Please tell me what makes a GREAT tartan design.

[OC Richard]

My eye is usually attracted to tartans that have strong gridlike structure, tartans which are rather bold.

I've never liked diffuse tartans, tartans with dozens of fine lines everywhere and no "big picture" structure.

To me it's not so much about the colours, because I like dark green tartans, and red tartans, and new purples tartans, more or less equally. But though I'm more attracted to structure than colour, nevertheless some tartans have very striking colours that I love.

OK here are examples, in an attempt to show what I mean.

These three tartans, Jacobite, Tullibardine, and Wilson look a bit too diffuse for me. Wilson looks very nice actually, and I think it's lack of strong structure is saved by its very nice use of colour:







The following three have a strong structure. The first two are recent designs (Isle of Skye, Western Isles). Note that these tartans are rather effective even in cases where very little colour is present:







Now here's one of the loveliest tartans I've ever seen, a recent one, Auld Lang Syne. The colours glow like a stained glass window or summat:



Here's a tartan with a nice bold structure but the colours are just too garish for my eye. It's an old authentic 18th century tartan or early 19th century I believe, Bruce of Kinnaird:



Here's my own kilt, muted Drummond of Perth, which combines nice colours with a strong pattern, resulting in a very nice effect: