We’re getting there slowly but surely.

Contrast stitching makes me happy. I like how it looks. So most of the bags in this debut collection feature contrast stitching.

Above is a Round 1 prototype from 5-ish months ago. I lamented over the production here and here.

Below is from Round 2. Here’s a preview while the bag is being constructed:

Excuse the illustration at left; it was a sketch from when I thought the metal TZ logo plate would still be 2″ x 2″. Then I changed it to 1″ x 1″ for Round 2, which is what you see in the photo at right. To get a sense of the former 2×2, scroll up and view the round 1 prototype. Yikes. See why I decided it had to be smaller for round 2? In any case, I’m really liking the 1×1 plates! =) (Then again, this is what I said about the 2×2 plates when they first came out, so I’m an unreliable narrator.)

We’ve encountered a few bumps with production of the other designs, but nothing serious enough to make me roll up into a ball and cry. All is coming along generally well.

Looking at the totality, I’m seeing a very distinct aesthetic coming out of Taryn Zhang. (I say this like I have no control over it and I’m not the designer behind the line or anything.) Not to keep drawing comparisons back to creative writing, but it really is like creative writing. Writers have an idea of what they want to write, but once the manuscript is done, the characters take on a life of their own, oftentimes a personality the writer did not intend. Applied here, the bags technically look like what I designed, but there’s a– a something I hadn’t consciously infused into the brand’s point of view. From a business marketing and purely non-art perspective, that’s something I’m going to have to analyze and understand before I put these bags up for sale.

For those who have been following along these last few months, I have endlessly complained about how giant the first metal logo plates were. Nobody’s fault but mine. 2 inches by 2 inches seemed all right at the time. And I still love them. They’re just, you know, flashy, excessively showy and garish.

In the metal logo plate remake, version 2.0, I went for a much smaller size, 1 inch by 1 inch. I cut the actual size out of paper and placed it next to the old logo plates for comparison. See above.

This week, the manufacturer sent back the tooling proofs for the new logo plate:

The top row above shows what I gave the manufacturer (with measurements, of course, which aren’t shown). The bottom row above show the proofs they sent back. Thought I’d share an insider’s view of the production process. =)

The difference between the before and after? Huge. Before, the 2″ x 2″ TZ logo plate was at the front and center of your attention. Now, with the 1″ x 1″ logo plate, you’ll actually look at the bag. Imagine that.

Stay tuned for more progress reports, as they should be coming in with greater frequency. We project to complete all samples production by the end of this summer.

2010.07.15 Update.

And here is a shot of the new 1 in. x 1 in. metal logo plates. =)

First, oops, I made a few mistakes in the collage above. I’m making the Tycooness sample in black and gray, for example, not black and that other color shown. I copied and pasted the wrong thing, but didn’t notice it until now, and I don’t have the patience to redo the collage. Then there’s the matter of proportions. Please do not try to determine the size of one illustrated bag by comparing it to the size of another. They were each copied and pasted from different documents or files. For example, no, the Dignitary bowler bag would not in reality fit inside the Jetsetter weekender, and the Executive satchel is not giant compared to the Tycooness, etc. =P

And no, I don’t know why I made the interior lining pattern front and center and the actual handbag illustrations much tinier around the periphery. Guess it started when I had to decide on one universal lining (to keep costs down) and tried to match up the swatch colors to the lining. Then to remind myself what each swatch color set corresponded to, I copied and pasted illustrations of the bag designs.

Taryn Zhang has a specific objective: to design bags for the working woman. It started with the Catalyst (thus aptly named) and Ambitionist briefcasey type bags because that’s what I needed myself for work. I couldn’t find anything that was both girly and corporate, because for some reason society still thinks the two don’t go together. They definitely do! Who’s with me!?

Then, because the working woman still has a life outside the office, I worked on designs for weekend travel, shopping excursions, or brunch with the girlfriends. Also, since not all of us work in corporate, I wanted to include a few handbags for the arts professional.

Folks in fashion design tend to be paranoid-secretive with their conceptions and are constantly in fear that somebody will copy their work and make a boatload of money off it. Perhaps it comes from being educated in Silicon Valley, because I have a more open-source outlook on design. Plus, worst case scenario, if somebody really did copy me, I can point back to this blog and say “Look! We’re the first! Just because it takes us eons to produce a bag doesn’t mean we didn’t conceive of it before they did.”

True, I don’t see many other designers (or any at all that I’ve come across to date) putting it all out there the way this blog does, but I refer  back to a comment on a previous post made by a reader. It’s okay that I have no industry experience or know-how. When I don’t know what’s “right” and what’s “wrong,” I will do what I want, where my passions guide me. And that in fact has been the key to many a success story. So I hope it’ll work out for me as well.

Samples production round 2 will begin in the next few weeks or so.

:: excited! ::

All illustrations above were rendered in MS Paint.

It did not work out so well the first time around, but that’s because I didn’t have swatch books! These are fantastic. In fact, I’m experiencing options overload.

I had a same-day flight to and from L.A. yesterday for work and what transpired there drained all my energy. I thought I’d stay in bed all weekend to recuperate from quite the stressful week, but then the package arrived on my doorstep: the swatch books from my manufacturer in Hong Kong! Yay! Forget the bed! It’s gonna be a Taryn Zhang weekend! Samples production Part II commences, officially now!

Oh happy day. The metal logo plates are here! They will be a lovely adornment to the Alpha Collection handbags. Cheers to a good Monday.