Here at Astute Graphics Hovel Towers, we are the first to admit that we’re not fashionable. Fashion is something reserved for those referred to as “dudes” (and “dudettes”?). However, we can all aspire…

But one aspect of fashion that is increasingly taking our interest is the widespread use of Adobe Illustrator in the fashion design industry. And we acknowledge it’s a very significant industry; we should know as some of our most well-known customers include Nike, Esprit and Nordica. Just as we concentrated on solving workflow issue within the pre-press, packaging and flexo industry when developing Phantasm CS Publisher version 2, we are now expanding our horizons to include other industries.

Hello Fashion Classroom

The roots for our interest in the fashion design industry are coupled to more than one event. A significant development that ignited our curiosity on what the fashion designers of today want to see improve in their workflow, was a message that arrived from Jason McConnell who is currently co-establishing a new fashion design training and resource website, Fashion Classroom (www.fashionclassroom.com). It’s still early days for Jason and his colleagues, with the website in its “beta” stage, but it shows much promise, including a set of very useful tutorial videos. They even kindly added our latest HD Phantasm CS movies!

The videos and Illustrator tips already present in the Fashion Classroom website highlight specific requirements to this line of design work. These include the handling of Pattern fills, for which a couple of very useful videos clearly set out excellent workflow solutions.

We will continue to follow the development of Fashion Classroom and will let you know when it is fully released.

Other fashion design resources

We are only beginning to scratch the surface of what other resources are out there for fashion designers who have Illustrator keyed into their daily lives. One excellent resource that we did find was a website produced by a company called Designers Nexus Inc. (www.designersnexus.com). On their website, an extensive set of Illustrator (and Photoshop) artwork resources may be purchased and downloaded for free…

Artwork includes what’s referred to as “fronts” (detailed clothing design outlines) and “croquis” (figures). See – we are trying to learn!

Designers Nexus also have an excellent, if fast-paced, Illustrator fashion design-specific video which may be found by clicking here. This video demonstrates their modular approach to fashion designing in vector, based on their library of artwork components.

There are also a number of Illustrator plugin developers who also cater for the fashion design industry. One such example is Artlandia (www.artlandia.com) with its powerful SymmetryWorks solution.

Astute Graphics maintains a comprehensive list of commercial and free plugins and scripts available for Illustrator. Following our recent website refresh, this page a little homeless, but can still be found at www.astutegraphics.com/links/.

But what do fashion designers crave from Illustrator?

We know from our own customers that many fashion designers already use Phantasm CS for its ability to easily and powerfully modify vector and image colors using standard tools such as Curves and Hue/Saturation. For example, when applying patterns across a garment design, it’s possible to use Phantasm CS to simply change the blue shades to, say, green.

But there’s much more to fashion design than just color. Basic design creativity is the foundation to all artwork. For example, what do you look to improve on when drawing with the Illustrator Pen tool all day? Just as the Phantasm CS Publisher Ink Coverage tool solved a specific void for pre-press operators, can you envisage any tools for Illustrator which would really be welcome by fashion designers?

We’d love to hear from you. Please either leave a comment at the bottom of this article or contact us direct.