After immersing yourself in the world of design, it’s inevitable that the language of the industry will start creeping into your day-to-day conversations. What you need to be aware of, however, is that this familiarity in design jargon isn’t necessarily the best way to convey your intentions to an investor or manufacturer. As you start on the path of product development, you’ll need to adapt accordingly as your start dealing with different people in every stage of the process.
Partners and Investors
This is the kind of disconnect that typically comes up at the early stages of the entrepreneurial process. If your potential partners and investors don’t have a design background, it’s especially vital to show polished illustrations and renderings of your product, rather than rough descriptions. It’s worthwhile doing a couple of test runs where possible to secure testimonials from customers.
Manufacturers
For manufacturers, you’ll need to take it up a notch. Given that they’re well-versed in concepting and ideation, ensuring that you have technical drawings noting the exact measurements of your eventual product. Putting together a full tech pack is also helpful when communicating your design, and allows little room for error or tolerances when a certain fabric or material can’t be sourced.
In other instances, you might be working with a factory that doesn’t have in-house staff to assist with technical drawings. If you haven’t been trained in technical drawing, this is a great time to secure that knowledge – whether it’s by taking an online class in technical drawing or fashion flat drawing at Parsons, or a similar class on websites such as Skillshare. You’ll also find that Adobe offers third-party plugins created for technical drawing capabilities, which sidesteps having to fork out for pricey drafting software.
This post was inspired by an earlier Maker’s Row article.
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