Designtex launched Ribbon, a new polyurethane-coated textile pattern created in partnership with British artist Sophie Smallhorn late last year. Ribbon is a multicolor, large-scale linear pattern with overlapping elements of color and transparency that mimic the fluidity of ribbons in motion. The pattern is available in a simplified DS and the customizable Flat Ribbon versions.
Sara Balderi, executive director of design at Designtex, had first tried to collaborate with Smallhorn when developing Designtex 5x5, A Crypton Collection. While Smallhorn wasn’t available for that project, the two stayed in touch, and six years later, the two were able to work together. “We really wanted her to explore what she does, but in the medium of textile design,” Balderi recalled.
Creating a Concept
Digital printing was “new territory” for Smallhorn. “I use color in quite an analog way,” she said. “I like to screen print and use actual paint.” One reason for this is that she prefers working within established boundaries like processes or design briefs. For example, knowing that a certain set of colors or shapes will not be used in a project or even the limitations of scale can provide guidance for what the final product should look like. With digital printing, however, “it feels the possibilities are just endless,” she said. As such “it was actually quite hard to find my way into it.”
Still, Smallhorn knew what she wanted to create for the project. “I wanted to make something, obviously, that had a lot of color in it, but [also] something very clean and very graphic and very bold.” For inspiration, she went to the Victoria & Albert museum in London to look over the various textiles on display. What ultimately caught her eye, however, was a small snuff box with an enamel design of a “twisting colored ribbon.” With that image in mind, she started to translate it into a “contemporary, clean graphic design” with a multicolor linear motif that looks like ribbons in motion.
Once the design was in place, Smallhorn and Balderi “played” with its scale and how they could apply it to objects. The pattern was expanded to five colorways, each selected to evoke a different mood. “This was the point at which it was important for me to understand, with feedback from Sara, what customers would want and [how they would use the textile for] different applications,” Smallhorn said.
Implementation
Balderi provided Smallhorn with “parameters” around the colorways, and the partners selected polycarbonate polyurethane as the base material to let it fit a range of uses. “Both from a performance and sustainability standpoint, it's kind of the top tier,” Balderi said of the material. “This is something that's easily cleanable, easily wipeable [and] very durable.”
The pattern looks different when applied to different pieces of furniture. “You're getting a different experience because of how the pattern falls and hits on any one of those sections,” Balderi said, describing the effect on chairs and benches. “It's the same pattern, yet you're getting a different experience within each individual seat.”
To help designers determine the best usage for the textile, Designtex added DS Ribbon and Flat Ribbon to their Digital Studio online tool. These patterns will be available to use across upholstery, multiuse and wallcovering substrates. Users can use the tool to choose their pattern, play with color and scale, visualize their design and order a sample.
“I really love the scale of it,” Smallhorn said. “The scale is sort of brave and bold. And I love the fact [that] it can be quite abstracted on a piece and in a wider sense, you can really read what it is. I'm really pleased with how it turned out.”