Pattern Changing Clothing by yong hwan Kwon at Coroflot.com

Pattern Changing Clothing

Pattern Changing Clothing from yong hwan Kwon

Pattern Changing Clothing

The motivation for this project is my interest in fashion. Whenever I see various clothes in fashion magazines, I always consider how to apply fashion items to product design. As a result, this interest leads me to enter the field of fashionable technology. My thesis started from a hypothesis: if a garment can be developed into more than a piece of clothing, it will be able to offer a wearer new user-oriented experiences.

01 Design Background

01 Design Background - Contents - we are able to prepare the future by lessons from the past, then let's create and design something special.

Pursuing the beauty will never end

The History of Modern Fashion - Textile Technology

History of Modern Fashion - Techno Textile

The History of Modern Fashion - Fashion designers & Events

Fashion + Technology = Fashioning Technology - Keywords - Fashioning technology, Customization, Individuality in Fashion

Fashioning Technology - 1) General Functions

Fashioning Technology - 2)Considerations - 1. Output & Input

Fashioning Technology - 3) Other considerations

Futuristic Clothing

Mass Customization - Case study

Mass customization - Visualization

02 Problems

Fur industry

3) De-individuation

3) De-individuation - Mass-produced individuality

External complexity happens through various customers’ reactions to customized products. Specifically, standardizing user-oriented customization is difficult because there are many different individuals who are looking for unique items. In addition, shoppers’ unintentional purchasing behavior causes external complexity. In terms of internal complexity in mass customization, merchandisers have a hard time offering reasonable prices for customers because delivery costs and installing various options require extra money from buyers as an alternative to mass production. For these reasons, I conducted an experience with custom clothing through usability testing on the Zazzle website in order to understand the problems.

Inspiration - Analogous way

2) Fabric net

As I studied the change of look in an analogue way, I had so many ideas, questions and imaginations. I wanted to share them with people. But yet, creative solutions were not coming out. My several experiments were temporary solutions, not innovative and long-lasting ones. The reason why these ideas are still yet too far from a final solution is that they were time consuming, not cost effective, and not very attractive visually. For these reasons, my journey to find new solutions will go to the next level: find an easy and original way to alter the look of a piece of clothing digitally.

Digital way

There is no doubt why music is so popular among all generations. Yet, current music industry is losing a lot of profits due to illegal downloading. Also, cell phones now include many functions including a camera, an mp3 player, etc. It has become consumers’ most favorite portable device. Contrary to the trends, consumers who purchase a vinyl album by a musician must appreciate the tangible and believe that the value of music is more than the sound. Many people also consider album jackets as valuable collectibles just as they do the LPs themselves. Currently, the young seem to be very interested in communicating with other people about their musical tastes or personal opinions in regard to music videos on websites like You Tube and Facebook. Furthermore, the visible value in music is similar to that in fashion in that both of them communicate with people visibly as well as tangibly and both can be with people everywhere as they are portable.

Sound is also a kind of customization since a user can select songs that he/she wants, I therefore added two speakers with their speaker lines and an audio jack to connect to an mp3 player.

Arduino was used for activating LEDs

Through the experiments I would change the look of clothes in both ways: analogue and digital, I needed to do research promising into technology more like E ink. Obviously, modifying the styles by analogue is not very effective, as is shown in several experiments. Therefore, I decided to design customizable clothing digitally. The final ideation of Digital Hanger became the base of this thesis’s final concept. Specifically, this technological solution of interaction between a wearer and a clothing was inspired by Digital Hanger’s wireless data transmission.

Inspirations for fabrics

Patterns make a different style

Wearable - Access data anytime and anywhere.

Inspiration for patterns

First and foremost, I started to create patterns to show visual changes on a piece of digital clothing based on the study of pattern. In order to change visuals on a piece of clothing smoothly, I created one image and modified the style of the image by using the filter tool in Photoshop. The purpose of the varied pattern is to show different textures from jewelry to jeans. Also, changing colors is one of the options to show how one garment expresses different styles.

Elements for making patterns There are several elements that can be used for making patterns or images on a piece of clothing. The elements will be; 1) Accessories (Belts, Jewelry, Bags, etc.) 2) Unique portraits of celebrities - Fame factor 3) Different textures 4) Three dimensional images (3D) 5) Lines, dots, space 6) Optical illusion 7) Famous brand pattern (Gucci, Louis Vuitton, etc.) 8) Art and craft 9) Each year's color trends

01 Creating patterns by an image editing program/ Data Transmission to a controller by NFC

02 Transmitting data to a controller and its GUI

03 Transmitting data to a garment (Pattern Changing Clothing)/ Putting a pattern onto clothes by using a controller

04. Changing patterns according to atmosphere or mood

projection Mapping For presentation, I planned to use a projector. This project is a concept product in the year of 2060. Therefore, making a real piece of clothing completely covered by E ink was nearly impossible because it is not invented yet. For this reason, I started mapping the clothes by using Photoshop after taking a picture of a model with clothes. And I used patterns that I created from pattern study. Then, consecutive images were projected onto the surface of clothing. Before completing the mapping of a pattern on clothes, wrap order from the transform menu on Photoshop (Photoshop/ edit/ transform/ wrap) must be used as it is the key to project mapping because the order of wrap helps to cover the pattern three dimensionally.

Projection Mapping - Execution Customized clothing is a reasonable option for customer’s satisfaction and for rational consumption because consumers can make sure of their satisfaction through the process of customizing clothes. Also, in order to encourage people to buy less clothing, customers must get long-term satisfaction from a piece of clothing. Therefore, I planned to design Pattern Changing Clothing using E ink. Through creating the clothes’ patterns as individual customization, which is an enhanced area of mass customization, people might express their personality as a symbol of their tastes in art, music and literature, etc. Once a user creates a single image, he/she can pattern easily by selecting how many times he/she copies the image.

NearFieldCommunication.org defines Near Field Communication (NFC): It is a form of contactless communication which allows a user to exchange data among digital devices through wireless communication by NFC compatible connection. It uses electromagnetic radio fields instead of utilizing radio transmissions. In the future, all forms of near field communication technology will interact with other NFC compatible devices,

Principle of Eink

Eink concepts

Graduate Thesis show at Bevier gallery (March 4 2013)

Throughout the process, I focused clothing’s beauty and believed that customizable clothing encourages wearers to complete their own styles, hoping that they will be able to find their ego through the process of styling the clothing. For this reason, I began to find various methods of changing styles in an analogous way. Positively, I found that users are able to express their individuality, making different styles with their own artistic sensibilities. However, they have to spend a lot of time, energy and money to create varied styles. I was able to meet with new display technology, E ink when I researched visual technologies.

A pattern is usually used for a corporation’s identity. If the means of a pattern can be individualized adopting E ink, new way of making styling will be possible. Also, advanced display technologies, such as E ink SURF, encourages me to develop a more flexible and thinner fabric displayer concept like Pattern Changing Clothing. When this E ink clothing displays different patterns, users will be able to make various styles with just one garment. Thank you.