The Scottish Wildcat Tartan thread: conceived here on X-Marks!

[Creag]

I like the next-to-latest iteration - posted on 28 August - better than this last one. McMurdo, perhaps take some period of time, like a week or so, and don't look at or think about the design. Come back to it then and see if there is anything you'd like to change. This has been a valuable practice for me.

(disclosure - I'm also an artist/designer. No experience with textiles, though I did design wallpaper and borders for some time)

[Alan H]

Well, personally I like most everything that McMurdo has come up with. IMHO, and this is just me...I would go back to your previous design and, keeping in mind Jock Scots suggestion that all of the cats the he's seen have yellow eyes instead of green, experiment with replacing the green with some yellow or gold.

The rest of it,all of it, in your previous design looks fantastic to me. I don't think it's "muddy" at all, in fact I find the lines to be very attractive. Also, if other tartan designers have wanted to contribute their two cents, they've certainly had the opportunity to do so, and none of them have done it. Finally, while McMurdo has been incorporating with, and experimenting with suggestions from a number of people, the flat-out truth is that there is no way to keep everybody 100% happy with the final design. It's impossible.

McMurdo is "the Art Director". .... Period, as far as I'm concerned.

Also, as Unixken has pointed out, if the only goal here is to produce a tartan which is as similar to the cat as possible, and forget the marketing, then we might as well all go give $50 to Wildcat Haven and be done with it. However, suggesting any such thing is against Rule #10, and besides, this is a KILT FORUM. So we're trying to make a tartan which looks good IN KILTS (and waistcoats and skirts and so on).

So again, McMurdo...my two cents, and this is just me, is to go back to your previous design, try yellow/gold instead of green. If you like it, and can see a way to make it "work", then IMHO, you're done, and we have a Scottish Wildcat Tartan.

Still no word from Nick Fiddes, BTW. However, I'm hearing back from "Hamish" on Scotweb. I've emphasized with him that two-line e-mails about one little detail at a time, back and forth with 48 hours between exchanges, is not going to work in this situation. Let's see what happens.

[Alan H]

I'm going to be extremely blunt, here.

It's impossible to keep everybody happy when designing something like this. Dixiecat, if McMurdo doesn't happen to take your suggestions to heart and completely start over, then...well...to be blunt.... too bad. I don't expect him to take MY suggestions completely to heart every time, either. That doesn't mean that I'm not going to buy the tartan. Your assertion that if we don't acquiesce to YOUR suggestions means that we don't care about the catrs is almost beyond belief. What makes YOUR design ideas better than anybody elses? You wrote this: " And, if you're not listening to me and my suggestions it shows that you're only in this for yourself and not the cat and it's survival. " That sentence indicates what I can only call MASSIVE hubris and it's utter garbage. You are entitled to your opinion. Here on X Marks the Scot, as long as you "play by the rules" you're welcome to express that opinion. However, the converse is true, I...and we... are also entitled to opinions, and my opinion is that how you expressed your opinion, this time, is incredibly aggressive and obnoxious.

If you don't like the tartan, then don't buy it. If you don't like where this thread is going, then go read another one.

I heartily encourage you to donate to the the Wildcat Haven, the Scottish Wildcat Association, or any other Wildcat charity, if you don't like where this tartan is going. After all, you're well aware of the situation and have been aware long before this silly X Marks "bandwagon" about the cats. So I gladly encourage you to donate to the Wildcat Charities, often and in great volume. However, I'm not inclined to ask McMurdo to change anything, because of your ....well, to be blunt....attempt to bully him/us into your design ideas.

[creagdhubh]

Well said, Alan!

[Benning Boy]

First off I am a designer, yes a graphic designer but I have had over 25 years at that, as such I do understand colour theory. [snip]

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. When you have reached over 30 years experience how will you look back on this? Will you be able to say you did your very best, or that you just settled for good enough? Will you be able to say you stretched as a designer, or just reached your limits?

Steady on, old chap. When one picks up the colors, one becomes a target.

[Nathan]

I've been watching this thread with interest and haven't jumped in for two reasons:

1) I really respect @McMurdo's talents.

2) I don't know if I can afford a kilt in the tartan.

That said, I did agree with some of the suggestions by @Jock Scot and others and decided to contribute my concept of what I thought they were saying just in case it might inspire McMurdo further. I do agree that you'll never please everyone.

I should also note that I paid no attention to sett size or pleating options or any of the very real concerns a proper tartan designer must take into account. This is just to propose an alternative palette with how this one man thinks they might look nicely balanced.



Let me state explicitly that I trust Glen's design experience and am making a visual suggestion to the tartan designer not trying to become the tartan designer.

[Terry1948]

I have followed this thread with interest, and in the last day of posts, with a great “sigh.”

