Innovative Jacquard Textile Design Using Digital Technologies

Frankie Ng, Jiu Zhou

• Publisher: Woodhead Publishing
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781845697112
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857098702
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Materials Science
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Jacquard fabrics feature intricately woven designs. Through the use of digital technology, new design concepts, principles and methods for producing jacquard fabrics have been established, facilitating the creation of a range of novel effects. Innovative jacquard textile design using digital technologies is a unique guide to the fundamental design principles, techniques and applications resulting from this important development.Beginning with an introduction to jacquard textile design, the book goes on to give an overview of the development of jacquard fabrics and textile design methods. The principles and methods of digital jacquard textile design are considered, followed by a chapter on structural digital design. Subsequent chapters cover the digital design of colourless and colourful jacquard textiles, and the use of novel simulative effects, shot effects and double-face effects in jacquard textiles. A review of the applications of digitally designed jacquard textiles is then presented before the book concludes with a discussion of current issues and future trends in digital jacquard textile design.With its distinguished authors, Innovative jacquard textile design using digital technologies is an authoritative guide for all those looking to employ this exciting technology in their work, including designers and product developers in the textile, interior and apparel industries, and academics interested in this field. - Provides a unique guide to the fundamental design principles, techniques and applications of jacquard textile design - Covers structural digital design, digital design of colourless and colourful jacquard textiles, simulative effects, shot effects and double-face effects - Includes a comprehensive discussion of current issues and future trends in digital jacquard textile design

1

Introduction to jacquard textile design

Abstract:

This chapter provides a broad outline of the book, including a general background to the subject, presentation of objectives, corresponding methodologies, and the significance and value of the application of digital technologies to bring innovation to the design and production of jacquard fabric.

Key words

digital

jacquard

woven

fabric

layered-combination

1.1 Introduction

Jacquard textile weaving is an ancient craft with a centuries-old history. The design and production of jacquard textiles has always been regarded as tedious and time-consuming endeavours, in which considerable skill and experience are required to produce hand-drawn patterns to form figured woven fabric. Due to the intricacy and unique design of the woven colours and patterns, jacquard textiles and related jacquard products have extended their applications to a wide range of fashion materials, home furnishings and decorations. Today, with the increase in demand for sophisticated and high-quality jacquard textiles, jacquard products made by conventional methods are often of a relatively crude quality and no longer satisfy consumer aspirations. It is imperative that more sophisticated and intricate designs are produced, with added commercial and artistic value. Digitisation technology and the digital design concepts proposed in this book are proving to be effective and powerful tools to achieve this goal.

Theoretically, a basic difference exists in the effect of colour and pattern between jacquard woven fabrics and printed fabrics. For printed fabrics, the printed pattern is a result of superimposing several transparent colour inks. Such superimposition of transparent inks enables a pattern to be reproduced on fabric with over a million shades. Hence, the pattern reproduced is very close to its original. For jacquard fabric as well as for woven fabric, however, pattern is reproduced through a kind of woven figuration, where the colour and pattern effect are dependent on the woven structure of interlacing warp ends and weft picks. Due to the different colour theories and restrictions of woven structures, the pattern of jacquard fabric ought to be designed with reference to the weaving and figuring technical conditions, such as fabric density, materials, the hook number, and the manner of mounting of the jacquard machine. In addition, since the structure design of jacquard fabric is approached in a traditional single-plane design mode, and a one-to-one corresponding principle, i.e. designing weave one by one according to the effect of each colour drawn on a certain pattern, currently the colour expression of jacquard fabric is limited to not more than 100 colours in each pattern design (Zhou et al, 2006). Even by employing CAD systems today, the design principles and processes are still subjected to a plane design mode. Thus, the colour and pattern effects of jacquard fabric remain very much the same in terms of expression. It is still a major challenge and aspiration for jacquard textile designers to be able to design a method that enables the creation of print-like patterns on figured woven fabrics that can be processed and produced conveniently on an industrial scale.

Today, digital image design is one of the popular design tools that merge technology and design, and it represents an important movement in the history of modern design. Capitalising on digitisation technology, digital image design features higher efficiency in design processing and greater compatibility in design applications. The effects produced by digital images can be more picturesque and imaginative than those expressed freehand. Thus, digital images fulfill very well the increased demands for innovation and novelty in the fast-moving commercial design industry. Due to its popularity, substantial investment and resources have been put into digital imaging technology, notably, for example, in the movie-making industry. It was therefore only a matter of time before digital design technology brought innovation to the design and production of jacquard textiles. Over the past ten years, for example, research had been carried out to study computer-aided design via digitisation technology, with the purpose of enhancing the design efficiency of jacquard fabric. However, because of the unresolved constraints of plane design mode, the design of jacquard textiles has remained unchanged and digital image design, via CAD, has been employed only to replace hand-drawn patterns and point papers; digital technology was not directly applied to the creation of jacquard textile designs per se. Since the structural design of the fabric plays the most important role in the creation of jacquard textiles, an attempt has now been made, in this book, to bring innovation to the traditional principles and methods of structural design through the deployment of digitalisation technology.

In addition to structure design, the colour theory of woven fabric is another important factor in the innovation of jacquard fabric. In colour science, colours are a result of colour mixing of the three primary colours. For colour mixing, three theories prevail: the additive colour mixture of light, the subtractive colour mixture of pigment, and optical colour mixture. For jacquard fabric, as well as for woven fabrics constructed with opaque colour threads, the resultant colour effect exhibited on the face of the fabric is subject to optical colour mixing. By tradition, jacquard fabric design is a mechanical reproduction under a single-plane design mode that aims to imitate the colour and pattern effects of hand paintings. The potential aesthetic innovation of colour and figuration of the woven structure of the fabric have largely been overlooked and underexplored. Having said that, the potential artistic and commercial value of innovative design and production of jacquard textiles remains a fertile field of research.

