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Tips, tricks, and advice on getting a sewn product idea into development and manufacture.
Heather Zager: [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to today's podcast. My name is Heather Zager. I am the host of this podcast series and founder of Made Apparel Services. Hi! Heather here from Made Apparel Services. Welcome back to my channel. In this episode, which is the first of a four part series called Concept to Customer, I'm going to talk about design concepting boards. I'll explain why you need one and how to make them, even if you don't know how to draw. Before we start, I want to give you some background on why I created this series. Over the last couple of years working with my clients, I noticed they were consistently misinformed in four key areas. Those were design concepting, material sourcing, size and fit, and types of manufacturers. This misinformation was creating some confusion and making the experience of developing their ideas more stressful than necessary. Once I clarified things, the process became much more manageable for them and easier to understand. If you're that person, I'm hoping this series will help clarify things for you too.
Heather Zager: [00:01:03] So now on to concept boards. We'll start first with what is a concept board? The reason you need a concept board is simple. It ensures that your idea is being developed correctly the first time and in the way that you imagined. Consider, for example, if you were in need of a custom cake for a wedding, you would probably have a conversation with the baker as to how many tiers, the diameter of each tier, the frosting color, flavor, and so on. But if you say you want it decorated with red flowers, they might be imagining roses and you were thinking tulips. But neither of you realize this was a detail that needed clarification until the cake is finished and you see it and suddenly realize the idea was translated incorrectly. It's not necessarily anyone's fault, but you are now faced with the decision of accepting the cake as is or starting over. And of course, the wedding is tomorrow. Even if you think your design doesn't have a lot of detail, such as a t shirt, there is always room for something to be misinterpreted. So stay in control of the process and its outcome by thoroughly documenting the details of your design so you are both literally on the same page. Have a conversation before the start of your project and reference your illustration as you go to make sure all questions are answered. Work with someone who will actually ask questions, and be sure to be involved yourself by being responsive and available to them. It's so important that many professionals actually have a term in their agreement stating that unreciprocated communication for more than X number of days will delay or possibly even end the project. So working together will keep both of you motivated and inspired if you are equally collaborating.
Heather Zager: [00:02:44] So with that said, I'm going to next explain how to create a concept board and you can do it in five very simple steps. Now that you understand why you need a concept board, let's talk more about what it is. Simply put, it is a single page illustration of your design idea that describes visually all of the features and details of your concept. The main goal is being able to share it with others to start conversations about development. As I mentioned at the very beginning, you do not need to know how to draw. We are going to basically Frankenstein your vision together in those five steps. The first step is to determine the platform on which you want to work. If you like using posterboard or pad of paper, you can certainly do that. Many people like to go digital and use something like Canva. Any of these methods will work, the only thing to keep in mind as you go is, will this print onto an eight and a half by 11 page and still be readable? Many technical designers and product developers need to take notes or have your board in front of them for quicker reference. So consider how much space you were using as you go, and we'll get into this a bit more later.
Heather Zager: [00:03:49] Step two is about finding a reference garment that most closely captures your design idea. You will use this as a central image on your concept board. It can be an image you find online or an existing garment that you have in your closet. A lot of times people have something existing that they want to replicate. Its perfect in every way except maybe 2 or 3 things. And that is exactly what is creating their concept of this new design that they want to build. If you are able to sketch, you can rough up an outline or a silhouette, as we call it, of the style on paper. It does not have to be perfect, it's just something as close as possible to your vision as a starting point, and we will build on this image in the next steps. If you are using the internet to source your central image, try to curate only photos that show the garment being worn instead of ones showing the garment laying flat on a table or hanging up on a hanger. If you are sketching, use a croqui, which is a human form that you trace over. You can find free downloadable croquis everywhere, but the ones on Fashionary are proportionally accurate. If you have a current garment you are using, have someone put it on first and then take the pictures. You'd be surprised how much information about fit and proportion is captured by the trained eye of a pattern maker when they see the garment on a human form. But also you will instinctively pick photos that have a fit and a look you couldn't otherwise know how to explain or describe. One final thought: don't forget the back. Even if it's nothing special, capture that picture of the back too so that your team knows that you didn't just forget it, and then that forces them to have to clarify with you.
Heather Zager: [00:05:30] The next step is step three. This is where it gets fun as you start to describe everything you don't like or want to change about your reference image. For example, if you don't like the color of your image, find an image of a color you do like. Whether you see a shirt in a store and take a picture of it, or you find an image online or you sketch it, you will collect all of these detail images until you have fully edited your design in the way that you want, and then you'll be adding them to your board in the next step. So at this point, what you have is one central focus image that is as close to your style as you can get, and then a whole bunch of detail images, whether it's the collar or the hem or a sleeve shape, button placket, anything that you want to change about your reference image. You are focusing in on the details and the aspects of your central image to effectively change them as we go forward.
Heather Zager: [00:06:26] Step four is going to be about taking all of these images and organizing them onto your board. So the first thing you're going to do is take your reference image and put that in the center of your board, and then draw a circle or a square around that just to encapsulate it. Next, place your detail images from step three around the central image, but closest to the areas that they reference. For example, any color images would be near the head and any images describing the hem would be towards the bottom of your board. Position these around the perimeter of your central image just as best as you can, as best as they will fit. If you are struggling for space, you can put the photo of the back of your garment onto a second page and move some of these detail images that are relevant for the front and the back over to the back, and then you'll have more space for the front. Then what you're going to do is draw a line from your detail images to the point on the central image that they describe. You can start adding in handwritten notes or sketch on any top of images to further describe your design, but as you work, don't forget to consider how it's going to print out. So step four is going to take a little bit of finagling, and you'll go around and around and you'll make some different decisions and you'll change things. And that's good.
Heather Zager: [00:07:39] Step five is simply going to be about printing out your design and making sure you can still read it. So if you need to go back to your board and rearrange those detail images, you can do that. And if you're still struggling for space, even after doing a back view, keep in mind a few things that you do not need. You don't need brand or logo images. You don't need colorways, inspiration, target market or vendor or sourcing information. You also don't need material information or findings like buttons and zippers. That's not to say that these things aren't important, but what we're doing with this concept board is simply trying to convey your design idea in a more technical way and understand how it's constructed. And it's supposed to start a conversation, and it's in that conversation that you start talking about colorways, size ranges, your logo, fabrications and things of that nature. So now that your board is done and you do have it all fitting on a page or two, if you have a back view, I also suggest turning it into a PDF and attaching it if you're going to email it to someone rather than embedding it as an image. Embedding is notoriously inconsistent with size, and I've even received some where it's interrupting the text in the body of the email and I missed everything after the image. I was so confused until I figured out what had happened. So make it simpler for the person that you're sending it to and sharing it with, in that they can just print it out and read your email and understand what you're trying to do, and then just pick up the phone and call you and you have that conversation.
Heather Zager: [00:09:10] Now I realize it might be a bit difficult to visualize everything that I've been explaining and describing in this podcast, so I'm going to give you the Design Concepting Guide PDF that I created for my clients. Normally I only send it when someone signs up for my Design Concepting course, but you'll definitely appreciate the value of it now that we've had a conversation that you can't really see what I'm describing. So just email me at Heather@MadeApparelServices.com and I'm happy to send it your way. When you have your concept board done, I can also send you an estimate for the next step of pattern making, if you'd like. Email that to me at the same address, or there's also a button at the bottom of my homepage on my website for a free estimate, and you can submit it there and that website is MadeApparelServices.com.
Heather Zager: [00:09:55] Thank you so much for listening. Don't forget to subscribe or follow me, because I do post regularly and want to make sure that you catch the latest. If you do have any questions or suggestions for future videos or podcasts, you know how to get ahold of me. Have fun concepting.