Tech Packs are the Blueprint of the Fashion World.
When you’re serious about manufacturing your fashion designs, you need a fashion tech pack. If you have one, nice work, rockstar! If you don’t have one though, you probably need some tech pack software to help get you started.
If you don’t have a tech pack, for a big factory, that’s a deal-breaker. Pardon my language, but there is no way in hell that a proper garment factory is going to accept a project that lacks tech specs. If they do, you should be suspicious.
If you think I’m exaggerating how important it is to have a fashion tech pack, let me tell you about this time my design team work for months to create designs but we didn’t realize till too late that we needed a tech pack in order to work in the factory.
We had these beautiful designs for dresses, but no tech specs. That’s like having a car engine but no tires! It was the worst mistake of my career, let me tell you.
I made sure to never make that mistake again. Next time I work with one of those massive apparel companies I’m going to be prepared because now I know what’s needed for factory-produced clothes, and it turns out I need some good fashion tech pack software before meeting with them.
Luckily for all us professionals who want to succeed at our jobs and keep them too, there are plenty of fashion tech pack software packages available now that make life even easier for us.
Choosing the right Tech Pack Software
There is nothing better than using a reliable fashion tech pack software package when working with factories because that’s what they use too.
Showing your designs in the proper format is super important, especially if you’re working with really big companies that have an army of machines and workers cutting out all those pattern pieces. If you don’t know how to do this stuff yourself, a fashion tech pack software package will do it for you.
Tech Packs and Construction Details Software
I hope I made myself clear on this; there is no way around having a fashion tech pack if you want to sell your clothes to a real factory.
You’ve got to plan ahead as we’ve said here. And part of planning ahead includes choosing the right style of tech packs and the best layout for them too.
If you’re going to work with a professional manufacturer, then they need all sorts of details such as fabric construction, cutting layouts, and style lines drawings, which are usually included in some form or another with most professional fashion tech pack packages.
This might not be the case if you’re working with a smaller manufacturer, but it would still be wise to find out what they require for their tech packs. Otherwise, there could be some snags when you get down to the business of producing your clothes.
Techpacker:
techpacker is the perfect partner for your fashion company to create professional-looking tech packs that can be sent via email, printed, or exported to a pre-made format. With easy-to-use tools and an intuitive interface, this software will save you hours of work time!
Adobe Illustrator:
Using Adobe Illustrator to create your tech packs is the industry standard. It takes a bit of practice, but it’s well worth it because you will have greater control over your design once you learn how to do it right.
There are two ways to approach this: either use one artboard per pattern piece and place pattern pieces on top of each other so they overlap in some way or place pattern pieces on different layers and turn them off and on as needed so you can see what goes where without having to look at an entire artboard full of pattern pieces all at once.
Use guides to align patterns on top of each other if necessary. If the seam allowances on the patterns don’t line up, copy or draw a new one to make them fit with each other perfectly.
Creating a Cutting Layout Once you have your patterns on the artboard where you want them, use a rectangle shape to create a separate artboard for the cutting layout.
Make sure that all cutting lines are on their own layer (so they’re easy to find) and draw new ones if necessary. Give these layers their own color group (I like pinks, purples and greens).
Place one pattern piece on each line and label it accordingly. Use rulers to help place pieces at set increments if needed.
Labeling Lines: Label all of your cutting lines with different colors or shapes so that they stand out from each other and don’t get mixed up while you cut your fabric!
Once your patterns and cutting layout are arranged just how you want them, it’s time to send it out for production!
Just remember that when your sample comes back from the factory, be sure to check it against your pattern pieces and make any necessary changes or corrections before you give the final bulk production approval (after all, this is one of the most important aspects of fashion design).
Reasons NOT to Use Illustrator
It takes a long time to learn how to use Illustrator correctly.
You have full control over what happens with your files if you do it yourself, but this lack of support comes at a price….the price is the time and effort you have to put in for every single piece of your design before it can be properly sent off for production.
If your tech pack consists of 100 pieces or more, this method will eat up a lot of your time and energy so choose wisely!
When it comes to your fashion designs, you want them to look their absolute best.
Your designs are beautiful, or they should be if you want to design clothes professionally, but your drawings need to show every line of your pattern pieces exactly where they will end up on the final garment. And for that, most fashion tech pack software packages have you covered!
