Threadless + Steven Alan Pattern Design Challenge: Using Seamless

Threadless, well known for it's community-designed, community-picked (aka "scored") t-shirt designs, is partnering up with Steven Alan for a fun, Fall Pattern Design Challenge. We LOVE Threadless because they empower artists and create portholes of success, no matter who you are or where you are at in your art career/hobby. In turn, this produces a wide range of awesomely unique clothing for the rest of us to wear.

Steven Alan is a native New Yorker and has been a leader in the fashion world on many different levels. His first collection of menswear stamped out what he is most recognized for in the fashion industry - the reverse seam shirt, a unique twist on the classic button down, but with the worn, comfy fit of your favorite oldie-but-a-goodie (with a bit of fashion sense). His style is strongly vintage-based with smart little twists of the contemporary world.

The Fall Pattern Design Challenge is centered around creating a pattern to be designed for a Steven Alan product in time for 2011 NYC Fashion Week's "Fashion's Night Out" on September 8th.

Design AND Template your Seamless Pattern all from COLOURlovers.com

We have some amazingly talented COLOURlovers who would be more than qualified to enter this challenge. COLOURlovers has made it a breeze to submit your custom design to the contest with the Threadless Template Maker.

YOU CAN DESIGN BOTH YOUR PATTERN AND TEMPLATES STRAIGHT FROM COLOURlovers!

FIRST, come up with a great patten design concept that will work with the Steven Alan brand.

SECOND, Click on the link, Threadless Template (see below image) to apply YOUR pattern to the template files needed for the contest.

Now you will see your pattern in the template files. You can work with scaling your pattern to the size you feel best portrays your pattern on the clothing templates.

As you can see, the above image shows my pattern scaled to the largest size and the image below shows it scaled to the smallest size. Pretty amazing stuff right?

>You only get to preview it live on the Oxford Template. But it will help you decide visually what is going to look good. You can easily download the other templates that will be the size on the live preview. See the boxer shorts (below) and the Women's Dress (below that)...

I decided I liked the larger print for the Women's Dress (see image below). The contest does not require you to stay with the same scaling on the different products, which makes it fun to try a more bold size on another template if your pattern suites it.

So after you've settled on a proper size or sizes, get your templates downloaded (Oxford Shirt, Women's Dress and Boxer Shorts) to your computer for submission. Yes, you still have to upload the files and fill out the submission form. Nicer yet, the handy dandy Threadless Template maker gives you the proper 900 x 475 pixel JPEG to upload.

THIRD, submit away! It's suggested to give your design a catchy title because it'll help sell your design to the community. And do make sure to read all the details on artwork file preparation, etc.

Steven Alan Inspiration Resources

Remember, this is for his Fall line and probably best to give it some vintage love; not to sway your artistic direction or anything. Aside from perusing Steven Alan's website, www.stevenalan.com, other sources of inspiration can be found. Check out this production for his Spring 2011 line. I love the soundtrack ("ELEVEN "It'll Rain" by the Skeletons) which talks about memories and things (hint hint - vintage).

Steven Alan Spring 2011 Video: Mixed Doubles from Steven Alan on Vimeo.

Vintage Inspirational Patterns & Palettes from our own COLOURlovers Community

The colors might be mixed up a bit for more of a Fall-Winter, but most of these I think would really portray well on the Steven Alan line.

There are so many great patterns and colors by COLOURlovers that would work for this contest, I'd love to see your ideas. Paste badges in the comments if you find some must see ones.

ARE YOU DOING THIS CONTEST??