Scotweb's new online Tartan Designer is now live!

[Nick Fiddes]

Firstly, huge thanks to those of you who have been playing around in, and providing feedback on, our first (mostly) working version of our online Tartan Design facility. In the intervening months, we've made lots of improvements, many in response to your ideas and responses. In particular I'd like to individually thank Rex, for several very helpful suggestions which have led to lots of work(!) but we think a better result.

The invitation-only password restrictions have now been removed, so anyone can use it. You still need to be logged-in to save a design, or see your own saved designs, of course. But it's totally free to use, until of course you choose to have your design woven.

There are lots of new tricks that should make designing tartans more intuitive and easier. For example, you can drag colours into any position in the threadcount sequence... and change all instances of any colour by dragging onto its swatch... and hover over the preview to identify which thread to adjust... oh, and just find out for yourself. :-)

We're also delighted to be providing a quite extraordinarily wonderful expert review panel, for anyone wishing to commission a Critique. In addition to Brian Wilton (Director of the Scottish Tartans Authority) for historical expertise, we now have on board the head designer for House of Edgar (the world's largest producers of traditional kilting selvedge tartans) for weaving expertise... and also, I'm delighted to say, X-Marks' own Barb Tewksbury for her kiltmaking expertise. So for anyone wanting to create their own new tartan design for serious use, we now offer the facility to have full creative control over its development, in the confidence of having it professionally appraised and perhaps tweaked towards perfection... for a fraction of the professional design fees that you'd previously have paid without enjoying such direct personal involvement. We think this has to be a good thing.

We hope the new layout and interface is considerably clearer too. There's a few details still to finish (such as the Help tools, that aren't yet fully implemented). But it should mostly be working otherwise.

You're the first people to see it, and we won't be announcing it fully quite yet... until we're 100% sure it's all working robustly. Hope you enjoy it. And as usual, anything that is broken or confusing... please let me know!!

Check it out at: http://www.scotweb.co.uk/tartandesign/

Nick

[Lady M]

This is an excellent tool, very easy to use. I could see spending a few hours playing around with it. Thank you very much for implementing it and sharing it with us!

[skauwt]

thanks for the info

[KFCarter]

Have already checked it out and like it very much! Thanks for implementing this great, easy to use tool.

[GMan]

That's great.

[Rex_Tremende]

Terribly sorry to have caused so much work, Nick, but I'm awfully pleased with the outcome. Thanks for your team's innovation and services to the tartan-loving community.

Regards,
Rex.

[Standard]

Thanks for keeping us abreast of the progress at your website. This is truely a useful tool for us here at XMarks, and for the rest of the world too.

[Fit2BKilted]

I want the edges to be a bit rough, so; why not let me?

[fluter]

Thanks, Nick and team. That's very nice!

[Morris at Heathfield]

Thanks for making this tool available! I've been looking forward to its release ever since I heard about it.

I have a few questions, though, regarding the terms & conditions. First, who weaves the custom tartans? Is it "glena", or some other weaver/mill? Or is Scotweb establishing itself as a tartan weaver in its own right?

Secondly, the part about waiving legal rights until one commissions production of the tartan is giving me pause. What constitutes commission of production? Is it enough to permit others to start ordering products in the tartan, or does the designer have to personally make a purchase? And what are the implications of waiving one's legal rights? I hope I'm not interpreting this correctly, but it sounds like some unscrupulous person could poach your design if you don't immediately order it into production.

Other than that (:mrgreen, I have no complaints. I'm not terribly fond of exclusive licenses, but I think it's eminently reasonable that anyone making use of Scotweb's tartan designer (and potentially racking up Scotweb points) should give something back to Scotweb.