Lunchtime looms this Monday morning. However, the minds of nine undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are on other matters, for they are experiencing U4ia in front of computer work stations. In this apparel design class, they are groping their way through the extremely powerful, extremely sophisticated, extremely complex state-of-the-art design software, a $1 million gift to UW-Madison's School of Human Ecology (SoHE) from the French design software manufacturer Lectra.
Every now and then one of the company calls out a question, always starting with, "How do you get it to...?" Whoever knows the answer - or has some insight into the problem - calls back instructions.
For example, how do you get U4ia to center an entire page of clothing designs? This one has printed off the page, half the designs wandering away into some private ether.
"Oh. I know what happened," says Anna Stevens, the senior lecturer who is teaching this course in the UW-Madison Department of Environment, Textiles and Design. "You just have to make sure that the printer and your preference settings agree, and that both, both, are set on 'center.'"
Once understood and correctly applied, U4ia allows students to quickly create intricate textile patterns and experiment with colors, textures and more. Meanwhile, Stevens and her students are discovering the deeper meanings of "we're all in this together."
"U4ia is not at all intuitive," Stevens says. "There's no second-guessing this program. I studied U4ia for about two weeks last summer, and then two more weeks this semester. Lectra says the usual learning curve for U4ia is about three months, so there's a lot I don't know yet."
She and other apparel design faculty spent much of the past summer redesigning their classes to make good use of U4ia. Stevens' students, for example, are working on a color project, having chosen a two-dimensional piece of art and reproducing its color scheme on original clothing designs.
Tenzin Kunsang, a senior with a double major in apparel design and retailing, has selected Robert Delaunay's 1914 "Homage to Bleriot."
"I was attracted to all the colors in it, especially the pinks and oranges. I think they would appeal to children," she says. Indeed, Kunsang plans a career combing retailing with children's attire design. She displays a printout, or "flat," of several Empire-waisted frocks, naturals for the upcoming holiday party whirl. The renderings still need their pinks and oranges, though. Color will come a bit later in this process.
Apparel design senior Allison Cowee is enrolled this semester in Stevens' U4ia-using apparel design class, as well as in assistant professor Jennifer Angus' course in computer and manual-generated pattern and design. Here, Cowee will use both U4ia and Photoshop software to complete four projects, all drawn from the real business world.
"We have to create a group of designs for a woman's scarf or shawl, fabric used for an office or studio, or something for a client of our choice," she says. "We have to develop the designs, clean them in U4ia and then put them into 'repeat,'" so that the patterns will be able to be used in other ways," Cowee says.
"When U4ia 'cleans up' an image, it really means reducing its colors," Angus says. "Most commercially printed cloth has between eight and 14 colors. The 'repeat' function is the trickiest thing about creating a design for printed cloth. This skill has to be developed over years of practice, but U4ia allows the designer to cycle through many, many possibilities. Previously this was done by hand and very labor-intensive."
Indeed, students in associate professor Sonya Y.S. Clark's structural enrichment class are using U4ia to repeat a pattern for the top of a pillbox hat. "They select an image and use a portion of it to create a repeated pattern for the side band," Clark says. "U4ia allows the students to create multiple options for their coordinating side bands before moving to the step of making swatch samples in various fabrics."
Despite its labor-saving features, no one seems to think that software will replace altogether hand-design and printing, "but U4ia will enhance learning and give students a significant professional edge," Angus says.
However, unlike the highly-specialized U4ia software, it's an edge that will apply to a broad swath of professions and life experiences, Stevens says.
"I hear over and over from employers that our apparel design graduates are absolutely the best at solving problems," she says. "Our students also excel at visual and written communication, verbal presentation and critical analysis. Working with U4ia will only enhance those skills."
UW-Madison apparel design graduates work in virtually every sector of the apparel design industry, at companies like Lands' End, Jockey, Oshkosh B'Gosh, Dana Buchman, Calvin Klein and Victoria's Secret, to name a few. Many spend a few years in the industry, then migrate to other occupations in vastly different fields, where they and their new employers discover how well the skills first developed and refined in UW-Madison's SoHE translate, Stevens says: "One of our graduates is now a national leader in Montessori education."
Sari Rozins, a junior majoring in apparel design, adds "patience" to the list of life lessons she is learning from U4ia. "I am such an extreme beginner with computers. It's frustrating," she says, although she's already managed to produce a group of flat designs with U4ia.
Next semester will bring even more challenges and, um, electronic learning opportunities. Already the apparel design faculty are redesigning courses to use more fully software like U4ia and Sketch. For example, one class previously required the design and execution of three garments; in the new incarnation, garment execution probably will be replaced with more in-depth design documentation process. Stevens says that there also will be complete production specifications, measurements of all garment details and cost sheets to familiarize students with industry standards.
In addition to the $1 million grant from Lectra, UW-Madison's SoHE U4ia project also is made possible with financial support from a DoIT Teaching and Learning with Technology grant.
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