1.2 The use of digital technologies in jacquard textile design

Digital textile design is one of the most important research directions in advanced textile technology and science. Development of innovative textile products is of both artistic and commercial value. At present, research in digital printed textiles attracts global interest and has yielded fruitful results in commercial applications. By contrast, research in digital jacquard textile is still in its developing stage, due partly to the complication of the digitisation processing for a woven structure. Since jacquard fabric is interwoven with warp and weft threads, the colour and pattern effect of jacquard fabric can only be realised through its woven structure. Innovation in fabric structure is thus crucial to future design innovation of jacquard fabric. To this end, the research reported in this book aimed to invent new design concepts, principles and related design methods in jacquard textile design and production via the deployment of digitisation technology. The specific objectives of the application of digital technologies for innovating jacquard fabric are listed below.

1. To re-invent the concept, methods and procedures of jacquard textile design using digitisation technology to replace the traditional single-plane design mode.

2. To explore and expand the creative dimension of woven textile structures and their colour expression based on digital design principles and methods.

3. To investigate optimal structural design methods in accordance with the layered-combination design mode.

4. To construct a theoretical framework for design creation of digital jacquard fabric, in which a series of weave-databases are established with which design and production of digital jacquard fabric, under varied processing conditions and fabric technical parameters, are made possible.

5. To create sample jacquards to illustrate and explain the simulative and innovative effects of digital jacquard textile design.

The design concept of digital jacquard was originally borrowed from the ‘layered–combination’ design method of digital images. In theory, a colour digital image is displayed in the form of the colour mixture effect of primary colours, each with its individual colour path/channel. Since a digital image can be separated into several colourless layers through colour separation, attempts have been made in this book to translate the design concept and principle of the digital image into the digitisation processing of jacquard fabric design. The result is an innovative design method, called the ‘layered-combination’ design mode, which is proposed in this book and which enables innovative jacquard textile design and production. In general, the layered-combination design mode consists of two parts: a colourless mode and a colourful mode. The design of colourless digital jacquard is based on the grey-scale mode of digital colour and single-layer woven structures. By using the layered-combination design method, several colourless single-layer structures can be combined to form a compound structure that enables the production of true-colour effect jacquard fabric with millions of colour shades. By employing an innovative design method of full-colour compound structures, invented especially for the layered-combination mode, the jacquard fabrics created are capable of expressing picturesque and print-like effects with smoother colour gradation. Several designed images have been specially created for this book to illustrate the thrust of the proposed new design concepts, both in the layered-combination design mode for digital jacquard fabric design and the related full-colour structure design method. Two directions were proposed for design creation: simulative effect and innovative effect. The former enables the simulation of both black-and-white and colourful effects, whilst the latter enables the creation of various original effects including a figured shot-effect and a figured double-faced effect.

Figure 1.1 presents a flow-chart of the organisation of research for this project. Research was organised in five stages: (i) the history and background of jacquard fabric; (ii) design principles and methods of digital jacquard; (iii) design issues and constraints; (iv) novel simulative and innovative effect fabric development; and (v) conclusions.

1.1 Key steps in research into innovative jacquard textile design.

In the initial stage, a literature review of the history and background of jacquard fabric was conducted. Comparisons of design concepts, principles and methods between traditional jacquard fabric and digital jacquard fabric were made. The second and third stages were crucial, and involved detailed theoretical and practical research using digital technologies, during which theoretical design and practical realisation of new jacquard structures was undertaken. In these stages, based on the principles of digital image design and digital colour theory, the ‘layered-combination design mode’ was theorised and proposed for digital jacquard fabric creation. The design mode was further evaluated from theory to practice. Practical research was divided into colourless and colourful streams in which key design issues and constraints, and related optimal solutions, were introduced. ‘Colourless’ and ‘colourful’ referred not only to the subsequent colour effect of the fabrics, but also to the design mode by which digital jacquard was designed and created. The fourth stage of study targeted the development of novel effect specimens that testify to the validity of the proposed concept, principles and methods of the layered-combination design mode. The design specimens created in this stage illustrated both the simulative and innovative effects produced under lower warp density (see Appendix 2, section A2.1) as well as higher warp density (see Appendix 2, section A2.2) (Zhou, 2001). In the final stage, conclusions were drawn, limitations identified and further work in this area recommended.

This book’s main contribution is not only the proposed design concepts, principles and methods that are particularly suitable for the digitisation processing of the sophisticated structural design of jacquard textiles, but also the provision of detailed design illustrations and technical parameters for digital jacquard, created for ease of reprodu...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Author contact details
• Woodhead Publishing Series in Textiles
• Key terms and definitions
• Foreword
• Chapter 1: Introduction to jacquard textile design
• Chapter 2: The development of jacquard fabrics and textile design methods
• Chapter 3: Principles and methods of digital jacquard textile design
• Chapter 4: Structural digital design of jacquard textiles
• Chapter 5: Colourless and colourful digital design of jacquard textiles
• Chapter 6: Digital design of novel simulative effects in jacquard textiles
• Chapter 7: Digital design of shot-effect and double-face effect jacquard textiles
• Chapter 8: Applications of digitally designed jacquard textiles
• Chapter 9: Current issues and future trends in digital jacquard textile design
• Appendices
• Index