The Textile Design Wordbook

If you are a newbie or an experienced designer in the textile industry, I am sure you have run into a technical term that sounded like a foreign language.

I get you. I've been there. 

To make your life easier, I prepared this glossary to guide you and hopefully help you communicate with the fabric manufacturer (and with me). 😀

Rapport

The design tile that once is repeated along the fabric, it creates a seamless effect - without borders or margins. 

Colorway 

The range of combinations of colours that one design can have.

Source File

The file where the artwork was originally created. It comes in EPS and PDF for vector files and PSD for Photoshop files. With the source file, you can easily adjust colours, change size, apply your brand label to the print, and more.

Vector file

The graphic file that is constructed using mathematical formulas, so it stores its lines, shapes and colours. A vector file allows you to resize the artwork with no limits. Vector file formats: EPS, AI, PDF, among others.

Raster image

The graphic that uses many coloured pixels or individual building blocks to form a complete image. Raster image formats: JPG, PNG, TIFF, among others.

Colour Mode

How the components of a colour are combined based on the number of colour channels in the colour model. You must ask your fabric manufacturer which colour mode they require for printing. Colour mode formats: RGB, CMYK, among others.

DPI

DPI stands for Dots Per Inch. It refers to how many dots of ink are dropped down when printing a file. Most fabric manufacturers require 300dpi, but some of them print on 150dpi, or 200dpi...

Placement Print

A print that is applied to a specific place of a garment. It's different to a repeat print, which prints continuous tiling of artwork. It is most commonly applied to the fabric after it has been cut and/or made into a garment; and not directly onto a length of uncut fabric.

Non-directional print

The elements of a print are placed in different positions across the fabric, in a way that it appears to have no direction at all. Non-directional prints are great to reduce fabric wastage, as your garment can be cut across the fabric in any direction.

Digital Printing

The printing process that uses inkjet technology to print colourants onto fabrics. It is very popular in the fashion industry and it can print highly detailed artworks, as well as photographic prints.

Sublimation printing

The process of printing onto a special paper, and then transferring that image onto fabric. The ink is heated until it disintegrates into the fabric. The result is a permanent, full-colour image that won’t peel or wash away from the substrate. 

Flatbed Printing

The printing process where individual screens are made for each colour and design motif. Flat screens print a finite area and not a continuous pattern.

Rotary Printing

The printing process where each colour is engraved onto large cylinders that then roll the colour across the fabric. As the cylinder rotates, the squeegee device pushes print paste through the design areas of the screen onto the fabric.

Direct Printing

Direct printing means printing directly on the surface of fabrics with different types of dyes and pigments

Mockup

A scaled or full-size model of a design. It is used for demonstrating how the artwork will look in the end product.