Alan, developing this conservation measure was your idea, and a valuable endeavour it is. From my reading, you brought it to XMarkstheScot.com in this thread with post #1 back on August 24^th, indicating one of your first steps would be to find a tartan designer. But you never actually put it out to the membership to see if there were any experienced tartan designers within the membership, such as figheadair, who would be interested in doing up the design. McMurdo indicated in post #6 that he was beginning a design, Artificer in post #7 said he would see if he could come up with any ideas, and even California Highlander in post #21 played around with some of the ideas McMurdo had come up with. It became evident very quickly that McMurdo had become your tartan designer (post #44) or as you phrase it, the Art Director (post #91), even though he is, by his own admission, a graphic designer not a tartan designer (post #107). That’s fine, I trust he has the talents necessary for the task, and kudos to him for volunteering, but you made a statement in post #112 that other tartan designers had a chance to put their two cents in but had not. Post #112 was on August 30, so only 6 days after your first post. It is possible that other tartan designers did not even come across the thread until it was obvious that McMurdo was your chosen person, so felt their input might not be welcome.

Now, I don’t necessarily agree with what DixieCat said, and how she worded it, but part of what I see in her posts is frustration over what is coming across as a rushed process. I do believe her input in the design has as much value as that of others. We are only talking less than a week into the process of designing, so looking at different ideas is good at this stage of the process before going too far down the road. Once the design is finalized then you are committed, even if it is not the best design.

Alan, I would suggest that you and McMurdo set a date for all comments/opinions about the design to be submitted, then take a couple of days to review them and come up with maybe 3 designs. Put the options up side by side so the membership can compare them. Perhaps even put up a poll and let people vote on which one they like the best. As you say, there is no way to please 100% of the people 100% of the time, but at least with concrete choices you can get a sense of what the voting membership thinks is the best design. If someone does not like any of the choices, they can simply not vote.

[Alan H]

I had, shall we say, a "rather difficult day" yesterday, came home, read what was written and wrote a rather hot under the collar response. I just logged on to re-edit and explain. Anyway, that is an explanation, not an excuse. Others have read and responded to what I wrote, so I suppose it should stay, now. That said, I don't want this thread to become a battlefield.

When the X Marks tartan was designed, tartan which represents a "place" in which all of us participate, we went through 2-3, maybe 4 weeks of "development" and Matt Newsome presented us with three designs. We, the member of X Marks theScot at that time, voted, the winner is now the X Marks tartan. However other people also contributed designs, just that Matts sort of evolved into the final three.

In this case, the tartan is not an image that represents all of XMarks the Scot. I don't see the need for this to be an X-Marks-wide "democratic process" when 99.9% of the members will never purchase this tartan.

Now Nathan has actually put up an alternate design, which is great! Thanks, Nathan! Until now, NOBODY ELSE has done so. I, personally, welcome input like that. It's not like I'm against people contributing ideas! I would guess that McMurdo appreciates Nathan's efforts, too. If others want to create variations and present them, that's great! Telling McMurdo that what he's done is garbage....is not so great.

IN FACT the main guy from Wildcat Haven has been invited to join here and contribute to this effort. He's extremely busy with work for the Haven and hasn't done so, yet. I hope that he will be present in this effort, soon.

I have, over the years, been involved in three fund-raising-type efforts on the internet and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that "delay" and "interest" and "internet" are three things that do NOT go together. If the project feels rushed , it's because it is. It is already taking weeks to communicate with, and locate a mill that wants to run the order. It will be AT LEAST a couple more weeks before a mill has agreed to the jjob and I have a schedule of when the stuff might be woven. That' plenty of time to continue with the design process.

Finally....I'd like to object to a nit-picky detail, here, Terry 1948. McMurdo is not MY Art Director. I don't OWN this project, I'm not McMurdo's employer. I just believe that in the interests of getting something actually DONE, rather than going in an endless circle of revision after revision, a single person needs to be in charge of tartan design. McMurdo stepped up. He's presented designs. He's listened to many requests for change and implemented many of them, or at least tried them out. It seems to me like he's doing an exemplary job. But he's NOT "MY" art director. He's the PROJECT art director. I don't own this project. I might be the guy who came up with the idea, I might be the guy contacting the mills, and I might be the guy registering the tartan, but I don't "own" it.

[McMurdo]

Thanks Terry, Alan and Nathan your words of encouragement mean a lot to me. As Nathan was working on his ideas I was trying to take some of what has been said into consideration and have come up with something else. Please let me know what you all think of this, for my part I think it gets away from the mud factor.





Lets be honest the important thing here is the cat. I am trying not to take any of this personally and will continue trying, however again the important thing is the cat and if we can indeed get something commercially viable in the end this is the crux of it. All I really want is for one of the designs to be popular enough to actually be worth the investment in our time and words.

[KiltedKnome]

It is much more subtle/muted than the one presented in #64, which will appeal to some folks and not to others.

When I look at these I try to see how they would be pleated. It might be valuable to get the input of some of the kilt makers (who routinely work with tartan), such as Barb T, Rocky from USA Kilts, The Wizard of BC from Freedom Kilts, Matt Newsome, etc. I've never tried tagging (?) so that they know they are being hailed. Can someone else do that, and add any other kilt makers or tartan people (such as Figheadair)?