Textile design is the creative and technical process by which thread or yarn fibers are woven together or interlaced to form a flexible, functional, and decorative cloth or fabric which is subsequently printed upon or otherwise adorned. Textile design is further broken down into three major disciplines, printed textile design, woven textile design, and mixed media textile design, each of which utilize different methods to produce a surface ornamented fabric for variable uses and markets. Textile Design as a practice has evolved to become an industry integral to other disciplines such as fashion, interior design, and fine arts.

Printed textile designs are produced by the application of various printing processes to fabric or cloth and other media, namely: resist printing, relief printing, rotogravure, screen printing, transfer printing, and digital printing. These processes utilize various inks and dyes to imprint aesthetic, often repeating patterns, motifs, and styles onto the fabric or cloth. Printed textile designers are predominantly and inextricably involved with home interior design (designing patterns for carpets, wallpapers, or even ceramics), the fashion and clothing industries, and the paper industry (designing stationary or gift wrap).

There are numerous established and enduring printed styles and designs that can be broken down into four major categories: floral, geometric, world cultures, and conversational.[8] Floral designs include flowers, plants, or any botanical theme. Geometric designs feature themes both inorganic and abstract such as tessellations. Designs surrounding world cultures may be traced to a specific geographic, ethnic, or anthropological source. Finally, conversational designs are designs that fit less easily into the other categories: they may be described as presenting "imagery that references popular icons of a particular time period or season, or which is unique and challenges our perceptions in some way." Each category contains sundry, more specific individual styles and designs.

Different clothes, moreover, require different dyes: for example, silk, wool, or other protein-based fabrics require acidic dyes based whereas synthetic fabrics require specialized disperse dyes.

The advent of computer-aided design software, such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, has allowed each discipline of textile design to evolve and innovate new practices and processes, but has most influenced the production of printed textile designs. Most prominently, digital tools have made the process of creating repeating patterns or motifs, or repeats, much more effective and simple. Repeats are used to create patterns both visible and invisible to the eye: geometric patterns are intended to depict clear, intentional patterns, whereas floral or organic designs, for instance, are intended to create unbroken repeats that are ideally undetectable. Poorly constructed repeats draw the eye to portions of the textile that expose the pattern and break the illusion of continuity, an issue called "tracking," which is easily remedied in a digital environment. These tools, alongside the innovation of digital inkjet printing, have allowed the textile printing process to become faster, more scalable, and sustainable.