The first blueprint that your garment maker sees is a tech pack. It serves as a guide for building the garment you spent so much time and effort creating. Building a tech pack is a crucial yet challenging step in clothing design. One might easily become overwhelmed when creating one because the procedure is quite rigorous and detailed. It’s simple to make mistakes, which might have an impact on your project’s outcome. In this post, I’ll outline the step-by-step procedure for producing a tech pack and offer advice on how to produce an impeccable blueprint for your clothing.
Describe the Tech Pack
Let me first explain what a tech pack is and what all of its components are. An electronic document called a tech pack shows all the fine features of your outfit. Because it includes all of the technical information about your design, tech is short for technical. The guide to creating your clothing is in tech packs. This form asks for information on finishes, fabric samples, and preferred shipment dates. Usually, a tech pack is created digitally using Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, Microsoft Excel, or Powerpoint.
What ought to be contained in my tech pack?
Your tech pack has to have a lot of different parts. As I’ve previously stated, this document contains every single one of your design parameters in order to clearly communicate to the manufacturer how to replicate your clothing. Here are the top five characteristics of each tech bundle.
Flat Design
A flat sketch is a basic illustration of how your clothing will appear when it is laid flat on a surface. Although it may be done in color, this is commonly done in black and white. A flat sketch can be created manually using a digital snapshot or digitally using Adobe Photoshop or InDesign. This section of the tech pack focuses on the positioning of buttons, seams, hems, zippers, and other closures as well as texture. A flat drawing is used to communicate to the manufacturer where you or the designer want certain seams, hems (and the length of the hems), closures, and zipper features to be positioned on the garment. Additionally, it demonstrates to the maker how the finished product should seem.
Here is an example of a typical flat sketch. The illustration depicts both the front and back of the garment. Drawing a straightforward, straight seam simply requires one line. Two dotted lines should be used when drawing a hem. Any other seam with a distinctive style needs two dotted lines. Seams, buttons, hems, pockets, and other intricate elements like fabric should also be included. Because they are so tiny, these particulars are frequently disregarded. However, the manufacturer will not include these elements in your clothing if they are not depicted in the flat drawing. Before submitting your flat sketch to the manufacturer, it is crucial to go through it again and make any corrections that could have been neglected.
Specs
Specifications are abbreviated as specs. It includes information about your garment’s technical manufacturing. These specifics contain information about your garment’s size. Each piece of your clothing has to include sizing dimensions. For instance, it’s crucial to include the necessary sizes in your document if your business is designing and making hoodies so that the manufacturer will know how big to make them. Additionally, sizes ranging from armhole dimensions to neck drop sizings must be given ( front and back).
Specs also include information about the clothing item, color, number, and the location from which your materials will be supplied ( if necessary).
Materials
A list of the materials you want your garment to be constructed of is essential for communicating with the maker. Included in this list should be the fabric choice, trimmings, thread, embellishments, preferred interfacing weight, finishes, prints, embroidery, labels, tags, buttons, and flourishes. It is crucial to mention the business from where the materials will be transported, if necessary.
Order Specifics
In order for the manufacturer to know when to finish the garment (or to inform you and your business if there is a manufacturing delay), it is crucial that you include your target delivery date and address in your tech pack. An order is typically completed in 7 days). Instructions for packing are also essential. For instance, packaging the item laying flat rather than folded to prevent wrinkling may be wiser depending on the fabric you choose for your order.
It’s crucial to provide creation and release dates in your tech pack along with the names of your business and designer. This will guarantee that your design is yours and the property of your business and prevent any potential copyright issues.
Size, Weight, and size
Along with the specifications, it’s crucial to provide the sizes (Small, Medium, Large, etc.) and the number of each size category you want for your item. Measurements may be written right on your flat drawing or specified in an Excel column.
It’s crucial to mention in your tech pack the order’s quantity as well. It’s critical to communicate with your manufacturer about the size of your order, whether you want a sample of your created garment or a bulk purchase of 500 or more items. Despite the possibility that you did so while contacting your manufacturer, it’s crucial to restate this information in your tech pack
It’s crucial to factor the weight of your clothing into your tech kit. Numerous elements, such as the thickness and kind of fabric you’ve chosen for your project or the quantity and weight of interfacing or filler in your garment, affect weight. Share the fabric, interfacing, and filler weights as well as the ultimate target weight of your garment.
An illustration of a jacket’s tech pack is shown above. As you can see, the flat drawing of the garment is located in the document’s upper right corner. The designer’s inclusion of the jacket’s hems, seam locations, pockets, accessories, and other details are all included in the flat drawing.
The fabric swatch that will be used to make the jacket is placed next to the flat drawing. These specs include information on size, intelligence description and location, a list of materials, quantity, a supplier list, and descriptions of the colors. The business name, the season in which your garment will be published, the style name, number, and description of your garment, the date the tech pack was produced, the designer’s name, the size ranges, and the kind of fabric are all included at the top of the tech pack. A well-organized tech pack is made up of all of these parts.
