I designed some webbing patterns for some dog leashes and collars. When our manufacturers made samples, they looked like absolute crap. I’ve been trying to understand where the problems lie, but haven’t received any info other than, “the colors were too close together, they will look the same”, but the patterns looked strange too.
Do any of you do this regularly? Are there any industry terms (picks per cm, etc) that I can use to facilitate international understanding?
I sent illustrator drawings, but am now thinking I should chart/graph out the colors…
if the samples are so bad that you cannot define the webbing stitch pattern using illustrator you may need to chart out the colors and placement.
For example: on thong sandals (woven flip flops) an average resolution is around 15 to 20 stitches per 1/2" wide web–so on a 1" wide there would be approximately 30 to 40…but that depends on the vendor. It can go higher, it can go lower. Problem is once higher it looks like crap and blends together (your vendors words are correct) and if you need an even higher resolution you need to go to a Jaquard stitched webbing, (which gives a fabulous resoultion but a poorly finished back side. Its the typical logoed pull tab on a shoe–Paiho Taiwan does these all day in ways you could never dream of…) that you then can get sewn onto inexpensive webbing.
it does depend on how the colors go together side by side, but it depends more on how low your resolution (weaves per width) can go without compromising the design intent.
I am assuming that you are doing some kind of pet collar/leash. Unless its never been done before, I’d recommend going out and buying a piar of woven flip flops, (Reef or Teva for example) that has a close approximation of what your intent is and send it to your vendor along with a clear drawing…
good luck with it, webbing design is so simple its a beeatch, kind of like painting the Sistine chapel with three colors in dot matrix.
Thanks for the advice. During my last Asia trip, I visited our webbing factory and developed a grid with the technical designer there that can directly translate into his software, and therefore directly into the looms. If anyone in the future needs help with this, PM me and I’ll send over my grid. It is a serious pain in the ass to color each rectangle in Illustrator, but is worth it when you compare the frustration of getting wrong sample after wrong sample.