About the CLAN Tartan Designer

The CLAN Tartan Designer is a simple to learn and free online design tool that lets you create custom tartan patterns to professional standards, then buy either woven or printed items in your tartan if you wish. You can either:

• Start from a blank sheet
• Base off an existing design
• Let our "Imagine" tool generate you a starting point

You can customise your design with a full specrum of colours, patterns, and weave styles. For authentic weaving purposes, we provide guides to select appropriate yarn shades and pattern sizes. With CLAN Tartan Designer, users can create high-quality designs that can be used for different purposes such as products, logos, prints, and more.

Quick Start

Getting started with the CLAN Tartan Designer is easy. From the main menu (which should be open on arrival) select either new blank design or else official designs to access the library of tartans. With official designs, you can browse through the tartans by category, or search by name or by colour, and select any to customise. You can then:

• Add, remove, or change colours
• Add, remove, move and resize lines
• over-ride default mirroring or symmetry (expert)

You can name, describe, and save your design as you go, then return later to make adjustments.  More help with the specifics of using the tool can be found in our complete guide.  When you are happy with your design, you can purchase fabrics or products in your tartan.

Learn about Tartans

If you are interested in learning more about tartan design and its history, CLAN offers the world's most comprehensive online tartan encyclopedia loaded with whatever information you need about tartan and fabric design and culture. You can read about the traditional symbolism, symbolism myths and misconceptions, and the meanings behind the various sett, weaves, stripes and colours used in tartans.

If you're thinking of designing your own tartan, you'll find the section on why & how to design a tartan especially useful.

Fabrics & Products

Once you’ve designed your own tartan using the CLAN Tartan Designer, you can put it to use in all manner of products. These are available directly from the Shop button in the designer area.

The CLAN website offers an extensive selection of woven fabrics, or products made in them such as scarves, ties, hats and much more, all produced with your unique tartan.

We're also adding many more printed products such as printed fabric, mugs, phone cases, keychains, tote bags and more for direct purchase in your design.

Restrictions

There are far fewer formal rules regarding tartan design than you might think. But please note that whilst most tartan designs are historic and ‘in the public domain’, others are commercially restricted. A tartan can be trademarked or copyright like any other unique piece of design. Our systems are designed to respect this, to prevent copyright abuse, to protect your own unique creative vision, and to defend our own rights and responsibilities. By using our facilities or saving a tartan design you are deemed to be accepting our Terms and Conditions (which we think are entirely reasonable, to protect everyone from accidental errors or abuse) so if in doubt please read these before starting.