How to Shop for Fashion Designer Software

Whether you are in school as a fashion design student or you are a professional designer looking to enhance your portfolio through the latest technology, fashion designer software can help you make your designs a reality. When you shop for this technology, keep your design, pattern-making and construction needs in balance with your own computer and design tool literacy.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Printer
• Digital camera

Bring Your Designs Into the Tech Age with Fashion Design Software

1. Remember that compatibility is key when selecting design software. Not only must the software you shop for be compatible with your computer platform (either PC or Mac) but it must also work with your current operating system.

2. Shop for fashion design software that features easy-to-navigate menus. If you have difficulty going from one function to the next when creating a design, you are less likely to put the software to its greatest use.

3. Look for software that is packaged with extensive color, texture and fabric galleries. The more choice in materials to create your designs with, the more creative you can be as a designer.

4. Check for added functionality, such as the ability to import textures or fabrics into the software and apply in scale to your design.

5. Make sure that the design software you shop for can provide you with printed patterns once your design is complete. You should be able to choose from a selection of basic pattern shapes, as well as create your own shapes for more complex construction projects.

6. View your prospective software in its preview mode. Your fashion design should be viewable in a realistic manner. In fact, you may find that many programs offer both two-dimensional and three-dimensional preview modes to view fashion designs from all angles.

7. Drape on a virtual form of your own creation in many fashion design software applications. The flexibility to enter body dimensions and create a scaled down version of your fit model is essential to drafting or draping a properly fitted garment.

Tips & Warnings

• Download a free, demonstration version of a fashion designer software you are interested in before taking the plunge. You can browse through the software's menus and get a feel for how the application works.
• Check out the software licensing requirements for any fashion design software you select for use in a fashion design school lab. The manufacturer may require a license per computer station or the software may be available in a multi-use package for school-use only.

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