Using Adobe Bridge to Prepare for Pattern Presentations

We’re preparing for an exciting week at Pattern Observer. We’re going to be taking a trip to Portland, Oregon. During this time we’ll be meeting with clients who we’ve worked with in the past and also potential clients who we are really excited about having the opportunity to work with. We’ll be showing them our spring and fall pattern collections.

To do all of this, it takes some prep work for the presentations, and this is what I’d like to share with you. I hope that it’s helpful as you begin to prepare for your own pattern presentations.

What’s Your Story?

The first thing I do when I begin preparing for a presentation is to think about how I would talk through my patterns. From doing this I realized something important; that I like to think about the customer’s journey and the type of patterns that they may want to wear throughout the season. To demonstrate this, I divided our portfolio of over 300 patterns into 5 stories. You can see this here in Adobe Bridge.

Pattern-Presentation-Stories
After that, I scroll through our Dropbox of patterns. This is where I will click and drag each pattern into its appropriate story. This is part of what’s so wonderful about Bridge, as the location of the files in the Dropbox doesn’t change when you do this. It simply created the collections within Adobe Bridge.

But how about creating a new collection? This is simple! You will:

  • Click on the “new collection” button in the bottom right hand corner of your collection window.
  • Name the collection whatever you like.
  • Click the back button to return to your original screen.

After this, you will begin clicking and dragging patterns into your new collection story folder. Make sure you choose the patterns that best fit the story that you’d like to tell. For me, I will choose to tell my story through seasons and through the customer journey. This may work for you, or you may prefer to use more traditional pattern collections or trends to divide your overall portfolio.

Organize your Adobe Bridge collection

Once your collections are done click on a collection to open it. This is where you’ll review your collection as a whole. Ask yourself these questions:

  • What colors stand out?
  • Do I need a larger variety of patterns?

Based on your thoughts about your answers you can then adjust the order of the patterns to best fit the color palettes that you’re using or the story that you’re telling.

In this example I may want to consider: 1) using these brightly colored patterns at the end of my story; and 2) beginning to tell the story of starting the collection with these icy winter blues and slowly warming up into spring, oranges and yellows, and then ending with the bright reds of summer.

Pattern-Organize-Collections

As you look at your patterns, click through each one and imagine the story that you might tell. Think about what you might tell your clients about the pattern or the collection as a whole. This is how you can effectively arrange your printouts and fabrics in the same order. You’ll feel more confident during your client presentation from these efforts.

This has been my method for preparing for our upcoming sales trip. How about you? Do you have any presentation techniques or tips that work great for you? The entire community – and me too – would love to read them in the comments below.

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  1. Helpful, but I was hoping for informations on how you actually delivered presentation. I would love to see what form that took. What you presented was a way to organize patterns into collections, but not how to make a presentation…but thanks for sharing

    1. Yes, this is just on preparing for presentations. I can work on a post about how I actually present. Thanks for the recommendation!

  2. Being an educationist and fashion & textile designer, I look forward to new developments , innovations. I feel each designer should adapt the changes in these fields with open arms. It was a edifying tutorial and I look forward to such more to come out way.

  3. Okay… I was clueless to Adobe Bridge! Thanks for this information because you turned on the ‘light’ for me (lol). Much success and favor to you and the Team as you head up to Portland!

  4. Thank you very much for telling about this presentation technic. I never used Adobe Bridge, but you have really opened my eyes. I find your business model very interesting, but did not participate in any lessons as I am “old” in business, active since 1973 :-), mainly in production companies.

  5. Thanks so much for this tip! It’s very helpful to see how other’s organize their designs. I also use adobe bridge for submitting designs but have never used this ‘collections’ feature. This seems very helpful!
    I was wondering, once you have your collections created, how do you present these ‘stories’?
    Do you print them out in a book or is it a digital book or pdf packet? Or do you have a class on creating presentations?
    Your tips are always so helpful, thanks!

  6. Helpful tutorial, thank you. I would also like to see how you present. Is seems as though clients want to see printouts to confirm the ink colors on textile, fabric, paper, etc., vs. viewing designs digitally via an IPad presentation.

    1. Thanks Chris! Yes, I am working on a video on my presentation process. I hope it will be done by the end of August!

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