The Telling Line: The Relationship between Cognitive Style and Fashion Design Sketching

This mixed-methods exploratory study addresses a gap in the literature by testing for links between cognitive style and the gestalt of sketches produced by college-level fashion design students. Students’ cognitive styles were appraised with the FourSight assessment, a measure of problem-solving preference gaining use in design schools. Then participants sketched fashion designs to complete a design brief. Panels of raters trained in FourSight reviewed the sketches to assess the cognitive styles of the sketchers. Quantitative analysis revealed a significant degree of interrater reliability, while qualitative analysis indicated emergent themes of selection, attitude, and innovation that aligned with FourSight types. The raters’ evaluations showed relationships between the sketches produced by fashion design students and the students’ cognitive style preferences, potentially affording designers additional insights in the problem-solving process. These findings support and extend FourSight theory and provide insights into the relationships between how people think and how they express their creativity through the concepts they produce

Laser cutting and etching textiles and apparel design: an experimental study on the implementation and documentation of laser cutting and etching in the apparel design creative process

Textile cutting is a standard pre-production stage in the apparel manufacturing process that has developed from a manual to a fully automated procedure in recent decades. Laser cutting technology has improved the efficiency and sustainability of cutting pattern markers on a large cutting scale, as well as the ability to cut intricate internal patterns and shapes on a smaller cutting scale. CO2 laser technology has been adopted by industry and academia professionals at an exponential rate, but standard material testing for cutting and etching different textiles has been minimally documented. There were three primary objectives that comprise the purpose of this research which were to: (a) perform material testing to document and create a user manual that explains the parameters needed to laser cut and etch various textiles; (b) use Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation theory to examine “perceived attributes of an innovation” (2003, pp. 15-16), which are characteristics that help determine the rate of adoption, to survey apparel design students in order to determine the possible diffusion of laser cutting and the user manual in apparel design educational settings; and (c) apply knowledge from material testing to create a fashion ensemble that portrays the capabilities of laser cutting and etching textiles in apparel design. To meet the objectives, the researcher first tested how 127 textiles from the Basic Swatch Kit provided by Textile Fabric Consultants, Inc. responded to the laser cutter to develop a user manual for students, educators and industry professionals. Second, the researcher used Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation theory to analyze laser cutting and etching in the apparel industry. A sample of 26 undergraduate apparel design students participated in a survey in which the results demonstrated that laser cutting is viewed as a means to enhance their design projects and increase efficiency and precision. Third, the researcher created an experimental garment that incorporated both laser cutting and etching. Although the material testing of the various textiles had been completed, the creation of the experimental garment allowed the researcher to reveal a significant finding related to the impact of overall percentage of area that the raster textile design covers on the job time or efficiency in etching. Also, as a result of this research, a formula is proposed that will allow students, educators, and industry professionals the ability to use the information from the user manual and adjust the parametric percentages to that of their machine specifications

SMOOSH : a conceptual approach to adaptable flat-pack shoes for contemporary digital nomads : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand

Copyrighted images have been removed, but may be accessed via the source link in each caption.Adaptable products often present a range of possibilities for changing contexts and circumstances. Their use can also enable a way of being and operating that engenders nomadism. However, shoe studies in this context have never been systematically studied. Immense technical changes over the last thirty years have affected communication and reduced travel costs, while globalization has made remote work not only possible but often desirable. This global transformation has produced “digital nomads”, who use telecommunication technologies to earn a living whilst living, travelling and working remotely. The digital nomad has inspired this practice-led research project exploring the conceptual design of a multipurpose, adaptable shoe, which satisfies the requirements of unpredictable travel and a nomadic lifestyle. This footwear design project is multidisciplinary and situated at the nexus of fashion apparel and product design. Transformable/adaptable fashion and un-build concepts have been utilised as a theoretical framework to explore the shoe’s versatility, critique aesthetic values used on an everyday basis, and locate the shoe in an urban, utilitarian and minimal fashion context. The primary focus is on the versatility and packability of shoes, which are bulky and difficult to transport. Identifying these constraints was a creative catalyst to challenge footwear construction methods and design processes and to explore a collapsible, packable free-upper shoe. The outcome of this research is a conceptual design for flatpack Smoosh shoes, a system that allows for convenient packing. The developed concept is a footwear with a range of sock-like inner components that can be docked into the shell outer-sole, both of which are fully functional pieces that can be used separately to expand versatility and minimize luggage space. They allow hassle-free travel and offer recyclability. Smoosh contributes to footwear design knowledge by providing a novel construction system for travel purposes. It establishes that although rolling is the most common collapsible principle in the travel apparel and footwear markets, principles such as folding, hinging and creasing are far more desirable for travel shoes. The conceptual exploration and final footwear design contribute to the field of adaptable footwear by providing information for further research and development

