Design Concepting

MADE Apparel Services Podcast

Host Heather Zager welcomes listeners to the inaugural episode of the MADE Apparel Services Podcast. Heather started the podcast to offer tips, tricks, and advice on getting a sewn product idea into development and manufacture. Today she begins a four-part series called Concept to Customer and explains the first step, design concepting boards.

Design concept boards ensure that your idea is being developed correctly. Heather noticed that many clients don’t know what design details to communicate and how to communicate them effectively through their concept boards. So to start, she defines a concept board as a single-page illustration of your design idea that visually describes all the features and details of your design. She then lays out five easy steps for understanding and creating a design concept board.

Heather’s five steps are: determine the platform you want to work on, find a reference garment that most closely matches your design idea, describe everything you don’t like or want to change about the reference image, organize all the detailed images on the board, and print the design. Through each step, she explains what is being done and why and offers examples of how to accomplish the task. Heather breaks down processes with ease and clarity in a way that will make your design journey, from idea to finished garment, smooth and efficient.

About Heather Zager | MADE Apparel Services Founder and Owner

Heather Zager found her calling when she signed up for a beginning pattern making course and realized she had a passion for technical design. She subsequently enrolled in the Apparel Design and Development program at Seattle Central College and graduated two years later with her Associate of Applied Science Degree.

After graduation, she began working with Meta assisting in developing and designing augmented and virtual reality wearable tech gear. In 2020, MADE Apparel Services was born with the idea of helping makers, inventors and designers bring their own sewn product ideas to manufacture. Since then, she has worked with various businesses such as Santa’s Tailor, Feathered Friends, Wolfpack Gear and Classic Accessories, helping them achieve their goals in design, development, pattern making, sewn construction and manufacture.

Today, Heather continues to grow her knowledge and share her experiences with others to bring their visions to reality.

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Resources discussed in this episode:

• Request the Design Concepting Guide PDF: email
• Fashionary.org croqui templates

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Contact Heather Zager | MADE Apparel Services:

• Website: MADEApparelServices.com
• Facebook: MADEApparelServices
• Instagram: MADEApparelServices
• Linkedin: MADEApparelServices

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Transcript

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 wa...