Are you a designer who wants to understand how to use human sizes to enhance their work? Do you want to show more of your design style and bring that to a wide audience? Maybe you can take some cues from Fashion Design.

At Nollie we want you to realize that your creativity isn’t as limited as you think. We’re all about showing you the transferable skills in Design. 

We want designers to be adaptable and chase opportunities with their diverse skills. We do this by demonstrating the 12 Principles of Interdisciplinary design.

One thing you need to understand to become a great designer is how to design for various human shapes and sizes. Even while accommodating different bodies, the design can still feel unique and allow individuals to express themselves.

No field does this better than Fashion Design.

Designing for Form?

Fashion Design is about designing around the human form. Every person has a unique size and shape. How can designers create something tailored to different human sizes, yet still allow the owner to feel unique and individual when they’re wearing it?

Fashion Design is about understanding human proportions and creating something that fits many different body sizes and shapes. This understanding of the human body and its sizes is known in the Design world as Anthopometrics, which is the study of human sizes and shapes. We apply that to our work to make sure things fit and work for the people the design is intended for.

Having an understanding of the human form can pay out big time when you begin to adapt to different types of design projects. From designing spaces and considering how people will fit within them to understanding how people would interact with physical objects, like handles or chairs. 

What is Fashion Design?

Fashion Design is a unique design field in that it changes rapidly. Unlike Jewelry Design which is designed to be timeless, Fashion is about capturing the culture and styles of the time within an item of clothing.

For Nollie, we’ll talk about Fashion Design in a more rounded view. Everyone wears clothes, but fashion is about wearing something that reflects the wearer, kind of like in Jewelry Design.

In Fashion, we’ll be talking about female and male clothing, footwear, and other accessories like bags and headwear.

Fashion operates on a seasonal cycle and designers must be able to look at the culture and distill that in an item of clothing. With the seasonal output of Fashion, designers must be constantly aware of these cultural moments and use them to predict what people will want for the next season.

Within a Fashion context, you must be constantly aware of the current trends and spot opportunities for the future. You have to understand what people want to buy and be able to use your research to predict what they will want in the future.

Fashion is about understanding the different groups of society and understanding what they would want to wear at the time. Fashion provides a way to view how people want to be seen, and the values that they hold. Understanding that will make you unstoppable!

Why Generalist Designers Should Learn Fashion Design

For Interdisciplinary Designers, learning Fashion Design elements will allow you another outlet for your creativity. At Nollie, we truly believe the more you learn and respect the different fields within design the more you can improve your work and expand your creativity.

Fashion Design is the perfect stepping stone from designing 2D visuals to starting to understand how design can be used in 3D space. It will help you develop a deeper understanding of how to design around the sizes and tastes of people.  

Capture the Culture

Fashion firstly does a great job of showing the culture of the time. It shows a lot about the social movements, the history, and energy. Learning the impact that design plays within culture can help you understand more about history and design’s place within it.

Fashion can also be used to demonstrate traditional culture, like the traditional dresses and outfits, that you see at events like weddings, festivals and celebrations.

Learning how design impacts history and culture has a lot of ties to the Past Masters Principle of our 12 Principles of Interdisciplinary Design framework.

Adapt Your Visual Identity

Fashion Design shares the same visual elements as Graphic Design. This makes it perfect for designers coming from a Graphic Background to begin developing their interdisciplinary skills.

By adding some Fashion Design principles to your design skillset, you’ll be able to translate your style into an item of tangible clothing that can be worn as a form of expression.

Understand User Needs

Fashion Design is about creating fashionable and functional garments to fit around the human body. You need to understand the purchasing intent of the user, for example, are they buying a jacket for the snow or are they needing clothes for a festival?

This is a skill that will play out amazingly for interdisciplinary designers. As designers, our work is made to help others. Understanding the requirements of people, as well as tailoring for a wide range of different body sizes also comes into the field of Industrial Design.

Exploration of Materials and Finishes

Fabric and textures play a big role in Fashion Design. They are used to provide different looks, have functional properties like being waterproof, and provide different sensory experiences with textures.

This has a huge overlap with Interior Design. Textiles and Textures are used within interiors to create inviting spaces, provide mood, and provide sensory moments in the space by adding textures.

By following the 12 Principles, we can show you how to develop your skills and start working on different types of projects.

The History of Fashion Design

Before the Industrial Revolution, most people made their clothes. If you were rich, you would buy fashion patterns and take them down to your local seamstress. Clothes were a status symbol, the rich having their clothes made for them and the poor making their own.

To cater to the fashion needs of the rich, Charles Frederick Worth set up the first seasonal fashion house in Paris. By creating seasonal work, he offered more choices and the rich could then begin to dress themselves in their unique way, giving rise to the concept of individualism in Fashion.

