May 3, 1996

Monarch Design Systems Breaks New Ground with "Off-the-Shelf" Software Offerings

Glendale, NY - Blazing a new trail for suppliers of CAD/CAM technology to the apparel and textile industries, Monarch Design Systems announced three inexpensive CAD-related software products, which will be sold directly and through reseller channels. "Monarch retail software is a means to introduce the benefits of CAD technology to fashion and textile designers who can't cost-justify purchasing an entire system or the more sophisticated Monarch software," says Eric Rosenberg, Marketing Manager. "In many cases, we believe these products will also serve as stepping stones to our complete systems and high-end software."

The first of the three products is Plaids & Stripes^TM, an Adobe Photoshop© plug-in which instantly generates simple to complex plaid and stripe patterns within Photoshop. These patterns can be saved as graphic files for further manipulation in Photoshop or other image editing software. Plaids & Stripes also includes a library of yarn structures to automatically create different patterns, such as Oxford and Twill.

Monarch has good news for designers who spend a lot of time developing silhouettes, findings, and textures for merchandising materials. Thanks to FashionFindings^TM, an expansive library of detailed, editable electronic clip art of fabrics, trimmings, and silhouettes, they no longer need to. The library contains over 175 editable EPS, PICT or TIFF images. "Using FashionFindings, designers can utilize existing high-quality art or modify it for a more personalized touch. Either way, you save valuable time and money, and improve the quality of your merchandising materials,"says Mr. Rosenberg.

The last of the three products, also the one with the most universal appeal to graphic designers, is ColorCharter^TM, a software utility which automatically generates reference color charts from any Macintosh application software to the designer's color printer(s). The color charts include exact color values, measured in hue, saturation, and lightness (HSL). The HSL values of the desired color "chip" are then entered directly into the Apple Color Picker - the color editing area for Macintosh software - to ensure faithful reproduction on printouts. "ColorCharter is one of those rare products that makes you wonder, 'Why didn't anybody think of this before?'" says Mr. Rosenberg. "The concept is simple, yet elegant - which is usually the case with good products."

Plaids & Stripes is available for Macintosh computers for $795 list price, and for IBM PC^TM and compatible computers running Windows^TM in early '97. FashionFindings is available for Macintosh, IBM PC^TM and compatible computers for $179. ColorCharter is available for Macintosh computers for $295.