Brilliant by Design: Kornit’s Design Team on How They Make Samples that Pop

Kornit’s in-house application design specialists, Marjorie Elkouby and Rotem Smolski, discuss their experience creating vivid designs and custom application samples for the company’s demonstrations and exhibits.

KORNIT DIGITAL: What is your role with Kornit Digital, and what does it entail?

MARJORIE ELKOUBY, APPLICATION & DESIGN SPECIALIST: We are a team of application design specialists here at Kornit’s headquarters, with backgrounds in textile and fashion design. In this capacity, we support application specialists and our chemistry department by supplying designs and media for research and testing.

ROTEM SMOLSKI, APPLICATION & DESIGN SPECIALIST: In addition to creating relevant samples based on current trends, much of our role consists of sales enablement. We create tools to support new product introductions (such as the recent Presto and Poly Pro rollouts) and oversee live demonstrations and showroom visits with prospects and customers.

KD: Tell us a few things about your creative process. Where do you look to keep current on trends?

ME: Some common resources for us include Vogue, The Runway, Premiere Vision, WWD, Pantone, Patternbank, Architectural Digest, and others.

KD: When you’ve found a relevant trend, what comes next?

ME: We pick those that are mainstream and look for the newest print and textile designs. Then we create a mood board and select key color pallets. Finally, we’ll decide which industries to focus on, and the variety and quantity of designs to make.

KD: What software do you use, and how?

RS: Adobe Bridge, Illustrator, and Photoshop help us create and adapt all vector and image files for printing.

KD: How do you adjust the application to the proper garment or pallet?

RS: We first select the item, choose where the print should be located, measure the available space and adapt the print size to fit. The application specialist prepares it to print in the correct size and format.

KD: How do you prepare the sample for printing?

RS: There is no preparation. With Kornit’s print technology, no offline pretreatment is necessary.

KD: How does Kornit’s technology make your job easier?

RS: My designs are not limited to a few colors; I can pick any image or vector in any scale I wish, and so long as the image is high resolution, the final print will be terrific.

ME: For roll-to-roll designs, I’m not limited to a mill’s fabric pattern or material. I can freely create my design on whichever base I choose and inside the pattern shape. My collection can be big or small, and I’m never wasting fabric or time. For DTG designs, I can personalize and scale every design as I wish, without worrying about mistakes, as I can check the end product two minutes after saving the file on my computer. Kornit enables fast, easy designing.

Here at Kornit, we work very hard to make things look easy. To prove just that, we invite you to learn four simple facts about the not-so-simple process of designing a new pattern. Here’s a little bit of what goes on inside the minds and on the computer screens of our talented designers.

It’s research-heavy

Every little or major thing we do is based on how the market works and feels. Before we even begin designing our patterns, we invest hours and hours researching the market. This includes reading dozens of fashion blogs and magazines (hey, it’s a tough job but someone has to do it!), checking out what major brands and indie artists are doing, asking lots of questions and looking around.

The work combines different inspiration sources and predictions by fashion trendsetters and business analysts. By the time they begin designing the different pattern options, our designers have a clear vision of the message these designs should send and the seasonal trends they will follow.

It’s not all digital

While Kornit is all about digital textile printing, you might be surprised to learn that many parts of the design process involve physical work. This includes face-to-face brainstorming meetings where everyone gets to share their opinion, printing out dozens of pattern options, watching them as they are being printed, placing the printed fabrics over different surfaces, and more.

Kornit’s designers know that their decisions will result in printed garments worn and used by people on a daily basis. That is why the design process cannot remain theoretical and has to be examined under different conditions. This is a hands-on task, literally.

Possibilities are endless

We practice what we preach, and since we offer customers unlimited designs and applications, the same goes for our team. Our designers have zero restrictions when it comes to the inspiration sources they use and their methods of researching them, the ability to change their mind and shift the design accordingly, and the number of options to be tested and considered.

We know that this flexibility is never a waste of time because in many cases, a design that didn’t end up becoming a Kornit textile pattern will inspire a different idea, which is why it’s super important to keep all minds and communication channels open.

It’s a team effort

As you may have noticed, many of the procedures described here could never happen with only one or two people involved. They require different opinions, fields of expertise, roles and backgrounds.

The design work at Kornit calls for an all-hands-on-deck approach and includes not only Graphic Designers but also Product Managers, Operators, and customers. With the greatest minds of the textile printing arena working hard to create these designs, you know you’re in good hands.

There’s a lot more to the journey of designing textile products, and the creative and brilliant designers we work with operate in curious and unique ways. If you wish to learn even more about our products, we recommend scheduling a demo and watching them in action.