Whether you want your first (or next) job in fashion design, or you want to grow your career as a freelance fashion designer, Adobe Illustrator is required. This guide includes free step-by-step video tutorials and templates so you can learn quickly!
There are 37 video tutorials in this guide, so I’ve broken them out into 7 sections organized in logical order. You can follow each one, or skip to ones relevant to you.
- The Illustrator Beginner Series for Fashion Designers
- Fashion Sketches (AKA fashion flats)
- Intuitively Draw Curved Lines
- Recolor Your Designs & Create Colorways in Minutes
- Seamless Repeating Patterns & Textile Design
- Tech Sketches & Technical Design
- Fashion Brushes (zippers, stitching, gathers, etc)
But if you want a little background on Illustrator for fashion, how (and why!) it’s used, keep reading.
What Software Do Fashion Designers Use to Draw?
If you watch YouTube videos or go to fashion school, you may think that fashion designers frolic in fabric all day and sketch beautiful designs on paper.
Because hand sketching is glamorous. It’s sexy!
Visually, it “looks” really good.
But hand sketching in the fashion industry is OUTDATED.
Hand sketching skills can be useful to get ROUGH ideas on paper quickly. (I know some designers who still start the design process this way.)
But in reality, digital (read: computer) drawing skills are MANDATORY.
This is especially important when you want to work remotely as a freelancer.
There are a handful of “fancy” fashion design programs out there: Colour Matters, Ned Graphics and Kaledo are a few.
There are also a handful of “general” design programs out there: Corel Draw, Freehand and InkScape are a few.
But NONE of this fashion design software competes with Adobe Illustrator.
Adobe is one of the most WIDELY used design programs in the world.
It’s used in LOADS of industries from fashion to graphics and architecture to web.
It’s a GIANT company with engineers up the WAZOO and offices around the world.
Since so many people use it, it’s cost effective (just over $600/year for the entire Suite as of February 2022) and always maintained.
Simply put: Adobe JUST WORKS.
Contrast that against fashion software (NedGraphics, Kaledo and Colour Matters are the 3 big ones) and you’re looking at very different things.
First, fashion specific software is EXPENSIVE.
Many programs cost tens of thousands of dollars JUST to get set up ($10-25k) and have yearly subscriptions that are thousands PER user.
Some BIG brands might have that kind of money for software. But smaller brands and freelancers don’t!
After all that $$$, the interfaces are clunky, some only work on Windows, and support is mediocre at best. (I know because I’ve used some of them.)
They don’t get updated often, they’re buggy, and most are just OUTDATED.
This screenshot of Colour Matters from late 2018. A photo is worth a thousand words:
There’s even been rumor that they’re going out of business…which is another scary thing about using “industry” software.
They just can’t maintain their programs.
IMAGINE:
It’s mid design season and *poof*, just like that, your software is gone.
No more updates. No more support. All the work you created? Eventually, you’ll have to recreate from scratch it in another program.
Which is why Illustrator wins. It’s flexible, you can endlessly edit things, it’s relatively cheap.
And it’s not going anywhere.
If you want to work in fashion design, Adobe Illustrator is mandatory.
Do you need to know Photoshop for fashion design too?
You do not need to know Photoshop for fashion design. Photoshop should be used for photos (cough, Photoshop, cough).
I’m not anti-photoshop, and there’s a time and place when designers use it in fashion. But it’s not used for the core set of skills you need, like sketching fashion flats, creating technical sketches, and laying out line sheets.
Fashion design is done with Illustrator. I promise, it’s all you need.
What Version of Illustrator Do I Need?
The current versions of Illustrator are subscription based and called Creative Cloud (CC). When you subscribe to CC, you get access to all updates.
Previously (before June 2013), designers would buy Illustrator (and other Adobe software) outright and own it.
When it got updated, you either kept the old version or paid for the upgrade.
What version do you need?
The older versions of Illustrator were called Creative Suite (CS2, CS3, CS4, CS5, CS6).
Although CS5 and CS6 still work fairly well, they’re becoming more obsolete every year.
Illustrator CS2, 3 or 4? That stuff is VINTAGE in digital years.
MOST brands are on Creative Cloud (CC). Meaning the software LIVES on your computer but is CONNECTED to the internet.
That way, it’s always up to date like MAGIC.
As a freelancer, using the most up-to-date version of Illustrator shows brands that you’re a professional.
It requires a monthly (or yearly) payment. Illustrator alone is about $20 a month.
If you’re still on CS, do you need to upgrade?
It’s up to you and your needs.
If you’re just using Illustrator for your own design purposes (i.e. you’re not sharing files with clients or other team members), older versions can work just fine.