Fashion played a large role for women before World War 1. Fashion was used as a symbol for women’s liberation, particularly by the UK suffragettes. Their role in the politics of the time, and women in the workforce while the men were at war, helped women gain the right to vote.

After World War 1, Fashion wanted to move past the dark years of war and introduced the Roaring 20s. Fashion became fun, and was designed to capture the party culture that became known at the time. 

War War 2, meant fabric was rationed and clothing was designed to be practical and long lasting. It’s around this time we see the introduction of materials like denim and lightweight cotton. As fabric became more accessible following the war, new fashions followed giving rise to long elegant clothing.

The 60s brought youth culture to the fashion forefront. Fashion became less about status and more about expression. This switch is something that led to the Fashion industry as we know it now, with most clothing being marketed towards younger customers.

Since the 60s, the speed of Fashion has only gotten faster. New materials like plastic, new manufacturing techniques, and globalization meant new innovative clothing could be produced faster and cheaper, and sold to larger audiences.

These processes were made faster and faster, with lowering quality and cheaper materials leading us to Fast Fashion. Fashion became seen as disposable, with clothing only worn once and then thrown away. It is still very much the way large Fashion companies operate today.

The issue with fast Fashion is that it’s terrible for the planet and an absolute waste. To counter this, Fashion Designers are now innovating new sustainable materials, processes, and techniques to make clothing that’s better for the environment and more ethically produced.

What Do I Need to Know

Visual Elements

The Visual Elements are the elements that make up what makes things look good, you may be familiar with these if you’ve read our Aesthetics post.

Lines 

Lines make up the shapes that go on to form your designs. Knowing how to draw a straight line might seem trivial but it can help you greatly further down the line.

Shape 

Shapes are objects made up of lines like squares, circles, etc. You’re an adult, I don’t need to explain to you what a shape is.  

Form

The form is about how a shape fits within its environment. If the shape is a square, then its form is a cube. 

Color

Color is how our eyes perceive light. Color plays a huge role in design. It can be used to establish mood, light, and depth for your designs. 

You can play this game  https://color.method.ac/ to improve your Colour Theory.

Texture

The texture is how something feels to the touch. Even if your design is a digital visual, it can still be used to imply what it would feel like. This adds another level of engagement between your design and the viewer. 

Space

Space refers to the area around your design, sometimes you can design for space to be around your designs. Space can also refer to negative space, which is using the space that isn’t there to add visual elements.

Value

Value is the measure of lightness and darkness in Graphic Design. White objects have the lightest value and black is the darkest value. The colors in between also have value, for example, yellow has a lighter value than the darker purple.

How to Use the Elements in Graphic Design

Pattern

Patterns are repeated elements of your design. These repeated elements could be using colors, fabrics, and graphic elements, which help create consistency.

Contrast

Contrast is the use of balancing opposing elements to create harmony. It’s created by pairing two opposing elements together, like having dark vs light as an example. You can use different elements to establish contrast, like color, texture, type, and other graphic elements.

Emphasis

Making one element of your design work stand out gives it emphasis. This drives the viewers attention to one focal point.

Balance

Balance is using symmetry to create harmony in your designs. Humans love symmetry, it is something that we psychologically enjoy looking at. 

While we love symmetry, you can use asymmetrical visuals in your design too. Having things deliberately off-balance helps draw focus towards one single element of your design.

Proportion

Proportion is the size of the individual elements of your design. It can be used to help us make sense of the images we’re looking at and establish a hierarchy. 

Rhythm / Movement

Rhythm and Movement is the use of repeated patterns, textures, and colors to create a feeling of flow. You can use that flow to draw the user’s eye to the areas you want them to look.

If you want to learn more about the Visual Elements you can check them out in our Graphic Design post.

The Fashion Design Seasons

A season in Fashion is the period clothing is released and sold. It allows designers to be on top of recent trends, change for different periods of the year, and create a new range to sell. 

Originally there were two seasons within the Fashion Industry to match the clothing needs of the year, with Spring / Summer and Autumn / Winter collections. This is still how Fashion Weeks operates.

But with Fashion becoming faster and cheaper to produce, more seasons were introduced and it matched the seasons of the year. 

However, with fast fashion, companies are making as many as 52 micro-seasons a year! That means a new clothing range every week! Many of these clothes are poor quality and will likely be worn once before being discarded. 

To combat the ever-growing problem of Fashion waste, designers are currently thinking of ditching seasons altogether. With thrift clothing becoming more and more popular, and the growing resentment towards pumping more crap into the world, designers are opting for more deliberate items of clothing that are intended to last.

