Digital Fabric Printing « Ponoko

The Aureate Timorous Beasties February 3

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Pattern maximalism hits the substrates from the Timorous Beasties studio.Â For nearly twenty years Alistair McAuley and Paul Simmons have been designing subversive graphics in the guise of tradition for off the shelf fabrics and wallpapers as well as bespoke commissions and collaborative projects. The latest news on these guys? Just last week at the studio the 250th birthday of Scottish poet Robert Burns (who provided the name of the studio in his poem ‘To a Mouse’) was “celebrated with whisky, haggis, poetry and song.”

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T.B. had another party last fall with partners Nobody & Co for the launch of their Scroll Table. The powder coated steel table has a handle which rotates the ‘tablecloth’ underneath the glass. There’s a version with patterns printed by hand and another with digitally printed fabrics such as the gradated ‘Russian Damask’ featured above.
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Posted in Design, Digital Fabric Printing, Digital Fabrication, Fashion + Textiles, Furniture + Lighting, Kristen Turner by Kristen Turner | Comments are off for this post

Centerview: Haile McCollum of Fontaine Maury December 6

I’ve always loved paper products and frequently send letters and cards to friends and family, but the Holidays are really the raison d’être of stationery. So for the month of December, I’ll be focusing on all the things Ponoko loves: mass customization, consumer creation and laser-cutting as they relate to paper.
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One stationery company that I’ve personally had the good fortune to freelance for on occasion is Fontaine Maury. Since the spring of 2003, Haile McCollum has been designing modern, personalized graphics for everything from notepads and rubber stamps to melamine plates and canvas wall decor under the brand Fontaine Maury.

The company is soon moving into wallpaper and fabric. Patterns can be customized with silhouettes of the client’s choice. One such silhouette damask featuring Haile’s own profile along with her family is featured in the January issue of Country Living.

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With her growing business and a new baby, Haile has been pretty busy. So I thought, what better time for an interview! Below, Haile talks about her love of customization, digital fabric printing, and demonstrates how to correct someone’s spelling with tact.

Me: First of all, congratulations on the baby! Give us the details: name, weight, size, hair color!

HM: William Banks McCollum, little brother of Parker. 8 pounds 3 ounces, September 10, 2007! 15 months old and a QT pie. Hair… maybe red!

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Me: When and why did you decide to start a stationary company?

HM: First of all, its Stationery- ery. -ary is when you are standing still and trust me, Fontaine Maury is not standing still. So my big picture is not stationery, but personalized. I moved back to the South after a just turned 30/snowboarding stint in Jackson, Wyoming. Got to our little town, Thomasville, and needed something to DO, not being married or having kids yet, I had lots of free time and not so many opportunities that I could really dig into. I almost bought a sewing machine to do digital embroidery. I love the idea that technology would allow me to sew what I can draw. But the machine was $16,000.Â I already had a printer and a computer. So I started a personalized stationery company. I also had some stationery experience and only one 4-H sewing class under my belt, and that was in 1979.

Me: How has living in the South influenced your work and company?

HM: I think that living here I am somewhat out of the inner, super fickle design loop. Which is good in a way. I might be over stimulated if I lived in Brooklyn. Dunno.

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above: live oaks line the streets of Thomasville
Me: You attended school in the south as well?

HM: Yes, Vanderbilt University, BS in Human Development (one part organizational psychology, one part mojo, one part managing people in small groups). Savannah College of Art and Design, MFA Graphic Design- I actually wrote my thesis on the correlation between the industrial revolution and the technological revolution and how once artists and craftsmen eventually master the machine born from the revolution, amazing things happen. Think the arts and crafts movement as a reaction to the industrial revolution. But until the artists get a hold of the machines, and the “hand done” (does not have to be literally hand done) element into the work produced, the work is less than stellar. Example- digital fabric printing. Until artists grasp what the printers do we’ll see some pretty shabby designs produced by the developers of the technology. Not artists, engineers and the like. Once the technology is more widely available and artists (creative types) grasp what can be done, it will be amazing! It’s the missing link.
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Me: Tell us your thoughts on customization. Why did you decide to offer this service? In what ways does offering custom products build your relationship with clients/buyers?

