Patent ID: 8417585

Claim:
A method for producing merchandise having a design imprinted thereon, the method comprising: providing a computer system with (i) a database storing design elements and (ii) a database management and search system that allows user queries of the database; receiving, from the user, a natural language query; determining attributes, by the computer system, by analyzing the query to extract descriptive terms; searching the database, by the computer system, with the descriptive terms; retrieving, by the computer system, a set of design elements from the database, wherein each design element is associated with at least one of the attributes; combining, by the computer system, a plurality of the design elements from the set of design elements to create a design, wherein at least one of the plurality of design elements within the design is a graphical image; mapping the created design to a plurality of articles of merchandise; presenting to the user the plurality of articles of merchandise such that the created design on the plurality of articles of merchandise appears to the user to be responsive to his or her natural language query; receiving, from the user, a selection from the plurality of articles of merchandise; and automatically transmitting the created design associated with the selected article of merchandise to a configurable manufacturing system, wherein the manufacturing system produces the selected article of merchandise having the created design imprinted thereon.