Tips on Technical Garment Flats

Our friends at Techpacker asked The Fashion Professor to provide some insight on the best way to approach technical garment flats for your techpacks. (Want to understand the basics of what a garment techpack is? Check out this article HERE)

Here is a the guest blog post we wrote for them that includes 3 important tips you might want to consider when preparing your sketches for a techpack.

Making sure you have a complete garment or accessory sketch before starting your techpack is essential. I use the fashion industry program of choice, Adobe Illustrator, to create vector sketches with rich detail that work perfectly for techpacks. The beauty of developing vector sketches is that you can modify over and over again to create new styles.No matter how experienced you are, putting together a good techpack takes time. Obviously a more complicated style can take longer to complete than a simple style, but either way we don’t want to waste any of our precious time. Creating an accurate sketch can help expedite the process and spare yourself from headaches.

1.Get as detailed as possible!

Be thorough and don’t skimp on details. Omitting parts of your sketch will only make your job harder when it comes time to explaining your design to the factory. This means every seam, dart, stitch and button must be in place. Typically, a solid line on a garment represents a seam line and a dashed line represents stitching. Don’t point to a detail in your techpack and its not actually visible on your sketch!Sometimes there are just no short cuts! If you are creating a custom embroidery, beading layout or print for your product you may just have to suck it up and to draw each and every little detail for your factory to follow. Yes, it takes time, but its better you do it right, than to receive a sample that you just cant use.

You can also take the time to develop detail templates (i.e. the inside lining or label placement of your garment) that you can use in techpack after techpack.

2. Include multiple views

For garment sketches, it is typical to have just a front and back view but remember, you may need to add in additional sketches to show the inside of the garment and/or how parts of the garment function. For accessories, its usually important to have multiple views to give the viewer a better understanding of the design. For example if you are creating a techpack on a shoe or bag you will need a front, back, side and sometimes even a top, bottom and ¾ view.

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3. Keep it simple

Creating a sketch for a techpack can be very different from the type of sketch needed for a presentation. Techpack sketches do not need much movement or shading, as it can be distracting. Black and white sketches can be easier to “read” and provide a clearer representation of your design.

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