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Posted in Digital Fabric Printing, Digital Fabrication, Interviews, Thoughts + Opinions, Kristen Turner, Mass Customization by Kristen Turner | Comments are off for this post

Custom Fabric Printing from Spoonflower November 28

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Spoonflower is a web-based digital textile printing service run out of an old sock mill in downtown Mebane, North Carolina. Indigo has mentioned them previously in relation to the very apt Wordle.

At the moment the site is in Beta and as such does not offer any facility as an online marketplace or shared repository, but they will do in the next phase. This from their FAQs:

“When we come out of beta, … you will be able to choose to make your designs available for purchase by others. This feature — which will make Spoonflower into a marketplace for independent fabric designers — will probably take some time to evolve and grow in complexity. But displaying your designs, as well as selling them, will ALWAYS be under your control.”

Looks like another good opportunity for makers, keep up with their progress on their blog, where the Spoonflower folk also post pictures of their beta users’ creations.
via Make

Posted in Digital Fabric Printing, Digital Fabrication, Roy Shearer, Tools + Apps by Roy | Comments are off for this post

Reduced Carbon Footprint Christmas November 10

We are all looking for ways to reduce our carbon footprint, what with hybrid cars, recycled toilet paper and e-mailed then laser sintered souvenirs to friends back home when on international holidays. With Christmas fast approaching, let’s not send gifts that have been designed in America, manufactured in China with materials from Australia, shipped back to New Zealand and then sent sent to Europe? Let’s reduce the global traffic and use local manufacturers to produce a ‘local’ product.

As previously mentioned on the Ponoko Blog Spanish designer Hector Serrano has developed the Reduced Carbon Footprint Souvenirs so you can email your friends back home personalized souvenirs which they then materialize using a 3D Printer (stereolithography rapid prototyping). No transport or standard production methods are required so the object carbon footprint is reduced to the minimum.

The project questions the way objects are manufactured and new technologies are applied to propose alternatives ways of reducing their impact on the environment. The project becomes specially relevant as the 3D printers are getting smaller and more affordable.

For more from Hector check out his site, or the great interview on the Core77 Podcast.

For more ideas on how you can reduce the carbon footprint of your xmas presents, check out The Ponoko Showroom, ZapFab, Shapeways, Fabjectory, Thinglab etc. etc. etc.

Or check out the Treehugger Xmas Carbon Footprint Post if you need more info..

Posted in 3D Printing, Design, Digital Fabric Printing, Digital Fabrication, Duann Scott, Functional Art + Objects, Mass Customization by Duann | Comments are off for this post

Memjet – Really really really fast printer November 3

At the design office where I work you can almost guarantee that during the course of the day, two or three people at a time will be waiting for the printer to slowly churn out their print job. Sure it is a way to socialize, catch up on gossip and unite us all against the common enemy in the printer.

Silverbrook Research, based in Sydney Australia, may have developed THE print technology to end the print bottle neck, and get our designers back where they belong, the coffee machine. The Memjet printer technology (when released) will be 10 times faster than other technologies at the same price point.

The Memjet technology, which has been in development for more than 10 years, is backed by more than 1,400 U.S. patents; about 2,000 more are pending. The new technology prints full color images at 60 pages per minute (ppm), many times the inkjet industry standard. The technology, which will be a fraction of the price of high-speed color laser devices, will soon be available for OEMs targeting the home/office, photo-kiosk and label markets. A business-class, 60 ppm Memjet-based printer is expected to retail for under $300. The ink pricing is expected to lead the market and help eliminate the price penalty for printing color.

The Memjet technology is comprised of three highly integrated components: page-wide printheads, driver chips and ink.

The printhead consists of a continuous row of 1mm x 20mm silicon print chips connected end-to-end. Each chip contains 6,400 nozzles, equaling 32,000 nozzles in total for a 100mm printhead and 70,400 nozzles for a typical lettersize/A4 printhead. The nozzle density is 17 times higher than the nozzle density the market leaders offer in their leading printhead designs, which contributes to the cost effectiveness of the new technology.

The ultra-compact, continuous color printhead stretches from one edge of the page to the other. Unlike traditional scanning inkjet printheads, the Memjet printhead does not move, reducing vibration, noise and mechanical complexity, while dramatically increasing performance.

