How to Design in 7 Steps
To state the obvious, the process of designing a collection is different for everyone. Although, at FIT most of my portfolio professors really stressed the importance of documenting your process, and I’m so grateful for that because it put together how I create and gave me more clarity on where to begin a collection.
Start with a theme…get as specific as you want, sometimes the more specific the better.
Inspo / Research - this is the fun part; gather anything and everything that inspired the theme, whether that be a color from an ad you saw on the subway, a texture of a fabric you found at an antique shop, or the silhouette of a dress your friend wore to a party. Anything can be your inspiration, and thats part of the beauty. When digging for research and getting design inspiration, be sure to start gathering ideas about trends. What trends are something you’d like to incorporate in your collection?
Fabric- this is mostly inspired by which season I’m designing for, along with the theme. I placed fabric as the third step, but it’s also after I define my key elements, and I go back into this even after I sketch & refine to see if I’m missing anything for texture and/or color.
Define your key elements- there should always be clear and strong design elements that carry throughout a collection. To get organized, I create a loose plan of ideas by simply folding a piece of paper to have 4 sections. I develop 1 strong design element idea in each section and do quick sketch variations of each element. And the same for the other three sections. (if I have a larger collection, I do 8 ideas, etc etc.)
Start sketching- after looking at all my inspiration and a bit of design planning, I get a clear direction of where I want to take the collection and start sketching. I continue with thumbnails at first and create as much as I can. I’ve learned it’s better to have too many ideas and narrow down later, than to have not enough and have to add in last minute.
Refine, refine, refine- I sketch as much as I can and never all in one day, because new ideas spark with fresh energy, and I could come across something that inspires me the very next day. After that, I take what I have and start filtering. I take my strongest designs, and keep refining. Designing is difficult because fashion is constantly evolving, and sometimes my creativity sparks in random spurts, so it almost feels like a collection is never finished. I refine until I think the collection is cohesive and as strong as I think it can be.
Quick Tip - backgrounds on pages that contain illustrations / flats should be blank. If you must choose a background, it should be extremely minimal / simple. (This is not my opinion, this is from every FIT illustration professor I had AND my experience in the industry)
Finalize- take all of your elements and combine an amazing portfolio that you are proud of!
