It’s time to take your ideas, your message, your feeling, your style… and bring it to life on paper….

Fashion School: Sketching Flats for Fashion Design

In design studios, fashion flats are HUGELY important. Sketching illustrations with swatches in full color and posed models has its place and does so much to bring “life” into the collection, the design idea, and the FEELING of it all.  But in any fashion schools or online fashion study programs such as my own,  flat sketching is an essential part that has to be included in it all.

In many fashion studio environments I’ve worked in, flats were EVERYTHING! You can check out my pinterest board for fashion flats examples, too, although most of what I’m seeing out there is computer generated, which visually I find rather harsh and cold. It’s always your biggest asset to learn to do these things well by hand first and then translate that into vectors if you really have to, because you’ll have your drawing skill DOWN.

In fashion school, we included flats in every single design project presentation, but when I entered the industry I found that more detailed and technical flats were essential in virtually every project I was involved in. Clear, precise sketches are communication tools that, when well executed, can save time in getting a garment “right ” the first time because the details are communicated clearly with all members of a design team, from designer to sample maker to technical designer and production team. And time is usually TIGHT.

Better yet, once you settle into it, you realize that designing a flat sketch on paper, or a whole slew of them, IS design at its best: change a detail here, a variation there, trace what you just did and then make changes to that 10 times, now play with color combos, now try it with different stitching, different fabric….. IDEAS, IDEAS, IDEAS… and they are easy to view and review in such a format, too.

Watch this video and find out:

1. 1. Why flat sketching is liberating and allows you to focus on details

1. 1. How a designer’s ideas flow in a creative process while sketching.

1. 1. 3 GREAT art supplies to add to your Fashion Designer’s and Fashion Illustrators’ toolkits.

1. 1. How adding color and pattern concepts bring life to a fashion design drawing.

1. 1. How to join the “challenge” on instagram

Fashion School: how to use Flats to create unique designs for fashion designers and students. This video is inspiring and fun! Now it’s your turn to try.