Taryn's Design Diary

The TZ promotional postcards to be printed, 6.0″ x 6.0″:

I spent the weekend going over the numbers, calculating financial projections, and when the math started to strain my brain, I designed meself a postcard. (One of the books I’ve been reading recommended postcards as a promotional tool.)

Then I toyed around with Jasc Paint Shop Pro:

The above image gives off a very appealing mood, but it’s a tad too…suggestive, let’s say, to be consistent with the brand’s point of view. Taryn Zhang’s focus is on women in the outer sphere, not women in the inner. Otherwise I’d use the image more prominently on the TZ website; I love the photography (credits: Da Yu). Also, just in time for the holidays. It’s sort of Christmasy, with the Santa red and white poofballs.

The weekend was also spent mapping out tentative storyboards for Alpha Collection promotional videos, redesigning the embroidered labels to go inside each handbag, designing hangtags, dust bags, and discussing with the business partner, my husband, whether it’s worth it to get custom Taryn Zhang zipper heads and buttons. We decided not for the Alpha Collection, but maybe the Beta.

Sigh. Promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep… (in high school I could recite that poem by heart; dorky, huh?)

Happy Holidays!

I am reminded again why I love books. You may learn anything you need to learn from books, like fashion and design.

The books that are teaching me more than I ever presumed I would need to know:

Helen J. Armstrong, Patternmaking for Fashion Design (Prentice Hall 3rd ed. 1999);

Gini S. Frings, Fashion: From Concept to Consumer (Prentice Hall 9th ed. 2007);

Sharon L. Tate, Inside Fashion Design (Prentice Hall 5th ed. 2003);

Kathryn McKelvey and Janine Munslow, Fashion Design: Process, Innovation and Practice (Wiley-Blackwell, 2003); and

Mary Gehlhar, The Fashion Designer Survival Guide (Kaplan Publishing, 2008).

It’s like law school all over again. I’m highlighting passages, placing little color-flag-stickies (I have no idea what they’re formally called) to bookmark the chapters I want to reread, and taking notes. For Gehlhar’s book, I even started an outline.

There is an academic element to fashion and since I lack the degree from a design school, this is my best alternative. I found the titles to these books by searching online for design school syllabuses (or syllabi? apparently both forms of the plural are correct) and noting the required readings posted by the instructors. The above five books were the ones I decided on.

Samples production for the Alpha Collection isn’t even complete yet and I am already eager to apply the knowledge I’ve learned from these books to design the Beta Collection. Nuts.

Yes. Taylor Swift inspires me. And?!

We now have a logo. Yay!

When I sat down to design the logo, I knew I wanted something that brought to mind the Chinese ink seals, which are carved stamps that were used in ancient times for signatures. When stamped or silk-screened, the intertwining of the T and Z won’t be noticeable, as you see above, but it will (or should) be in the embossed metal logo plates that I have made a part of every handbag from the Alpha Collection. See as follows:

It’s hypocritical of me to talk about how silly handbags look when the brand name appears disproportionately large on the bag and then proceed to smack a 2″ x 2″ metal logo plate on everything I’m producing. However, this is my debut collection and I am launching a new line. It’s important to establish brand recognition right now, so that is why every purse in the Alpha Collection displays the metal (stainless steel) logo plate. In the future, there will be purses with no obvious logos.

Above is the embroidered label that will be stitched into the interior lining of every handbag. It shows off the signature trade colors of Taryn Zhang: brown, black, and pink. I’m thinking about taking off the “International.” It adds no value to this label.

My manufacturer is now in the process of making the copper mold for the embossed plates. I OK-ed the proofs this past weekend and can’t wait to see the actual plates.

When I first married my husband, I contemplated changing my name, except if I did, I’d forever be mispronouncing my own name. I cannot pronounce “Zhang” correctly. My husband and his family pronounce it something akin to “Jrrohhng.” My tongue hurts when I try to pronounce it that way. So I say “Zayng,” like zany with a twang.

Wrong or right, that is how I pronounce it. Zany with a twang. And that’s how anybody trying to say Taryn Zhang should say the Zhang.

As for Taryn, some say tear-in, like tear my heart to shreds, while I say tahr-en. It’s softer sounding. Tar, like the viscous black stuff. En, like enchant, or entice. Tahr-en Zayng.

In Chinese, the name of the brand is pronouned “da lun,” my mother’s best transliteration for Taryn. Normal this name is not! The majority of the native Chinese population would wring their faces at the juxtaposition of those two characters and look puzzled. However, I love the poetry of the name, and the meaning behind it.

Also, not sure if anybody noticed this, but I thought I’d be cute by drawing the first character “da” in “da lun” on one of my two-dimensional models from the previous post. I drew it from memory (while sick with the flu; that’s my excuse!) and it turns out it was wrong. In fact, I had drawn a completely different word.

See the error? The top square thing isn’t connected to the bottom line like I had done on the model’s tee. Oops! =P