Pattern Making

Pattern making is the designing of the flat layout of your fabric, which when cut and sewn together makes the 3D shape. The patterns you use can reflect the sizes of the people you are designing for and can be used as templates to keep sizing consistent.

Today, most fashion patterns are made using vectors with software like Adobe Illustrator. If you are not familiar with vectors you can read more about them in our Designing for Aesthetics post.

When you’re making a prototype (more on that later) you’ll use your patterns to create paper versions of your design that you can easily change and edit, before moving on to fabric.

Draping

Draping is the prototyping stage of Fashion Design and comes in the development stage of a project. This is when you apply the pattern onto the 3D form to make any edits and tweaks.

You can pin your pattern to a dummy or mannequin, and you can make any edits to the shape and fit of your design.

First, you apply a paper version of your pattern, this is cheaper and easier to edit and make improvements. Then you use your paper pattern to create a template that you can apply to the fabric.

This next step is about creating another prototype with muslin fabric, again this is cheaper and easier to edit but also gives you an idea of how your design would look when made of fabric.

Finally, another prototype is made out of samples of your desired fabric. This is another stage to give yourself time to develop your ideas. 

Sometimes your fabric might work differently around the form that you expected or the colors wrong. This is the final stage before buying your fabric and creating your final piece.

Sewing and Garment Construction

Sewing and Garment construction is about taking your patterns and putting them together to create a finished piece. If you take a look down at your clothes, you’ll see they’re made of different pieces of fabric sewn together. 

Individually these pieces would be the pattern mentioned above and together they create the finished item of clothing. 

It’s best to learn some basic sewing techniques to start, or if you can afford one, buy a cheap or second-hand sewing machine before investing in a better one. 

Textile Knowledge

Like a chef with an extensive knowledge of ingredients, you need to respect the materials you’re using in your design projects.

Like ingredients, there is an endless list of possibilities and each fabric comes in a range of thicknesses and fabric weaves. We’ll delve more into fabric types in a later post, but for now, here are a few you can use to start your journey.

Cotton

Cotton is a material that’s known for being soft, breathable, and versatile. Cotton is a common choice for popular clothing like t-shirts, shirts, and denim.

Polyester

Polyester is a synthetic (plastic) fabric that’s known for being durable, hard to crease, and quick drying. It’s a popular choice for sportswear, outwear, and blending with other fabrics.

Wool

Who doesn’t love a wooly jumper on a cold day? Wool is a natural material that provides warmth, and insulation and can dry up moisture. This is best used in jumpers, coats, and suits for cold climates.

Silk

Silk is a lightweight fabric that feels smooth to the touch. It’s a material that’s often used in formal attire, like dresses and blouses.

Linen

Linen is a material that’s used for summer clothing. It’s breathable and lightweight, making it perfect for summer clothing like summer shirts and dresses. Linen is also a natural material.

The Design Process

The design process is a personal workflow designers use to get from the start to the end of a project. Thankfully, interdisciplinary designers can use this framework to tackle any type of design project. We call this the Polymathic Process and can apply it to any design principle.

Brief Interpretation and Planning

The first stage of any project is to plan. It’s not the most creative activity, but it’s vital to help keep you on track to meet deadlines. 

When you get a brief for the project you’ll be given a list of things that are expected to be delivered at the end of the project. They may even include some information about the client you are working for.

You should plan your project as much as possible so you know when it’s time to move on to the next stage of the process and make sure that you submit your design proposal on time.

Research

Research is one of the most useful tools for designers and the more extensive research you do the more it will pay off in your project. Design is about understanding WHY something is the way it is, so the best way to learn that is through research.

Go out and meet experts, talk to your potential customers, read books, and get good information from credited sources. The more you learn about what you’re trying to solve, the easier it becomes to think of concepts.

Keep all your findings saved in your Design Specification, and refer to it throughout your project when you need to know key information that will impact your creative ideas.

If you’ve never used a Design Specification, you can find out more with this guide and our Design Spec template.

Find new materials, look at what your customers’ expectations are expecting, visit museums see historical fashion, and look at cultural displays to get inspiration.

Concepts

Now it’s time for the fun part! It’s time to start generating ideas. Put as many concepts as you can down on paper or in your sketchbook (or Croquis book in Fashion Design). The trick here is to explore as many ideas as possible, so you should draw small and fast.

For Fashion, you can draw some human figures and add the clothing elements over the top.

The trick here is not to overthink it. Just draw as many different ideas as possible. They say your first idea is never your best idea, so try to fill a couple of pages of your sketchbook with as many ideas as possible.

Development

The development stage is when you take one of your ideas from the concept stage and begin bringing it to its final form. It’s time to ensure that your idea is a solution that would work for real.

