The Design Center at PhilaU Featured on Tumblr Spotlight for Design

The Design Center at Philadelphia University was recently selected as a top design blog on Tumblr.com. The Center, which houses PhilaU’s historic and rare fashion and textile collection, regularly posts photos of prints and other patterns that play an influential role in the world of fashion.

The Design Center’s blog was selected as one of a handful of blogs to be featured on Tumblr’s Spotlight page on design:www.tumblr.com/spotlight/design. The Spotlight page is curated by Tumblr editors to bring the most creative and interesting blogs on the site to a wider audience.

The Design Center Tumblr blog logo textile (pictured here) is a design called Agate by David and Dash. David and Dash specialized in hotel textiles and wallpapers for South Beach, Miami during the 1960s.

“Being featured on Tumblr places The Design Center’s blog right next to established publications, such as Wallpaper Magazine and WGSN,” said Sarah Moore, collections curator for The Design Center. “Using social media, we have been able to give textiles that spend their time in archival storage a new life as digital files.”

With a visually interesting catalogue of textiles, The Design Center has actively cultivated on online presence through many social media platforms. In addition to the Center’s Tumblr page, you can also follow The Design Center on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

“Digital curation is a growing trend for museums and archives, and I think this will shape humanities outreach and education in the future,” Moore said. “Our newest foray is Instagram, where we are able to share some behind the scenes snapshots from our work in the historic textile and fashion collection.”

The Design Center houses more than 200,000 objects related to textiles and fashion and is located across from The Gallagher, Athletic, Recreation and Convocation Center at 4201 Henry Ave. In addition to the Center’s social media presence, followers of The Design Center can look forward to the release of an iPhone and iPad app sometime in the spring of 2013 that will allow users to browse a database of more than 9,000 historic textile swatches. The app is being funded with the help of a grant from the Barra Foundation.