The technology can print full-color, photo-quality images (4×6 or A6) at 30 ppm, full-color and black-and-white business communication (8.5×11 or A4) at 60 ppm, and draft mode at 90 ppm. In the label, tag and ticket market, this translates into 6 inches per second for full 1600×1600 color printing and 12 inches per second for 1600×800 color printing. This compares to industry standards of about 1 to 2 ppm for 4×6 photos, 10 to 15 ppm for cost-effective Ã¬businessÃ® color, and 30 ppm for draft mode. The technology also replaces similar-speed, 200 dpi label-printing technologies with a high-resolution color alternative.

Posted in Digital Fabric Printing, Duann Scott, Hardware, Inventions, Technology by Duann | Comments are off for this post

In conversation with the Centre for Advanced Textiles (Part 2) September 17

“We want to do things you could never do with mass production,” Andy McDonald tells me as we sit in the compact premises of the Centre for Advanced Textiles. From here, just five staff are delivering an on-demand textile printing service, retailing a range of classic designs on fabric, and exploring the boundaries of modern fabrication through several collaborative research projects.

One of the latter that Andy enthuses about is a project involving a “code-generated kimono”. For this Andy wrote a script that allows the user to arrange a pattern on a virtual diagram of a kimono, chossing exactly where to place elements of the design. The script then takes these instructions and translates them into patterns for printing on CAT’s digital printers, automatically calculating where seamlines should fall and making the patterm continue across them continuously (see bottom image).

More recently, CAT is working with local design heroes Timorous Beasties, a small enterprise specialising in unique wallcoverings and surfaces for home furnishing. JR cites the Beasties as just the size of business that CAT would like to target and who can benefit the most from digital on-demand processes. The business employs 12 people, screenprinting all their own surfaces by hand in batches, probably the most recognisable design being their very modern Glaswegian take on the 18th century ‘toile‘ style. In their forthcoming collaboration, CAT are exploring new ways for customers to commission designs, using computerised interfaces to give the customer an experience which can then be captured uniquely in the product they take home. It is this factor of ‘experience’ that CAT see as the crucial value in digital manufacturing.

“Timorous Beasties’ strength is in the aesthetic. We can take that digital, building interactions between the customer and, say, the ‘toile’ scene.” In facilitating the customer in creating their own unique pattern, say as a character in their own pastoral scene, JR and Andy hope to create high value products that the customer has an experiencial, traceable link with and therefore will never want to dispose of.

The results of one experiment in customisation hang in CAT’s offices

For Andy however, his work isn’t about customisation:

“Mass customisation has sidetracked the debate for 10 yrs or so – multi-production builds in flexibility from the core.”

Similarly to Ponoko, Andy’s vision is of completely decentralised manufacturing, fully exploiting the reduction in design, storage and transport overheads that the digital age allows. He sees the future for CAT as the first of many platforms for small businesses, that would then be able to offer their own web based fabrication experiences to customers. Accordingly, fabrication would become similarly localised and distributed, a system he tentatively calls ‘cloud manufacture’.

It’s an exciting discussion that brings us round to the rather more traditional example of tartan weavers – local purveyors of technical skills for whose customers negotitation and customisation were easy. And there are few things longer lasting and more globally pervasive than a good kilt!

Posted in Digital Fabric Printing, Digital Fabrication, Fashion + Textiles, Roy Shearer by Roy | Comments are off for this post

In conversation with the Centre for Advanced Textiles (Part 1) September 13

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of a very extensive discussion with the guys at The Centre for Advanced Textiles (CAT) in this very city of Glasgow. CAT is a combined commercial/academic organisation housed within one of the Glasgow School of Art’s design school buildings. It currently provides digital textile printing services to small and medium sized enterprises, whilst also quietly plotting a revolution in digital fabrication! I was speaking with researcher and interactions man, Andy McDonald, and surface designer JR.

The centre currently has 2 large inkjet textile printers, as well as the use of the small laser cutter down in the product design workshop. We talked about digital processes for textiles in general, the pair’s various projects in using digital processes for customisation, and the state of on-demand manufacturing.

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Posted in Digital Fabric Printing, Digital Fabrication, Fashion + Textiles, Roy Shearer by Roy | Comments are off for this post

Bon Bon Kakku – No Thank You August 26

Awhile back, I wrote about digital fabric printing. The great thing about it being that you don’t have to engrave or burn screens for each color, and that means unlimited color, unlimited design, no minimum order. And no minimum order is essential to customization.

