The design curation process guarantees a flawless selection of designs for our partners and more sales possibilities for designers.

A great design is both beautiful and technically sound. In digital printing, what you see on screen is what will be printed on fabric. Therefore, we are selective when choosing designs to share with our partners. Each published design goes through a curation process, where we examine it for flaws. Appropriate designs may be shared with our commercial partners, while designs with technical issues will not. We reserve the right to  keep designs with major flaws unpublished.

To help you to optimize your design’s potential, we’ve put together this post to explain some of the things we are looking for when we curate designs.

Design Curation Process: what we look for in scale

The best trick to scaling a design for WeaveUp is setting it at 150dpi and fit within 54”.

Keep in mind that some of our clients are in Home Decor trades, where motifs are preferred to be large-scale.

With WeaveUp’s Customization Tool you:

• Can reduce a design’s original scale.
• Can not increase a design’s original scale.

Here’s what we look for regarding scale.

1. Appropriate scale for the intended use: Designs should not be scaled too small, as our tool is unable to enlarge them more than the original file size.
2. Optimal resolution and quality: Designs should be clean and sharp, and free of pixels and noise created by inappropriately enlarging the image.

Design Curation Process: what we look for in repeats.

Here’s what we look for in Basic, Half-Brick, or Half-Drop Repeats.

1. Seamless Repeats: Elements in your design match along the repeat line.
2. Spacing: Elements should be spaced well and no visible lines or large clumps between them.
3. Rotation: Elements should be well placed and not duplicated too close together.
4. Background: Pattern in the background, if present, should be seamless as well.

Here’s what we look for in Mirrored Repeats.

1. Cropping: Elements should be cropped appropriately, ensuring they aren not cropped at odd points.
2. Shapes: All shapes created when repeated should be deliberate and not oddly met.
3. Background Pattern: Should be repeating appropriately and not breaking when repeated.

Design Curation Process: Line Quality

The universal rule is that edges and lines, when present, are clean, continuous and free of stray pixels.

When evaluating designs for line quality and noise, we consider the type of design and the artist’s intent.

Here’s what we look for regarding image and line quality.

1. Cleanliness: The design, including backgrounds, should be clear of any stray pixels or unwanted noise.
2. Clear edges: The design should have clean, free of unwanted pixels and sharp edges.
3. Smooth and straight lines: The design’s lines should be smooth, or show that curves and bumps are deliberate.
4. Free of overly fine lines: When lines are too narrow, they break down in a different scale.

Design Curation Process: Color

The best trick for your design to be color-customizable is to create it appropriately, with 12 colors maximum and on a vector program. Read more about it here.

When we are looking at the color-setting of a design, we are determining if the design has 12 colors or less, and, if it’s clean of stray pixels.

Here’s what we look for when approving designs for color customization on WeaveUp.

1. Color amount: The amount should be 12 colors or less. And, should all be necessary, for example, something that was designed to have 3 colors, and is showing up with more than that when uploaded, probably has stray pixels, or was created using a non-vector program, creating fuzzy-edges.
2. Appropriate color reduction: Designs should be color-reduced in the correct manner, otherwise other issues arise, making the design inappropriate for color-customization.
3. Simplicity: the design should be easy to recolor with our customizer, and, be free of too many versions of similar colors.

Color Examples:

Design Curation Process: Summary

1. You Upload a Design.
2. You select the Public Setting for your design. Click here to learn more about publishing your design.
3. It goes to our Curation Queue.
4. We inspect it, this process can take up to 2 days approximately, then:
   1. If the design has any technical issues, we will get in touch with you.
   2. If the design was created correctly, and it’s free of technical issues, it will be marked “Public” and findable in our website.

Good luck designing!