personal tartan

[OC Richard]

For sure your Design #1 is more balanced (the balance between the green-ground area and the grey-ground area).

But I prefer your Design #2 because the grey-ground area is more attractive. In #1 the grey and pink are too close in tint and tone- it's the effect of somebody wearing pure white and not-quite-pure white together, or wearing two shades of black together- the unsettling effect of juxtaposing two colours that are not close enough to match, yet too close to harmonise/co-ordinate.

In other words, most tartans are made up of two more or less equal ground-areas, and each of the two should have a pleasing internal design and colour-balance. Throwing all the light elements in one half, and all the dark elements in the other half, probably won't result in a pleasing overall design.

That's why I and a number of other people find design #2 more pleasing, I think. But as I pointed out it has the problem of the lightest colour in the whole tartan being a bit too thick and also having a black border which makes it feel like a thing apart, like a racing stripe which has been laid upon the tartan. In a tartan one wants everything to appear to be elemental or integral to the cloth itself. The quick easy way to integrate an element that has a detached feel is to introduce a bit of the ground-colour in it, as I did there.

(Sorry for the somewhat technical talk but I'm putting on my hat as a professional artist. It's easy for anyone to say "I like that" or "I don't like that" but more difficult to put one's finger on the specific design principle at issue, and knowing what strategies to use to improve it.)