration or Fashion I implore you to feast your eyes on this remarkably beautiful and eclectic site. Fashion and Home Furnishing print design feed off each other and the images that Annie has posted from both the natural and man made world are spectacular.
Click here to check out Annie O’s gorgeous Pinterest page. We look forward to hearing more from Annie in the future.
Copying Print Design by Sarah
This is an abhorrent practice that some parties think is acceptable but we do not. We will mention no names but a young designer told me the other day that she had worked for a major multinational high street brand who would openly copy designs. The company would weigh up how much they would be likely to pay if sued against how much the company would make on the garment.
It is not always easy to spot a copy but here are some pointers. The design is usually generated by scanning fabric. This means that the surface of the scanned fabric may well have distorted the original design and this distortion is captured on the scan. Few copiers bother to pay someone to make new high quality artwork.
The original print may have been produced by a digital printer direct onto fabric or heat transfer paper, screens or rotogravure printing. Original artwork will have been designed in high resolution in order to achieve the greatest possible detail and definition that the technology allows.
A copier will be looking to produce as swiftly as possible and will often create just one colourway in a design and use the scanned image of the original. The copied image might be CMYK, like a photographic print or separated but produced by a different print technology to the original. The copier is concerned by two things; speed and costs. If the cost of the original was not a factor then there would be less reason to copy.
Like a counterfeit Rolex watch which weighs a ton and rapidly tarnishes, a copied print is usually of inferior quality.
The following are tell tale signs;
1) Lack of definition and flatness in what might be a complex design.
2) Cooking cutter edges between ground and motifs.
3) Missing colour where the scan has not captured all the lighter tones of the original image.
4) Slightly different scale as screen and cylinder sizes vary which may distort the symmetry of the design.
5) Disappearance of fine line details such as leaf stalks.
6) The garment has been manufactured in a far off place who wrongly believe that they do not have to follow copyright or intellectual property laws.
Let us play Spot the difference, find the copy!
The original dress from Zara
In a few weeks time I am going to go in to what you can do when you have a design copied and ask advise from people who specialize in this field.
Answers to Spot the Difference, the copies are: 1) B 2) A 3) B 4) A 5) A 6) B 7) B
The fabric may be confusing so take a good look at the print quality irrespective of the surface texture as these are one different base cloths.
The Print Affair 