Begin by starting by taking your concepts from your sketchbook and begin creating the initial prototype. Prototypes play a huge role within every design field, and Fashion Design is no different. Fashion Designers test their prototypes on mannequins known as Dressmaker or Tailor’s Dummies.

To test whether or not your idea is viable, start by using paper to create your prototype. You can use these paper samples to get an idea of how your design will look on someone and make any edits easily and cheaply. 

Once you have an idea of your fashion design on your Dummy that looks great, you can begin to build fabric patterns from your paper version. You can use the paper as a template to cut the fabric. Muslin is often used in the next stage, before moving on to fabric samples.

Detail

By this stage of the project you should have a The Detail stage of the project is about tidying up your idea into a polished final solution that can be replicated and manufactured.

You’ll want to test your fabrics and ensure they meet the brief. For example, if you were designing a raincoat, you would check how well the fabric you are using deals with water.

This is the stage where you can finalize any last-minute details and tidy up any other elements of the project in preparation for your pitch.

Pitch

Now you have a final idea, it’s time to present it to your client. The important thing to remember here, is you need to be able to EXPLAIN your design choices. 

If you were active in the Research Stage of the project, you should be able to use your Design Specification to help answer any questions and explain your creative decisions.

Promotion

At the end of every project, you should spend time adding it to your portfolio. This is going to be how new potential clients will find your work and help you build your audience as a designer. 

Your portfolio is the most important document you own as a designer, so make it your habit to add to it at the end of every project.

Also, you should upload your completed project to online platforms like Behance, Dribbble, and your website. If you have an Adobe subscription, you’ll be able to build your portfolio website with Adobe Portfolio.

What Tools Do I Need?

Design Sketchbook (Croquis Book)

A Sketchbook, known in the Fashion Design world as a Croquis Book, is a book where you draw and explore your ideas. 

With Fashion Design, the sketches are normally put onto silhouettes. If you aren’t great at drawing yet, you can use these croquis books, one for women and one for men, until we make our own better ones.

If you can draw your own, then even better. If not, don’t worry we’re going to show you the best drawing techniques used by designers in a future post. Join the Nollie Newsletter today and stay up to date!

Design Journal

A Design Journal is one of the best and underrated tools you can use as a designer. I never leave home without mine!

A Design Journal is a place where you can write down any new information, your research, advice, your goals, and a to-do list. This list goes on.

The truth is it doesn’t matter what you write, you can put anything you want. But using it consistently is key. Write in it every day if you can and you’ll soon begin to see the benefits. 

Having a journal allows you to keep your thoughts and projects together and the more you use it, the more you’ll have to look back on. It becomes a place to look over your previous projects and see how far you’ve come as a designer.

A design journal is great for remembering information. Anytime there’s something that might be useful to you later on, write it down. Even just the act of writing things down will help you remember better.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud is the industry standard design software, and because a subscription with Adobe gets you access to over 20 different types of apps, like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, you see it in every design office all around the world.

Adobe is often used in Fashion Design in many stages of the project. You can make digital patterns using Adobe Illustrator using Vectors, which you’d be very familiar with if you know Graphic Design.

You can also use Adobe Illustrator for showing your concepts with nice renders, which if you are unfamiliar with the jargon, just means nice images that show off your concept.

Designers can use Photoshop to adjust colors and textures. You can swap out the colors quickly and place different textures onto your idea with ease.

You can also use Photoshop when you want to make your concept look real by adding shadows, highlights, and other effects. 

An Adobe subscription also offers you a free portfolio website with the price, which means you can always be prepared to present your work to new clients. 

You also have access to Adobe Express which can create quick graphics to be used in Social Media and includes my favorite feature which allows you to send out your images to fit the different sizes of social media platforms.

Adobe is the software we recommend, however, we believe that Design should be as accessible as possible. If you aren’t financially able to get Photoshop, we do have a list of options you can use.

Conclusion

Fashion Design is one of the best ways for designers to learn how to design for human sizes. It’s also one of the best ways to start bringing your ideas from 2D visuals into physical 3D projects. 

By understanding Fashion Design, you’ll understand fashion trends, keeping you on the pulse of what people like. You’ll know how to create something that feels unique to the owner, even if it’s produced in large quantities. 

You’ll also have an understanding of Ergonomics and Anthropometrics (the sizes of people and the forces required to perform tasks.) Which will also be a big head start if you want to expand into Industrial Design and Interior Design.

At Nollie we want you to understand the bigger picture of Design, we want to show you how the different fields are pretty similar and how you can use those areas of similarity to your advantage!

If you want to explore more why not check out our 12 Principles of Interdisciplinary Design post?