'The emotional wardrobe': a fashion perspective on the integration of technology and clothing

Since the Industrial Revolution, fashion and technology have been linked through the textile and manufacturing industries, a relationship that has propelled technical innovation and aesthetic and social change. Today a new alliance is emerging through the integration of electronic technology and smart materials on the body. However, it is not fashion designers who are exploiting this emerging area but interaction design, performance art and electronic and computing technologists. 'The Emotional Wardrobe' is a practice-based research project that seeks to address this imbalance by integrating technology with clothing from a fashion perspective. It aims to enhance fashion's expressive and responsive potential by investigating clothing that can both represent and stimulate an emotional response through the interface of technology. Precedents can be found in the work of other practitioners who merge clothing design with responsive material technology to explore social interaction, social commentary and body responsive technology. Influence is also sought from designers who investigate the notion of paradoxical emotions. A survey of emotion science, emotional design, and affective computing is mapped onto a fashion design structure to assess if this fusion can create new 'poetic' paradigms for the interaction of fashion and technology. These models are explored through the production of 'worn' and 'unworn' case studies which are visualised through responsive garment prototypes and multimedia representations. The marriage of fashion and technology is tested through a series of material experiments that aim to create a new aesthetic vocabulary that is responsive and emotional. They integrate traditional fashion fabrics with material technology to enhance the definition of fashion. The study shows that the merger of fashion and technology can offer a more personal and provocative definition of self, one which actively involves the wearer in a mutable aesthetic identity, replacing the fixed physicality of fashion with a constant flux of self-expression and playful psychological experience. The contribution of the research consists of: the integration of technology to alter communication in fashion, a recontextualisation of fashion within a wider arena of emotion and technology, the use of technologies from other disciplines to materialize ideas and broaden the application of those technologies, and the articulation of a fashion design methodology

Case based design of knitwear

In the developed world we are surrounded by man-made objects, but most people give little thought to the complex processes needed for their design. The design of hand knitting is complex because much of the domain knowledge is tacit. The objective of this thesis is to devise a methodology to help designers to work within design constraints, whilst facilitating creativity. A hybrid solution including computer aided design (CAD) and case based reasoning (CBR) is proposed. The CAD system creates designs using domain-specific rules and these designs are employed for initial seeding of the case base and the management of constraints. CBR reuses the designer's previous experience. The key aspects in the CBR system are measuring the similarity of cases and adapting past solutions to the current problem. Similarity is measured by asking the user to rank the importance of features; the ranks are then used to calculate weights for an algorithm which compares the specifications of designs. A novel adaptation operator called rule difference replay (RDR) is created. When the specifications to a new design is presented, the CAD program uses it to construct a design constituting an approximate solution. The most similar design from the case-base is then retrieved and RDR replays the changes previously made to the retrieved design on the new solution. A measure of solution similarity that can validate subjective success scores is created. Specification similarity can be used as a guide whether to invoke CBR, in a hybrid CAD-CBR system. If the newly resulted design is suffciently similar to a previous design, then CBR is invoked; otherwise CAD is used. The application of RDR to knitwear design has demonstrated the flexibility to overcome deficiencies in rules that try to automate creativity, and has the potential to be applied to other domains such as interior design

