Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirt Fabric Design



Sketch 1

Near the end of the of the year we thought we would close things out with a glimpse of one of the new Hawaiian print fabrics we have been working on for the last 4 months.

Of course there are those of you that are already asking the big question "what takes you so long to knock out a design?" So for those people I will also guide you through some of the basic steps in doing so.

The first step in this process is taking my thoughts on a new fabric design and conveying those mental thoughts to the artist.

This particular design started out with a few leaf and flower pictures from Google images that I simply laid out on a table so I could get a feel for the sizing and repeat for the design.

Once I have a feel for the general repeat I take some rough measurements of things such as flower size, leaf width etc. I will then send my masterpiece to our artist via email. Once she recovers she will call me back and pick my brain over the phone, eventually we reach a point where she feels comfortable enough to start roughing out the first draft of this particular design. Shown in Sketch 1 is the first draft sketch with hibiscus flower and banana leaf.



Sketch 2
 

After we received the first sketch we put it into triage and discuss the designs good and bad points and note any changes we would like to see. In this particular rendition we decided that the banana leaf was to dominant as well as to wide.

 

So the decision was made to scrap one of the banana leafs and replace it with a fern leaf, which is depicted in sketch 2.

 

At this point I should mention that one of the specs for this design was that it not only had to work for Hawaiian shirts for men and women, but also muumuus and dresses.

 

One item that troubled us on this design was that the overall design looked a little “heavy”, meaning the overall design was just to dominant and out of balance with the background color. The weight of a design can make or beak things so its imperative that this part is done correctly.

 

This particular design was actually passed between quite a few artists in Hawaii as well as Japan to discuss the weighting of the leaves as well how to improve the overall look and feel of the design. In my professional opinion the finalized design is now perfectly weighted and well balanced.

 

If you look over at sketch 2 you will see that the tip of the fern leaf is pretty tight against the tip of the banana leaf and the leaf for the hibiscus flower overlaps the banana leaf.
 

Colorized sketch

Mock coloring will also uncover an entirely new set of problems. This design is called an “all over” design and is suitable for not just Hawaiian shirts, but also dresses. What you want to avoid is having any one portion of the design jumping out at you.

At first glance you want the eye to see the entire design and not jump to a specific part, which is this situation we felt we had created just that. If you look at the colorized sketch you will see a few portions of the banana leaf that stood out too much against the rest of the leaf design.

Rather than trying to describe this over the phone it's way easier to send the artist a marked up picture.

In this particular round of changes we asked the artist to break up the broader parts of some leaves with some simple strokes of a brush. The end result was a night and day difference.

Now take a look at the coloring mockup below and you will see that not only has the space between the foliage been increased, but also the width of the banana leafs has now been decreased. The overall positions of the flower clusters were also tweaked so they were in balance with the overall repeat.



Coloring mockup

Next is the all-important task of coloring the design. During the early stages of the design the artist will slap on some random colors, mainly so we can have a little better perspective on what the end design will look like.

 

Ultimately the color choices are left up to me, so during the often lengthy in-between time that it takes to make sketch changes, I can be found digging through color charts and pairing up colors that I feel will be well received by our in-store and on-line customers.


I will normally lay out 50 color codes on a table, and through a process of elimination, eventually arrive at five colors (for each colorway) that I feel go together the best.

  

I would eventually settle on a series of colors, add them in print order next to the color mockup, take a picture of it and then send it to the artist. Yes it’s a bit primitive sounding, but that’s how it works and I am probably being more technical than most artists.

New blue

The end result of all of this work is a new design in blue (shown on the left), which has a perfect color balance. Men as well as women should embrace the colors and how well they work with this particular design.

 

The new purple shown below is another design that we are very excited about.

 

Currently there is not a lot of purple Hawaiian fabric on the market and the designs you can buy are really sucky and cheap looking. 

While we have not yet received the strikeoffs, which is essentially a very short run of approximately 3 yards or each color, we anticipate some really stellar looking fabric. Especially the purple Hawaiian fabric.

New purple

Strikeoffs should be available for our final approval late February 2013 and once we approve them there will be a few weeks of printing time, and maybe another 3 weeks at sea before the rolls of fabric reaches our cutting shop in San Diego.

Which is where we make our Wave Shoppe labeled dresses and Hawaiian shirts sold on www.waveshoppe.com

Your comments and opinions matter, what do you think overall of these designs? Would you buy a shirt or dress in this design?

Hawaiian Shirts, from Conception to the Consumer

Hawaiian shirts, from conception to the consumer.

Welcome to the first in a series of posts outlining how Hawaiian shirts are made.

While the consumer only sees the completed shirt, there are a lot of processes that must first occur. So lets jump right in with coming up with a design and a brief overview of that process. I am one of those people that map out everything in my head and rarely put anything on paper myself and I place a lot of emphasis on how our customers will perceive the design on the fabric.

Remember that you have maintain your “Aloha identity” while at the same time satisfying your customers needs.

Once I have the overall Hawaiian design in mind, I will contact our Hawaiian design artist and she will start the process of extracting the information. The first renditions for our Hawaiian designs come to us as sketches, once the general concept is nailed down we discuss the repeat and then move on to coloring. Shown on this page is a print that is in its 4th iteration with partial colorizing, but it should be enough to illustrate how its done.

Eventually we make it to the point where we have the design approved and locked and ready to go to the printer. But that’s just one leg of the long journey, while you may have print ready Hawaiian artwork, you are far from having cut ready Hawaiian print fabric. The next step involves what is called strike-offs, whereas the design is sent overseas for screen setup and once those are prepared, the printer will run off about 1 yard of printed fabric, that is what’s referred to as the strike-off. Once that has been ran we will receive digital images for review, if all looks good the strike-off is then sent back to us for approval or rejection.

Due to variations in dye lots you may or may not get the actual colors you originally anticipated, so seeing the physical strike-offs are mandatory. Unfortunately some strike-offs do get rejected and its back to square one. But given the fact that you didn’t print and essentially ruin 3000 yards of Hawaiian fabric, it’s a minor setback.

Ok so now we are 8 to 10 weeks into the process, assuming the colors and repeat are what you were looking for its time to sign off on the strike offs and begin printing. Well you hope they will start right away but that’s not always the case. In many countries you have to deal with things like Chinese New Years whereas the plants shut down for a month and in some instances the local governments will shutdown entire industrial power grids to conserve electricity. Typically the entire process of going from design to printed Hawaiian fabric is about 3 months but you should also be prepared to wait as long as 5 months, and that does not factor in shipping which is usually by sea.

We hope you found this informative and come back to read our next post, where we will be discussing Hawaiian shirt patterns and cutting.

Mahalo,

The crew at Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts