So You Want to Be an Apparel Designer?

It’s
nearly impossible to walk into a clothing store and not see a
plethora of designs on the apparel being sold. Whether you’re aiming
to design for a specific company or brand, or license your work as a
freelancer, knowing what it takes to be an apparel designer is
crucial for your career to be successful. 

I interviewed several
designers who work in high fashion, as an indie designer, and for
various apparel brands to get to know what their work-lives have been
like so far. Consider this your guide to working as an apparel
designer.

What Do Apparel Designers Do?

Do
they just create rad t-shirt designs? What about other textile
prints? How much does the designer need to know about the printing
and manufacturing process to create successful designs? Let’s break
it down:

• Conceptual
  Design: The apparel designer may need not only to create some
  fantastic illustrations that will be applied to t-shirts and such,
  but also to create an entire line through a
  concept design. What will each garment look like? Where will the
  design be placed or printed onto the garment? How does one garment go
  with another? When creating a collection, the conceptual stage is key
  in figuring out how your work will fit into the final product.
• Illustration:
  It’s the most obvious answer of them all: the design itself. Artists
  who work within apparel have to create the original paintings,
  drawings, and vector creations that will later be reproduced onto
  garments and accessories.
• Working
  with Templates: Depending on the designer’s position, they may be
  asked to fit their design to a template that is either printed
  directly or to be used as a guide by the printer or manufacturer to
  make sure the integrity of the design isn’t compromised due to
  manufacturer limitations.
• Trend
  Spotting: Since the final product is something that needs to be
  marketable, knowing what current fashion, pop culture, and design
  trends are happening or gaining popularity can help a designer keep
  their work current and marketable. Whether this means working
  directly with a marketing team or keeping up on what’s trending
  socially or with other designers, it’s rare that anyone can design
  without outward influence if they want their work to sell (especially
  if you’re working for a larger brand or company).
• Know
  the Printing Process: Designers need to know the limitations of
  their artwork when designing for print. Will it be screen-printed or
  printed digitally? Do whites in the design get printed or are they
  rendered transparent? What about the size of the print itself: will
  it fit the garment, or do you need to provide multiple versions for
  each product? We’ll go into this in more detail below, but knowing
  how your work will ultimately be represented is an important step in
  successful apparel design.
• And
  More… Really the designer
  wears multiple hats. Some may only have the position of creating
  illustrations that will be handled by teammates or co-workers in
  the garment-creating process. Others, however, may have to generate
  print-ready content from sketch to finished product and will need to
  work closely with printers, manufacturers, and marketing teams to
  make sure their designs are ready for store shelves. Let’s explore
  this career further!

“As
a freelancer
I now work as a textile and
surface designer, as well as an illustrator and visual communication
consultant for both big companies and
independent brands, stylists, photographers, and magazines.” —
Silvia
Stella Osella,
textile and apparel designer.

What
Training Do Apparel Designers Have?

As
always, this question gets a mix of answers. Some designers have
formal training in illustration or design and hold a bachelor’s
degree or higher in a field related to their career. Other designers
are self-taught and have learned their craft along the way or through
online courses and other informal settings.

“[I
studied] Graphic Design at the University of Research and Development
in Bucaramanga, Colombia. I graduated in 2012 and was always drawn to
design and illustration, so I decided to study this. I like
typography and illustration and try to combine both [in my work].”
— Pellisco, apparel designer and illustrator.

“A
lot of things are unclear in the creative world, especially if you
grew up in an engineer’s family, studied to become an economist and
suddenly decided to change your course completely and become an
artist, without any experience and art education. I
actually have no formal training in anything I draw,
it was
difficult to understand where to direct my creativity. I started
learning
how to create vector graphics. […]
Now it’s my lovely job, I do that full time and travel around the
world non-stop.”
— Ira
Markovka, microstock and textile designer.

For
Whom Do Apparel Designers Work?

Let’s
take this in two parts: in-house and freelance (with freelance
including indie designers). 

For in-house designers, you may work for
a specific fashion brand or a company that produces all sorts of
products including apparel and textiles. If you work for a specific
brand, your design work will be under that brand name, and the
challenge of adhering to that brand’s image will be among your daily
tasks when creating concepts for apparel designs. The same goes,
really, for being contracted to create work for an existing brand.

In
the case of working for a larger company that manufactures apparel
and textiles in addition to many other products, you may not only be
an apparel designer, but also a surface and print designer of many items.
Or you may find that your scope is quite wide in the types of designs
you create. 

Let’s say you worked for Disney in their consumer
products division. While some of your tasks may be working on an
upcoming line of clothing designs, the wider scope of your work may
be creating additional products under that line or working on
multiple properties within the span of a season. The short of working
in-house is your client base doesn’t change unless you’re in-house at
an agency of sorts and your company takes on new clients as a whole.

“I
am now in my first months of being a completely freelance designer.
For 7 years I was working as a textile, interior, and toy designer in
different companies, combined with small and large scale freelance
projects. About half a year ago, I quit my day job, and moved with my
husband to another country for a long term adventure. That’s when I
concentrated on doing only freelance work.“ — Elena Belokrinitski

Freelancers,
however, and indie designers have more wiggle room when it comes to
their design scopes. Your client base may change monthly, weekly, or
even daily depending on what sort of schedule you’ve created. As such
you may work for a children’s apparel brand one day and an adult
sporting goods brand another. 

Indie designers may be focused on their
own personal brand, in which case your design demographic may be
entirely up to you if you find you’re successful in marketing your
own work. The short of working as a freelancer, contract worker, or
indie designer is your client base may change often, and who you work
for is quite variable.

Any
company, brand, or retailer that needs design work may hire a
designer or take on wholesale products to sell (in the case of indie
designers producing their own products). Considering how popular
apparel is (we all need clothes, right?), it’s no wonder that this
question is answered with a wide variety of companies and clients.

“At
the moment I am a freelance artist, but I work for companies doing
designs for them (such as Gametee and others), as well as doing
freelance work with conventions and online stores.” — Belle
Hissam, freelance designer.

In
What Media Do Apparel Designers Work?

Specifically,
in what media do the designers I interviewed work? Really,
whatever works and whatever a printer needs is what will ultimately
be used. Knowing what others who are successful work in often,
however, can be informative and guide those who may be asking, “How
do I get this doodle onto that shirt?”

“In
most of my work I start with traditional illustrations, mostly
ink/watercolor on paper, and then I bring it to the computer and do
touch-ups and color adjustments or add elements later. This is so
much easier when working with clients too because sometimes they ask
something like ‘Can we move the hand and change the pose and maybe
use a different hair?’ on the finished character, which is a real
drag if you only work traditionally. Sometimes one does have to
remind the client you don’t work with magic; Photoshop is not magic.”
— Anneli Olander Berglund, freelance designer.

Most
answered Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, which is
understandable considering they’re industry standards. Often printers
need designs to be saved in layered formats (especially if they’re
screen-printing artwork and need each layer to correspond to a
separate screen) or large, high resolution formats (often both). 

For
file formats you’ll find .PSD, .AI, and .PDF to be commonly requested
formats for printing. The former two are
layered and can easily be saved in high resolution formats. The
latter, however, will ensure that a flat image is printed exactly as
intended (when it comes to typefaces and layer order used). For more
specific answers, however, I defer to some of the designers I spoke
to below:

“I
work with dotted notebooks for the primary sketch in order to
conceptualize and put to paper a thumbnail of my design. That helps
me ensure that I find the perfect composition with the perfect
dynamic. After that I work with my Wacom Cintiq Companion, where I
upscale my sketch and refine it with more details. The next part is
the inking of the artwork and the selection of my color scheme (2 or
3 colors).” — Thibaut “Meka” Désiront, illustrator and textile designer.

What
Process Do Designs Go Through Before Becoming Apparel?

I
find you can learn a lot from the processes of other artists. As such, I asked those I interviewed what their typical process for apparel
design was, and I have a few examples for you to learn from below:

“Depending
on the client, they’ll usually tell me how they want the final file
set up. [One client] asks that I make all the separations with square
or diamond shaped registration guides. A few of my clients merely
want the Illustrator file and work from that.” — Asher Benson,
freelance designer and Tuts+ instructor.

“Once
I have a sketch that I like, or the client approves, I start with the
inking process. Normally
I do this process in Adobe Illustrator. Once
inked, I begin coloring. The
technique of depends on where you go to print: if I
need vector format, I
work in Illustrator, and if not I use both and color with Photoshop
with a very good resolution and a rather large size.” — Juan Manuel Orozco, freelance designer.

“The
initial research process is probably the one I enjoy the most: field
trips, trend and color analysis, it’s such a fascinating world! I
had no idea before starting working in this field that so many things
such as sociology, anthropology, sciences, etc. could merge and
influence even what color we are going to wish to wear next season!

“It’s
very important for our job to be constantly aware of trends. And I
personally think that being conscious […]
of what happens around us, and not just regarding the direct subjects
that we work on, truly makes the difference. Then
everything is translated into a mood board or declined to a brief, if
designed specifically for a customer.” — Silvia Stella Osella

Additional
Thoughts and Words of Advice from Apparel Designers

“When
I first got started with designing, after completing an image, I
thought that was the end: send to the designer and wait for new
shirts! I soon realized that measurements should be taken for each
aspect of your design to ensure that the print comes out the way you
intended. For our process, this includes measuring out physical
shirts and even pre-printing designs on paper to ensure an accurate
design when it’s finalized.” — Bryan Shelmon of Anthem Culture

“I
have a very strong bond to my designs. When I see people on the
street wearing my patterns, I have the strong urge to come and hug
them. The highlight of this was a few years ago: I
had designed a collection of surfing shorts for a rather low cost
brand, and went on vacation to a beach town in the country where
those shorts were produced. On the same day I saw dozens of teens in
“my” shorts, and later the same day my pattern as wallpaper in a hair salon! Boy, what a day! I felt like the queen of
patterns.” — Elena Belokrinitski

“Keep
a sketchbook always in your pocket and draw whenever you can. Don’t
criticize yourself for the first steps. When you practice a lot you
become more confident in your lines you make and little by little
drawing becomes an important part of your life.” — Ira Markovka

Conclusion

So
you want to be an apparel designer? It takes an understanding not
only of illustration and design, but also of what your client needs
in order to print the product to your original concept’s
specifications as well as the manufacturer’s specifications. Through
experience you’ll learn the ins and outs of textile and apparel
design.

Ask
questions, learn from your clients, and work with printers,
marketers, manufacturers, and fellow designers when possible so your
artwork meets the standards each item needs in order to be ready to
be sold. Get a taste for apparel design with print services like
Society6, RedBubble, and TeePublic, where you can print on demand and
design a variety of items for your fanbase as well as learn more about designing garments.

I hope you found this article informative and inspirational. Got questions, anecdotes, or advice about apparel design? Share them in the comment section below!

Many thanks to the artists who took the time to answer my questions and give us a peek into their lives and experiences as apparel and textile designers. You can check out their work or gallery spaces in the links below:

• Anneli Olander Berglund
• Asher Benson
• Belle Hissam
• Bryan Shelmon
• Ira Markovka
• Juan Manuel Orozco
• Elena Belokrinitski
• Pellisco
• Silvia Stella Osella
• Thibaut “Meka” Désiront