Fashion designers and technical designers work within the fashion industry to create brand-friendly clothing and accessory designs.
So, what are the difference between both professionals?
Fashion Designer
They are responsible for conceptualizing and designing garments and/or accessories. They are the ones that research fashion trends and changes within the fashion industry.
To do this, they attend trade fairs (Première Vision, Munich Fabric Start….), fashion shows looking for inspiration, buying fabrics….
They develop a concept for each collection. Creating mood boards to visualize the idea of that concept not yet materialized. In it he compiles: fabrics, color chart, trimmings, images that speak of the trend, details that they will want in the garments, ideas for prints...
Once this collection idea is submitted and approved. Each of the design departments (knit, flat, graphic) begins to create sketches, proposals, choose exactly what fabrics they will want to use, finishes, etc.
Once the designs to be produced have been chosen, they are sent to the technical designer. Which she will work collecting all the necessary information of each design and creating well-refined technical sheets to send it to the factories for the production of the initial prototypes.
Technical Designer
They are essentially the engineers of the fashion industry. They are the link between Design and Production. Responsible for ensuring that the vision of the product is aligned and is as expected.
Their role is to create a solid technical design for the garment or accessory that the fashion designer has sent you via sketch (freehand or in Illustrator).
From that moment on, the technical designer will work together with the designer to make sure that all the notions and details are correct (number of buttons, stitch gauges, thread colors, sketches…)
With all the information, it's time to create a Tech Pack that includes: list of materials (BOM), garment measurements (Point of Measurements), color variations, tag / pendant placement, clothing details, sewing details, washing description (mostly with denim), packaging instructions and of course, the flat of the garment (front, back and sides).
It is of utmost importance that the Tech Pack is accurate for each of the designs. Since it is sent to the pattern department to make the design pattern. And then, the Tech Pack and the pattern are sent to the production factory. Which, should not have any doubt to make the sample and therefore, there are no errors and time lost within the stipulated planning. All these details are very important - the more detailed the better.
We must bear in mind that production is usually carried out in factories abroad where English is not their first language - so images, diagrams and sketches are very useful. And if an error occurs and the information was included in our Tech Pack, the factory will bear the cost of the error.
The first sample arrives and with it the following checks must be made: measurements, quality of the fabric... any point out of tolerance will be noted in comments.
Afterwards, it will be showed to the fashion designer. Here a fitting will be done with a model to see how the garment really looks. (For example, the tech specs may all be correct, but perhaps the designer doesn't like one aspect of a shirt cuff and wants to change it. This will need to be noted and added to our Tech Pack.)
At that point both work together again making the necessary adaptations and adjustments to update the Tech Pack. The Technical Designer should speak with the pattern making department to make the changes and send it back to the production factory to do another test until the design is approved and be ready for your mass production.
Once it is approved, what is done is a new technical sheet to add that will be the scaling measurements of each of the sizes to be produced by design. Everything is sent back to the production department for mass production.
What we do have to be clear about is that these are some of the most important functions that a technical designer performs.vDepending on the needs of each company, the tasks to be performed will vary.
For example, one company may need the Technical Designer to be more of the Design Team and another more of the Production Team. So the responsibilities will be different.
Check out our easy to use Techpack Template:
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