Product Development Process After the Design Workshop

By Lidwina Dox

In Fall 2006, after a long flight I arrived in Bangkok and headed directly to our office (Tel-Dan Ltd.) in Samutprakarn district. Everyone there was eager to see the artworks I brought from Ethiopia. When we were going through them it was clear that everyone loved it. But a big question mark came immediately into our mind, "How to translate many hand-drawn artworks into textile design and products? And which artworks to start with"? We all knew that those artworks were no common textile designs in any sense. The translation work was going to be a massive challenge.

Still in the same Fall, Ami Zarchi (Tel-Dan's owner and managing director) asked me to join a business trip to the US to see some of his costumers. The trip was a good opportunity to find out how the whole concept of this work and the aesthetics would be appreciated by the big buyers. So off we went. We started in New York City, continued to Texas …and finally ended up in San Francisco. It turned out that the feedback from most buyers was highly positive. It was immediately clear which designs were best appreciated. With this information in hand, we returned to Bangkok with much optimism and delight to start working on the artworks.

Back in the office, our highly talented Thai designer, Bank, and I started to translate the selected artworks with some computer softwares. For us it was clear that our goal was to maintain the "deep" look of the hand-drawn, and not to make them look flat like some sort of typical computer textile designs. The "deepness" of the artworks makes a different aesthetics, which is their biggest strength. At the same time, we were aware that we had limited technical resources to translate the artworks. For this we had to do an awful lot of experiments in order to achieve the result we wanted. Step by step we improved our skills, and today we are confident that we can translate all the hand-drawn artworks onto fabrics and make them look artistic.

In the same time when we started to translate the artworks, we also began to work with a gifted Thai pattern maker named Eks. We developed 3D objects out of the artworks, such as stuffed animals, kids bags and different dolls. The challenge was as big. There are many things that have to be taken into account: the shapes surely have to match the textile design, the sizes have to be unconventional, etc., which require a thinking process on it own. Today, these products have turned out nice. In the whole process of product development, a couple of Tel-Dan's designers and a staff member specialized in inkjet textile printing also contributed to the success.

Now after a year of experimentation, we feel more confident and ready to take off. - And this feels good!