Reproduction of Historic Costumes Using 3D Apparel CAD

The progress of digital technology has brought about many changes. In the world of fashion, 3D apparel CAD is attracting attention as the most promising product which reduces time and cost in the design process through virtual simulation. This study highlights the potential of its technology and tries to extend the boundaries of its practical use through the simulation of historical dresses. The aim of this study is to identify the desirable factors for digital costume development, to produce accurate reproductions of digital clothing from historical sources and to investigate the implications of developing it for online exhibitory and educational materials. In order to achieve this, this study went through following process. First, the theoretical background of the digital clothing technology, 3D apparel CAD and museum and new media was established through the review of various materials. Second, the desirable concepts for effective digital costume were drawn from the analysis of earlier digital costume projects considering the constraints of costume collections and limitations of the data on museum websites: faithful reproduction, virtual fabrication and Interactive and stereographic display. Third, design development was carried out for the embodiment of the concepts based on two costumes in the Museum of London: (1) preparation which provided foundation data with physical counterparts, (2) digital reproduction which generated digital costumes with simulations and (3) application development where simulations were embodied into a platform. Fourth, evaluation of the outcomes was carried with different groups of participants. The evaluation results indicated that the outcomes functioned as an effective information delivery method and had suitability and applicability for exhibitory and educational use. However, further improvement particularly in the faithfulness of current digital costumes and more consideration for the concerns for virtual and intangible nature were pointed out to be required. Nevertheless digital costumes were reviewed to bring notable benefits in complete or partial replacement of the relics, presentation of invisible features, release of physical constraints on appreciation and provision of integrated and comprehensive information. This study expects that use of digital costumes may assist museums in terms of preservation, documentation and exhibition of costume collections giving new possibility especially to the endangered garments lying in the dark

Blending the Material and Digital World for Hybrid Interfaces

The development of digital technologies in the 21st century is progressing continuously and new device classes such as tablets, smartphones or smartwatches are finding their way into our everyday lives. However, this development also poses problems, as these prevailing touch and gestural interfaces often lack tangibility, take little account of haptic qualities and therefore require full attention from their users. Compared to traditional tools and analog interfaces, the human skills to experience and manipulate material in its natural environment and context remain unexploited. To combine the best of both, a key question is how it is possible to blend the material world and digital world to design and realize novel hybrid interfaces in a meaningful way. Research on Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) investigates the coupling between physical objects and virtual data. In contrast, hybrid interfaces, which specifically aim to digitally enrich analog artifacts of everyday work, have not yet been sufficiently researched and systematically discussed. Therefore, this doctoral thesis rethinks how user interfaces can provide useful digital functionality while maintaining their physical properties and familiar patterns of use in the real world. However, the development of such hybrid interfaces raises overarching research questions about the design: Which kind of physical interfaces are worth exploring? What type of digital enhancement will improve existing interfaces? How can hybrid interfaces retain their physical properties while enabling new digital functions? What are suitable methods to explore different design? And how to support technology-enthusiast users in prototyping? For a systematic investigation, the thesis builds on a design-oriented, exploratory and iterative development process using digital fabrication methods and novel materials. As a main contribution, four specific research projects are presented that apply and discuss different visual and interactive augmentation principles along real-world applications. The applications range from digitally-enhanced paper, interactive cords over visual watch strap extensions to novel prototyping tools for smart garments. While almost all of them integrate visual feedback and haptic input, none of them are built on rigid, rectangular pixel screens or use standard input modalities, as they all aim to reveal new design approaches. The dissertation shows how valuable it can be to rethink familiar, analog applications while thoughtfully extending them digitally. Finally, this thesis’ extensive work of engineering versatile research platforms is accompanied by overarching conceptual work, user evaluations and technical experiments, as well as literature reviews.Die Durchdringung digitaler Technologien im 21. Jahrhundert schreitet stetig voran und neue Geräteklassen wie Tablets, Smartphones oder Smartwatches erobern unseren Alltag. Diese Entwicklung birgt aber auch Probleme, denn die vorherrschenden berührungsempfindlichen Oberflächen berücksichtigen kaum haptische Qualitäten und erfordern daher die volle Aufmerksamkeit ihrer Nutzer:innen. Im Vergleich zu traditionellen Werkzeugen und analogen Schnittstellen bleiben die menschlichen Fähigkeiten ungenutzt, die Umwelt mit allen Sinnen zu begreifen und wahrzunehmen. Um das Beste aus beiden Welten zu vereinen, stellt sich daher die Frage, wie neuartige hybride Schnittstellen sinnvoll gestaltet und realisiert werden können, um die materielle und die digitale Welt zu verschmelzen. In der Forschung zu Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) wird die Verbindung zwischen physischen Objekten und virtuellen Daten untersucht. Noch nicht ausreichend erforscht wurden hingegen hybride Schnittstellen, die speziell darauf abzielen, physische Gegenstände des Alltags digital zu erweitern und anhand geeigneter Designparameter und Entwurfsräume systematisch zu untersuchen. In dieser Dissertation wird daher untersucht, wie Materialität und Digitalität nahtlos ineinander übergehen können. Es soll erforscht werden, wie künftige Benutzungsschnittstellen nützliche digitale Funktionen bereitstellen können, ohne ihre physischen Eigenschaften und vertrauten Nutzungsmuster in der realen Welt zu verlieren. Die Entwicklung solcher hybriden Ansätze wirft jedoch übergreifende Forschungsfragen zum Design auf: Welche Arten von physischen Schnittstellen sind es wert, betrachtet zu werden? Welche Art von digitaler Erweiterung verbessert das Bestehende? Wie können hybride Konzepte ihre physischen Eigenschaften beibehalten und gleichzeitig neue digitale Funktionen ermöglichen? Was sind geeignete Methoden, um verschiedene Designs zu erforschen? Wie kann man Technologiebegeisterte bei der Erstellung von Prototypen unterstützen? Für eine systematische Untersuchung stützt sich die Arbeit auf einen designorientierten, explorativen und iterativen Entwicklungsprozess unter Verwendung digitaler Fabrikationsmethoden und neuartiger Materialien. Im Hauptteil werden vier Forschungsprojekte vorgestellt, die verschiedene visuelle und interaktive Prinzipien entlang realer Anwendungen diskutieren. Die Szenarien reichen von digital angereichertem Papier, interaktiven Kordeln über visuelle Erweiterungen von Uhrarmbändern bis hin zu neuartigen Prototyping-Tools für intelligente Kleidungsstücke. Um neue Designansätze aufzuzeigen, integrieren nahezu alle visuelles Feedback und haptische Eingaben, um Alternativen zu Standard-Eingabemodalitäten auf starren Pixelbildschirmen zu schaffen. Die Dissertation hat gezeigt, wie wertvoll es sein kann, bekannte, analoge Anwendungen zu überdenken und sie dabei gleichzeitig mit Bedacht digital zu erweitern. Dabei umfasst die vorliegende Arbeit sowohl realisierte technische Forschungsplattformen als auch übergreifende konzeptionelle Arbeiten, Nutzerstudien und technische Experimente sowie die Analyse existierender Forschungsarbeiten

