Creative Fashion Design with Illustrator

By Kevin Tallon

In today's world of fashion, companies are looking for creative people who can communicate their designs quickly and neatly. The challenge faced by designers using computers is to create, produce and deliver ideas on a tight schedule while retaining their creativity. This book is one of the first to show both students and professionals in the fashion industry how to use the Adobe Illustrator vector-based design package to make technical drawings of garments in a fast and precise way, building a library of trims and design details and how to visualize and render their design ideas. The book's structure is to start at the basics, with clear step-by-step instructions on creating flat drawings of simple items such as vests, skirts and shirts, and gradually move on to more difficult tasks once the basics have been mastered. Once the reader has learned all the techniques in the book, they will be able to produce in printed and digital format all the common items used by design studios to communicate ideas such as mood boards, illustrations, garment range, sketches, design details and technical design sheets. Adobe Illustrator is the most established and commonly used application in the fashion industry. The book covers both Mac and PC platforms, and the version of Illustrator used - version 10 - is the most established and latest major upgrade.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0713490225
• ISBN13: 9780713490220
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: B.T. Batsford
• Length: 174 Pages
• Weight: 1.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 9.5" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Starter book

I found this book extremely helpful. Although I am an advanced user in Illustrator, there were some tricks I didn't know. I specifically got this book for the instructions for jacket linings. I modified the technique to be faster and easier for my own work habits, but through and through this book tells you how to become more efficient. I like the emphasis on using the book as a starting point and exploring Illustrator for yourself. The way to really learn is to play with it.

highly recommended

i love this book. it has taught me a lot, and it is focused specifically at using illustrator to create fashion flat drawings. the tutorials are clear and simple, and once i did a few i was comfortable enough to continue on my own. the book is full of illustrations and clear instructions. i have lent this book out to friends, and i recommended it to my instructors in college and they purchased it as well. bottom line: if you need to learn to use illustrator for fashion flats this is the only book you need to get started.

Great for beginners

This book is Great for novice Illustrator users. It has great step by step tutorials that really walk the reader through the basics of Illustrator. The tutorials are clear and informative. The book is well organized. As a proficient Illustrator user, I found a couple of tricks useful, but overall I would not recommend for anyone already experienced with Illustrator or for graphic artists not in the apparel field. Also the book is geared toward readers in the UK and therefore instructs the reader to set settings to A4 paper and millimeters. This may be confusing for some readers, and using A4 paper settings will probably not work with most US printers. I will be teaching a CAD for apparel class this fall, and plan to use this book. It can be difficult to find CAD books that are geared towards fashion design, and many of the great books out there are starting to become out of date. This book is relevant and current (Illustrator CS3).

Great Deal, Great Intro to Illustrator

This book is Fabulous! This book is a much better guide than the recommended one for a class that I am currently taking at Cornell U. that has an Illustrator component to it. Although I have just received it and therefore haven't used it much yet, the only missing info so far seems to be for drawing a zipper, a necessary tool for fashion design! This book is set up in an easy, tutorial manner and seems to cover a lot of tools for illustrating fashion technical flats. Minor Beware: the author is a MAC snob. All the patterning software that I have used(Lectra,Gerber,Optitex) is PC platform and I would have thought that he should recognize that the Fashion Industry is mostly PC based and put in MAC commands after the primarily used PC ones.

Great for beginner

I'm familiar with other drawing programs but illustrator was the only one available where I worked. I had to get up to speed quickly (as in over the weekend!)for a presentation the next week. This book saved me. It is very detailed and is perfect for a beginner. I was able to get right to the specifics of fashion design without learning other features that may not be applicable to fashion. Thanks, Kevin, for writing this book!