If you have freelance clients, most brands will expect you to be on the latest version. Otherwise, you’ll have file compatibility issues.
That’s because Adobe supports forward compatibility, but not backwards.
That means if you’re on CS6 (older version) and your client is on CC (newer version), they can open YOUR files, but you won’t be able to open THEIRS.
Also, artwork can become a jumbled mess when transferring between versions. Designs can get so “broken” that they can become almost useless.
More than once, I’ve inherited artwork from different versions that was such a mess, it was easier for me to redraw it than try and work with existing files.
So, even though many people are annoyed about paying a monthly subscription fee, I personally think it’s a great way to keep everyone up to date on the same version. It makes it a lot easier to collaborate and share files.
What Do Fashion Designers Use Illustrator For?
MOST of the fashion design process is done in Illustrator, from sketching to coloring and repeating pattern design to presentation boards.
And here are some of the exact tasks you’ll use Illustrator for:
CAD work like Fashion Flats & Tech Sketches
“Flats” are black and white drawings of a garment as if it were laying FLAT on a table. They include accurate construction and styling details (unlike fashion illustrations, which are more artsy).
Add callouts for construction details? They’re now tech sketches. These are used in tech packs to visually show a factory how to make the garment.
(Newbie to fashion? Flats / tech sketches and tech packs are two great services to offer as a freelance fashion designer. That’s why my premium Illustrator and tech pack courses are available to Freelance Accelerator students.)
Textile (Surface) Design + Seamless Repeating Patterns
Illustrator has a pretty amazing pattern-making tool that makes it easy to create custom seamless repeating patterns. You can then fill your flats with them to mockup designs. The software allows you to infinitely customize the size, colors and direction (e.g. on the bias) of the pattern.
Colorways and Line Sheets / Presentation Boards
Fashion designers typically put all the garments in all the colorways together on one “board” to show the collection merchandised. These layouts are great for design meetings, buyer presentations, or catalogs to help present the line as a whole.
Tech Packs (Do NOT use Illustrator for this. PLEASE DON’T.)
I debated whether or not to even include this, but I let it make the cut for TWO reasons:
- I know A LOT of designers and brands who use Illustrator for tech packs
- Illustrator should NOT be used to create tech packs, and I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you why.
Tech packs in Illustrator are INEFFICIENT. And since I’m an efficiency NERD…
Here are 5 reasons you shouldn’t use Illustrator for tech packs (and do them in Excel instead):
- Illustrator does not do math, and things like graded specs require math. Luckily, Excel does this very well.
- Illustrator does not do charts, and tech packs are full of gridded layouts. Like this one for colorways:
Or this one for your BOM (Bill of Materials):
Have you ever tried to create (and then edit!) a chart like that in Illustrator? It’s a huge pain and waste of time. Excel does this with a few clicks. - Illustrator does not play very well with Excel. Meaning it’s painful to bring data (like graded specs) from Excel into AI. Trust me, it’s much easier to bring your AI sketches into Excel.
- Most people don’t have (or don’t know how to use) Illustrator. But Excel? Almost everyone has it. So when your boss or client needs a quick edit, they can DIY it instead of bugging you for Every. Little. Change. #annoyingforeveryone
- Illustrator doesn’t link data…so when you have to keep inputting the same info over and over, it’s a huge pain and a LOT of repetition. And of course (you guessed it) you can do this in Excel.
Illustrator is DESIGN software. Not DEVELOPMENT software.
(Don’t believe me? Check out how I put tech packs together in Excel and download my free template. For super in-depth step by step learning, I have a comprehensive course on tech packs available exclusively inside Freelance Accelerator. I’ve “converted” plenty of designers who’ve graciously thanked me for cutting their tech pack time in half.)
Free Adobe Illustrator Tutorials For Fashion Design
Hand picked and logically organized based on what YOU need to learn RIGHT now.
This is where the REAL work begins.
Up next are 37 tutorials I HAND PICKED for you. But you don’t have to go through ALL of them!
Because here’s the thing about Illustrator…You don’t have to know how to do everything. (I don’t, and pretty much no one does!)
And you don’t have to MEMORIZE it all. I’ve even been known to go back and watch my OWN tutorials. #truestory
Click through to the tutorials that make the most sense for you and hit play.
- The Illustrator Beginner Series for Fashion Designers
- Fashion Sketches (AKA fashion flats)
- Intuitively Draw Curved Lines
- Recolor Your Designs & Create Colorways in Minutes
- Seamless Repeating Patterns & Textile Design
- Tech Sketches & Technical Design
- Fashion Brushes (zippers, stitching, gathers, etc)