Engineered repeating prints: computer-aided design approaches to achieving continuity of repeating print across a garment using digital engineered print method

This Master’s research investigated approaches for engineering of repeating prints using digital textile printing technology and universally available computer-aided design software. Current practices for alignment of designs in yardage printed fabrics at garment seams are wasteful and do not allow for mass customisation. This inefficiency can be overcome with engineered digital printing, a method that allows for an integration of prints with garment patterns to generate Ready-to-Print images. Engineered printing offers more cost-effective use of materials, improved visual appearance, potential for mass customisation and more sustainable manufacturing. Still, technical difficulties exist in the integration of prints with garment patterns. As a result, application for apparel is limited to non-repeating prints and one-off fashion show garments. The integration of repeating prints presents even more difficulties. However, the advances in digital printing and computer-aided design technologies call for an examination of possible approaches for achieving improved continuity of a repeating print across a garment. The research used a three-stage mixed method approach. The first qualitative stage examined current practices for design and printing of repeating prints. By undertaking Applied Thematic Analysis, the diversity of meanings assigned to words describing attributes of repeating prints as a result of historical and current usage were identified and the terminology consolidated. A taxonomy of repeating print attributes was established, with three levels observed: a superordinate level for a surface, a basic for a repeat, and a subordinate for a motif. Quantifiable attributes of repeating prints were assigned to each level. The analysis also suggested three potential directions for engineered repeating prints: Modularity Design, Flexible Tiling and Distortion. The second quantitative stage evaluated suggested design directions in four experimental studies: one for each of the directions and a final study combining all three directions to engineer repeating prints for a graded garment. Practical computer-aided design techniques, based on accessible Adobe software tools, were developed for integration of repeating prints with garment patterns. The techniques were then tested in comparison with mainstream printing practices. In each experiment, repeating print attributes were examined for their impact on the adaptability of repeating prints for engineered printing. All three directions were validated as suitable for engineering of repeating prints. Statistical analyses revealed relationships between repeating print attributes and their impact on the adaptability of repeating prints for the engineered printing method. The final stage analysed the combined results of the previous two stages. Existing computer- aided design solutions were found to offer opportunities regarding their ability to be integrated into current digital production for innovative and sustainable engineered printing. While the suggested techniques require knowledge of more advanced dynamic editing tools, the research highlights the benefits for both fashion and textile designers to utilise such tools in order to fully embrace the potential digital printing technology has to offer. The research also highlights the need for dedicated software solutions for integration of repeating prints with garment patterns. The findings on the impact of repeating print attributes on the adaptability for engineered printing can help in the development of dedicated software

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge