Digitizing traditional cultural designs

This paper explores a fundamental principle of digitizing traditional cultural designs to introduce a model to develop a digital design tool with three strategies (and five possible scenarios) for expanding traditional designs. The study structures pattern designs by analysing certain rules of traditional Korean bojagi textile designs and converting them into explicit rules in computational design. A bojagi design tool (implementing eight different schemes and allowing choice of colours and textures) was developed by the authors to show the advantages of using a computational design that combines traditional principles with today’s modern digital technology. The tool was then examined by four groups (designers, merchandisers, traditional bojagi craft practitioners, and random customers) in Korea. The findings resulting from the interviews suggested that the tool can generate most of original bojagi designs that will be suitable for current fashion and interior markets and even extend it as a marketing and educational tool.