The Ultimate Tech Pack Guide
Transcript (auto-generated)
What's up design family and welcome to another video on today's episode we'll be going through the fit design ultimate guide on how to create your own tech pack I'll be going through the seven key main components of what to include in your tech pack just a little asterisk I will be going through how to make these components because each component would need its own video this video would be an hour long and I'll reserve that for future videos but I'll just be going through what you need to include to make sure that your tech pack is watertight and you're including all the information that you're going to need I'll hope you guys are ready this is going to be a really really informative video welcome to fit design TV on this channel we'll explore what it takes to make it as an active wear fashion brand whilst providing tips tricks and actionable steps towards starting your own product line whether an entrepreneur look at the star your own brand or just someone interested in fitness fashion there's something for you here [Music] so let's start off by describing what a tack packets without going too much into detail a tech pack is a construction document of sorts that tells a supplier or factory how to make a specific garment it includes key information that a factor you would need and that's the key information we're gonna go over in this episode number one you'll need to include a visual mock-up this is a fashion illustration of sorts and it's meant to portray the aesthetic look of the design it doesn't have to be very technical but it just has to show where certain seams are located what how the garment is constructed overall a general idea of the fit and if you're using a colored markup which is always good you want to make sure that you can show accurately where the different garment trims or the different garment colors are located you also want to include in this phase a suggestion for the material the material should include the decomposition D weight the grams per square meter weight and the fabric finish you also want to include how many colorways are in the tech pack for instance if your tech pack has three colorways you'll want to show the three different colorways and you'll want to specify on each sheet number what colorway out of three it is let's just say you have three colorways page one will be one of three page 2 will be 2 or 3 and page 3 will be 3 of 3 so on and so forth in terms of specifying colors you'll want to use Pantone color codes I would recommend downloading the Pantone studio app it's $5 a month but it's going to give you access to the main key Pantone guide so you'll be using 4 design and the one that you'll want to look at for use with fabrics is the tea see X guide that's the main one that's the one you want to use and for prints you can either use salt coated or solid uncoated so the color of the prints that go onto the garment either solid coated or solid uncoated you'll want to include the TCX guide name the number and the RGB values on the page of a specific mock-up for instance let's just say you have a design with white in a purple color it's some sort of by panel product you'll want to show the white pen tone and you'll want to show the purple Pantone and you'll want to kind of indicate what pen tones those are referring to you want to be as explicit as possible the hope one of the tech pack is to make sure that you're getting your idea across as specifically as possible so there is no room for error for the mock-ups there are a variety of ways to create mock-ups you can start off with a very basic and go into the super in-depth also much with the basic you can use a flat illustrator sketch you know you've seen them on the internet they're these very basic looking mock-ups and they serve just to get a visual representation of the the apparel piece itself or you can do something that's more customized using digital programs like procreate affinity designer sketching on the iPad Pro that's also an option or you could go full-on 3d and use programs like Marvelous Designer or clothes 3d to digitally create 2d patterns and then model them onto mannequins and to get an accurate look on how the mock-up or the actual garment piece is going to look you can render that out in a software like key shot to apply lifelike materials so there is a spectrum of ways that you can create these mock-ups and it all depends on your ability your skill set but these are kind of the main three options that you could use illustrator procreate or Marvelous Designer number two in terms of what you'd want to include in the tech pack is a sizing guide it's a general rule of thumb for men you want to go for a slit up small to extra large and for women you want to go for a split of extra small to large you'll want to lay out the mock-ups and lay out the key measurements potentially you want to give them some numbers or some letters so that you can denote what specific measurements you're looking at and you'll have a table the table will have the key measurements that you're going through for instance for a t-shirt you look at the center-back length the chest width the waist width the bottom with the sleeve length and the cuff width and the neck whip so you'll lay those out on the mock-ups with the letters on top of each corresponding arrow so that way you can see how those measurements are grading over time grading is the term used to denote the way a measurement changes on a garment over different sizes so how you grade a garment is very important and it lets a factory know how a size large should fit in terms of when you have it designed for a size small how that should fit in a size large so that's how you create a sizing set I'll make a separate video on how a great certain garments because they're different formulas for each specific type of garment and there's different grading techniques but for now you just know that you want to include a sizing guide number three or the technical drawings you'll want to include some sort of flat