Bon Bon Kakku lets anyone design their own fabric. Most people associate fabric with repeated patterns, but you can get anything printed on fabric. Once you’ve submitted a design, it goes onto the website for public voting. Top rated fabrics are offered for sale through the web shop.

Sounds pretty great – until you realize that you don’t receive a percentage of the sales from your fabrics. This makes the entire company an automatic write off for me. Not only am I not given any incentive to submit my designs, but I wouldn’t want to purchase anyone elses knowing that they weren’t getting anything out of it.
That said, I thought I would still share some of my favorite designs from the shop. And if any of you wish you could have your own fabrics printed without giving up your work for free, check in next week for my article on a great little company from the Carolinas.

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Posted in Design, Digital Fabric Printing, Fashion + Textiles, Kristen Turner by Kristen Turner | Comments are off for this post

Flip Book July 30

Create your own old school analogue Flip Book animation by uploading a video to FlipClips.com.

FlipClips are individually crafted flipbooks, created using your own digital video. FlipClips are available in three styles, and are made using only the best materials around. Acid and lignin-free, heavy bond digital paper makes your video spring to life. Industrial-strength binding ensures your book will feel like a quality paperback, made just for you. Our design team can create customized covers to match a special occasion. Just ask, we’d love to work with you!

Available as Flip Books, Greeting Cards or Story Books, you can custom make your old school analogue animation..

Would be interesting to see what could be done by sending in some hyper processed animation, or maybe even your reinterpretation of the Radiohead video clip

Mass customization in the palm of your hand, Flip It

Posted in Digital Fabric Printing, Duann Scott, Mass Customization by Duann | Comments are off for this post

Machinate: blurb = Real books. Made by you. June 16

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Here at Ponoko it’s all about making it real. Blurb is to publishing what Ponoko is to laser cutting. This incredible site/store/service let’s you upload any print based content you want and have it printed into a professional, quality book. So incredible, that it won this year’s 2008 Webby Award for Best Service Website.

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My first experience with Blurb came through my professor in art school. Our small graduating class of around thirty created a catalog for our senior show. Each student got a full spread and there were photos in the back. We ordered eighty 7×7 inch paperbacks at $12.95 and sold them at the show’s reception for $20. We sold out in just over an hour.

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While we went with the cheapest option, there are four different book formats and both come in either softcover or hardcover. Just last month, Blurb announced ImageWrap – the ability to print a full-color, matte hardcover. Or choose the original black linen with dust jacket.

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To start designing your own book you download their software called Blurb Booksmart. This super simple interface gives you a huge selection of different cover/jacket designs and interior templates to work with or you can go blank. There’s an extensive list of themes and patterned backgrounds available, all of your essential fonts, a bank of icons and ornaments, and the RGB gamut of color.

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Photos can be uploaded from your desktop or from a list of social networking photo spaces like Flickr, Picasa and most recently Facebook. Blurb also allows collaboration on book creation with GroupBook. With GroupBook you can designate your friends and family as contributors and they can upload their photos into your book!
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And don’t forget, your creation deserves attention. So Blurb let’s you share it in the bookstore. That’s book STORE. Blurb prints your book on-demand for buyers for a flat fee of five bucks (plus the base price of making the book) and you set the retail. Buyers can preview the first 15 pages of the book with a Flash-based preview that let’s you flip through the pages with your mouse.
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One of my favorite things about Blurb is there sincere effort to be an honest service. There are no gimmicks, hidden costs or secrets to what’s going on. There’s a healthy community of forums, a page full of tutorials, profiles of the Blurb team, and of course, a blog.

Posted in Digital Fabric Printing, Digital Fabrication, Kristen Turner, Mass Customization, Tools + Apps by Kristen Turner | Comments are off for this post

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The Aureate Timorous Beasties February 3

Related posts:

Centerview: Haile McCollum of Fontaine Maury December 6

Related posts:

Custom Fabric Printing from Spoonflower November 28

Related posts:

Reduced Carbon Footprint Christmas November 10

Related posts:

Memjet – Really really really fast printer November 3

Related posts:

In conversation with the Centre for Advanced Textiles (Part 2) September 17

Related posts:

In conversation with the Centre for Advanced Textiles (Part 1) September 13

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Bon Bon Kakku – No Thank You August 26

Related posts:

Flip Book July 30

Related posts:

Machinate: blurb = Real books. Made by you. June 16

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