Feb 15, 2023

Mastering Garment Tech Pack Design: Tips and Insights from a Technical Designer

Whether you're looking for team sportswear, knit sweaters, lingerie tech pack designs, men's underwear lines, or basic sports clothing designs, Illustrator and Tech Pack Designer go hand in hand. Defining garment styles that offer an enticing combination of proportion, balance, line, shape, value, colorways, and textures is important. It's crucial to ensure that tech packs reflect every detail and show front and back views of the design, stitch detailing and trims detailing, along with enlarged views of specific details, prints with color details and separated vectors, embroidery details (if applicable), and most importantly, measurement spec-sheets with all size gradations.



Garment Tech Pack Design is a complex process, and I recently came across new clients who had some questions about it. This motivated me to write this post, which is an extension of the tech pack design process. One of the questions that came up was, "Do you think you can work with limited information given to you for preparing a Tech Pack?" Tech pack designers have a multidimensional responsibility in preparing and reviewing tech packs for complete and accurate information. They should understand sewing construction and translate it into the tech packs, as well as measurement detailing grading, and measurement. A Technical Designer must have the foresight to anticipate style details for the actual garment even before the technical flats are prepared and then sketch technical drawings accordingly.

When working with a creative client who has vague design ideas or images, it's important to capture their vision step by step. This makes the process easier, and a good Technical Designer should be able to capture the Line Owner or Creative Designer's thought process in stages. Throughout the process, there will be a lot of email exchanges, and communication is key. The more you talk to the client or Creative Designer, the clearer the style becomes, and it ultimately becomes easier to create the Tech Pack based on their vision.

Line Sheet designers who are looking to get the costing and pricing based on rough sketches are putting both the vendor and the Line Sheet designer in a difficult situation. If a quote is obtained, and due to market fluctuations, the rates vary, then one or both parties may end up losing. There can never be a win-win situation for either of them. Therefore, proper documentation and Tech Packs are required to get an accurate quote and begin the production process.

Urban Purple is a global fashion studio with a presence in the UK, USA, France, Greece, and Canada, and its head office is in India. As one of the top fashion design studios, it offers a wide range of specialist services to the fashion industry, including apparel tech pack and garment collection line sheet preparation from sketches, size chart creation, technical CAD design, and graphic T-shirt production. With an in-house factory, Urban Purple can produce clothing ranges, having served over 50 world-class luxury fashion brands across the globe for over 7 years. The studio's state-of-the-art sample development center and production unit allow for physical samples and garment production. To receive a free quote for garment production tech packs from the technical design team, or to receive free branding for a collection of more than 10 styles, contact Urban Purple today.