cad sketch that will accurately portray how a garment is supposed to fit this drawing is supposed to be very detailed if you think about it like a building it's essentially the plans and these sections of a building and you want to lay out the measurements of the different components and let's just say you have the sleeve the collar the chest all these things should be included in the flat 2d sketch you can think of this sketch as if you took a t-shirt and you laid it flat out in the ground and you started to measure it out that essentially what you would be portraying in this specific piece of content the main programs that I would use would be either AutoCAD by autodesk or rhinoceros 3d by McNeill so those are two great options and that's what we use in our workflow and you'll be able to get some very technical drawings that are accurate and you're able to portray all the measurements so that you can really hone in on what kind of fit you want number four is the spec sheet so the spec sheet for us is a diagram that shows real life images of certain details that link up to the mock-up so sometimes it's even with 3d modelling it's tough to show certain details because of how intricate they are or how complex they are that the model itself cannot show so you're better off just using real life from existing products for instance if you have a certain fabric finish or you have a certain hardware trim that you're using like a buckle or a zipper you'll want to show those in terms of real life images so what we do is we lay out two mock-ups one front and one back view and we'll have these detailed spotlights on the sides and we'll link them to the actual garment and where that arrow points to will show a real-life image of what we want that to look like so that way there is no confusion over what we want this thing to look like in real life a great place to get these detailed images is Pinterest once you search for a certain detail on Pinterest you'll be able to get a lot of different related details and they're really high quality and they're really close up and a lot of the times you get very very specific and innovative detail shots that you can include in your designs number five would be your colorways schedule so the colorways schedule is an extension of the color codes you used on our mock-ups and you'll essentially have a table with the different colorways you have for instance if you have five colors you have a table with five rows and that row each row will have the following information you'll have the colorway number the Pantone code the Pantone guide the RGB and a little swatch to show what color it is so that you can easily identify it and you'll want to do that as a way of summarizing all different colors that are included within the tech pack number six you'll want to have your tags your labels and any graphics you have for instance let's just say you have a graphic on a jacquard waistband or a certain pattern like a camel pattern that you're using you want to make sure that you label that artwork and you're able to correlate it to which parts of the garment that artwork is used so again you're being very specifically being very direct about where each graphic would go for the tags you can have different types of tags you can have a care label similar to the care label that you find on the kind of left the bottom-left of any garment that has the sizing information the company logo the country of origin washing instructions the composition all that information is located in there or you can have a brand label which is simply like a loop label just with a brand and the sizing information or you have a printed neck tag that has you know maybe the company website some basic washing information the logo so it all depends on what your specific situation is but all that information you'd want to include for instance if you have a sizing label you'll want to include all different sizes so each tag will have a size small size medium size large you'll want to have a tag for each of those sizes so that way the supplier the factory can know exactly what each tag looks like so that they're not having to guess the same thing for a neck tag or a brand label in this phase you'll also want to include any packaging any hand tags any specific piece of hardware trim that would be attached to the garment or included in this specific garment you'll want to include and that obviously it would entail the Hang tags and the poly mailers that would be used for that specific garment number seven is a little bit more advanced it's not something you would have to include at a beginner stage but it would be a bill of materials if you're working in a larger company where the interaction with the supplier is a lot more direct and you're able to source trims directly you want to include a bill of materials which essentially includes all the hardware the trims the fabrics any piece of material or like even thread that goes into a garment you want to include in there the quantities that you're looking to use and sometimes you clued the prices it's essentially like a bill of materials for a building you have all the information in there and that helps dictate where the different components are coming from which suppliers they're being sourced from again it's a little bit more advanced but that is also typically included in a tag pack so that's basically it tech packs can be as complicated or as not complicated as you want there's a formula that we use I'm going to include a PDF in the link below that is a sample tech pack that we've done so that way you guys can just plug and put in all your customized details and hopefully that helps you guys out a little bit if you guys enjoyed the video would mean the absolute world to me if you could smash a thumbs up leave a comment below it really does help us out let us know what you want to see in future videos and thanks again for tuning in to fit design TV it's been an absolute pleasure and we'll see you guys in the next one.
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