Printable smart materials offer textile designers a range of changeable colours, with the potential to redefine the expressive properties of static textiles. However, this comes with the challenge of understanding how the printing process may need to be adapted for these novel materials. This research explores and exemplifies the properties and potential of electroluminescent inks as printable smart colours for textiles, in order to facilitate an understanding of designing complex surface patterns with electroluminescent inks. Three conventional textile print methods – colour mixing, halftone rasterization, and overlapping – have been investigated through experimental design research to expand the design potential of electroluminescent inks. The result presents a set of methods to create various color mixtures and design complex patterns. It offers recipes for print formulation and documents the outcomes, offering a new design resource for textile surface pattern designers to promote creativity in design, and provides fundamental knowledge for the creation of patterns on textiles using electroluminescent inks.

Even though color is frequently used in the design of textiles and spaces, research into the use of color in more innovative ways has been uncommon in relation to textile practice. This may be due to a lack of exploration of nontextile materials such as dichroic filters and their design possibilities, which not only produce colors in novel and environmentally friendly ways but also influence space by creating physical and emotional experiences. Dichroic filters are an interesting design material regarding their ability to create surfaces that change color when activated by light and when viewed from different angles and can also influence surrounding space by coloring it. This research project aims to explore the design potential of combining dichroic filters and textile weaving techniques to create textile installations that influence space and create sensuous experiences. The research project resulted in a series of textile installations wherein dichroic filters changed the expression of textile surfaces and/or influenced the installation space. The installations visually reveal a poetic relationship between the craftsmanship of textiles and light, colors, the viewer, space, and our senses. They also highlight the performative property of textiles that influence space and have the power to create sensuous experiences. 

In textile design, the characteristics of a textured surface are the result of the properties of the materials, the textile techniques used, and the colour mixtures associated with each technique. The perception of colour on textured textiles is dependent on the angles of viewing and incidence of light on the surface. Accordingly, when analyzing the perception of the colour of pile textiles such as velvet, we observe that the orientation of the piles on the surface affects the perception of colour. The perception of colour and its transformation depends on whether the light is reflected off the side or the end of the yarn. By bringing do it yourself (DIY) materials into the textile design field, this research questions how biomaterials such as bioplastic can be further developed using textile surface design methods, and how the relationship between texture and colours can be advanced in the design of complex textured surfaces. The method develops a hybrid strategy for designing a new material category combining DIY and digital tools, which offers a more sustainable alternative to conventional textile materials. Moreover, the method proposed builds on two major aspects: explorations of bioplastic materials and their impacts on colour design and selection, and an analysis of changes in the visual perception of coloured surfaces with regard to differences in texture, the positioning of a light source, and angle of viewing. The results are methods of creating complex colour combinations and textural surfaces using near-adjacent and complementary colours and the intrinsic transparency property of bioplastics.

Light and lighting in fashion and textile design generally relate to the viewing and production of a fashion or textile collection in daylight, or integrating LEDs, electro-luminescent wires, and optical fibres in the structures of fabrics to create a light-emitting fashion or textile collection. This ignores the potential that coloured light as material for design can bring into these disciplines. This paper aims to investigate coloured light as a material for design in relation both to physical environments and immersive virtual reality, and to develop design methods for fashion and textile design that could lead to a re-learning of coloured light as a material for design for developing novel artistic expressions. The first series of experiments focused on addressing the following questions in both physical and virtual reality: How do coloured surfaces and coloured light interact? How do interactions between coloured surfaces and coloured light influence the process of designing surface patterns? To critically examine the results of this research, textile and fashion design undergraduate students participated in a five-day workshop during which they experimented with, and reflected upon different types of interaction between coloured surfaces and coloured light in both physical and virtual reality. The students’ designs showed that the design method provided them with an understanding of the use of coloured light in their design processes through experimentation and individual exploration, demonstrating that this approach can make a fundamental contribution to the development of coloured light usage in various design disciplines.

Artistic research in design is relatively new compared to experimental research in the natural sciences but it has matured a great deal over the last decade. Its extensive development has brought new challenges to professional practice, and also raised questions regarding how knowledge should be imparted in academia. By examining the field of textile design, which has traditionally been taught in close synergy with professional practice, we can discern the emergence of doctoral theses that have brought not only new perspectives to textile practice but also a new role to the design educator as a researcher within the academia. One of the challenges that design education program are facing, however, relates to creating a better connection between research and education in order to continually enrich curricula with new developments in the field, so that basic knowledge and novelty can interact. By looking closely at the development of the research environment at The Swedish School of Textiles and the interaction with undergraduate and postgraduate education, this chapter describes how research has informed the development of textile design education.

What are thermochromic inks? They are colouring agents characterised by their ability to, when printed on textiles, change colour in response to temperature fluctuations. Below their activation temperature they are coloured, and above their activation temperature they are clear or have a light hue. They are usually blended with static pigments, allowing them to change from one colour to another. 

Do the thermochromic inks offer other design possibilities rather than only change from one colour to another? What if thermochromic inks are mixed with static pigments in different proportions? What is the behaviour of prints produced using these mixtures when they are heated or cooled? What if multiple colours could be concealed or revealed at once? What if thermochromic colour mixtures are printed in layers on top of each other?What if thermochromic inks have different activation temperatures? And what if the states of thermochromic colour transitions between non-heated, heated, and cooled are properly visualised?

Marjan Kooroshnia is a textile designer and lecturer at the Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås. Much of Marjan’s time as a Master’s student in Textile Design was spent at the printing lab, learning about thermochromic inksbehavior when printed on textiles and designing dynamic surface patterns. In her PhD research she has explored the design properties and potentials of leuco dye-based thermochromic inks when printed on textiles in order to obtain an understanding and facilitate the design of dynamic surface patterns. 

In this exhibition, she presents her Ph.D. thesis, in which she has investigated different methods to create diverse colour changing effects on textiles. The prints displayed in this exhibition show a wide range of aesthetic possibilities offered by thermochromic inks on textiles.

When used within textile printing, smart colours have expanded the design possibilities for textile patterns as relates to both motifs and, more importantly, uses. Smart colours suggest new functionalities and provide specific perceptions, reactions, and activities in terms of usage. At the same time, the need for peripheral information sources that are less intrusive than many of the everyday devices of the present has continuously been addressed to improve wellbeing, e.g. by making life more manageable and meaningful through the use of technology in everyday life. We aim to increase knowledge of the design qualities of smart colours, which is of use in relation to creating non- or less intrusive ways of displaying peripheral information. This paper focuses on the character of colour transition and discusses different colour-changing possibilities with regard to surface patterns; that is, from the perspectives of different levels of change and complexity and in relation to levels of intrusiveness and information comprehensibility.