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Posts from the ‘Technology tips’ Category

30
Sep
Representing the Fashion Industry at adobe max

Sweepstakes! What would you change in Illustrator or Photoshop? Fashion designers opinions wanted?

Update! I closed the blog entries at this time. Thank you for reading.

Fashion designers! What are the most troubling issues that you have had or are having with Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop? What would you add inside of either software to fix it? Get an answer from the creators of Illustrator and Photoshop the “Adobe Team”**.

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3
Feb
Qr-code-in-illustrator-for-fashion-designer

Free Friday Mini Fashion Webinar – QR-code fancier than your competitor

QR-codes are everywhere and they have quickly become mainstream. QR which stands for quick response is one of the simplest ways to peak interest in products, promotions and perhaps your portfolio? Anyone can create such code for free and the basics are very simple. Let’s be creative and make it more colorful and fun. I put my QR code in a heart shape and changed it’s color in Illustrator. It took a bit of testing to eliminate some errors but now you can scan it with your smartphone and you will find yourself on my Facebook page. Enter QR code in Fashion into Google images and become inspired by what companies around the world are doing with this free yet fun and possibly exciting mobile technology.
Register for Our Webinar Click here to reserve your spot now
When: Friday, April 8, 2011 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM PDT
  Any smartphone can install a free app like barcode scanner for android or qr reader for i-phone. I have seen simple tee-shirts with a screen printed QR-code to knitted QR-codes on scarves. Check out the dress by designer Sam Trout that features a cyber treasure hunt by clicking here. Advertisers in Magazines for different target audiences like Vogue or Seventeen are using the codes to drive traffic to their promotions and contests. Other magazines let you discover more details of their stories such as behind the scenes video footage or more photos of products. Fashionablymarketing.me reported in 2010 about Calvin Klein using a giant QR code on a billboard on Sunset Blvd. that let customers view a short add on their phones.
18
Nov
Fashion-design-class-by-google

Fashion design class by Google

Today marks Google’s venture into the Fashion world and what an entry they have made. A couple of words before you roll your eyes. Google does not design or sell you Fashion. Google rather uses their technology to help users search visually through millions of styles found on the web, it collaborates with designers, celebrities, stylish bloggers and e-retailers to bring you the visuals. Boutiques.com is the name of the new website that allows you to set up a profile or so called “boutique”. Think of it as your personal shopper! You communicate a variety of preferences such as favorite silhouettes, colors, print preferences and style. While browsing the sites visuals or boutiques by others you can further customize to narrow your search by prize, sales, free shipping or of course only luxury items. Fully customize your search Now why did I call today’s blog entry a “Fashion design class by Google”? 1. For starters the websites that collaborate with Google should already be bookmarked by you to stay ahead of the trends and what is currently going on in the fashion world. Here are a few: Polyvore.com , Couturious.com, Weardrobe.com, Lookbook.nu, Modcloth.com 2. While exploring existing boutiques you will notice that there is a short written note about the inspiration behind the boutiques. Learning how to combine visuals with the written word is very important. At each midterm and final I have my students explain the inspiration behind the color stories, who their customers is or how they came up with the silhouettes that they are using. Here on Google’s Boutiques.com you find many different inspirations describing trends, customers or a Fashion designer’s philosophy.Written-inspiration-for-fashion-customer-trend 3. When customizing your own boutique you are choosing from a variety of style, silhouettes, colors and prints. While you might have a very precise idea of what you like, this is a great way to refresh your memory of all the other design options that you have. Imagine that you are giving a freelance job to create a line sheet in Illustrator for a certain target group. You could simply use these boutique features to do your research on your customer. You will be able to receive visual inspiration for your flat sketching project.

Dress-flat-silhouette-prints

Pants-flat-silhouette-prints

4. In my Photoshop for Fashion Design class, I teach my students how to create  Fashion collages, trend-boards or so called mood-boards. While browsing through the shoes, clothing, bags or accessories section of the website you will find visual inspiration that either consists of one picture or of a collage. Here these visual inspiration will take you to the linked sites that Google works with and then most likely further to the actual sale of the item that you would like to buy. In the Fashion Industry your visuals will help you communicate your vision to your colleagues, boss or even a buyer. It’s like a mini commercial that sells a dream. Learn how to do this and you will be able to sell your design to whomever you need to convince of your talents. Visual-inspiration-for-Fashion-trend-boards Now go and explore and let me know what you have learned or if you scored something fabulous.
7
May

Customize your Iphone case with your design

Okay, so I admit it. I do not have the IPhone ! There it is, a tech geek with a boring old phone.  But I would like to have it. Or rather any other phone that can run the thousands of apps that are being developed daily. I am still waiting to see what works with my plan, and I want to to be able to use a Memory card instead of having to upgrade the entire phone. But that is not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to post a link to this neat website that I stumbled across that first off all has the cutest bamboo cases for the Iphone, and it also let’s you upload your ai file (illustrator file) or PDF file and create your own custom bamboo Iphone Case. The website is called grovemade.com and is based in Portland, USA it seems that the founder has a furniture company and extended his business into this genius idea.

Pretty neat. Check their website out right here, Or check out their Flickr page right here and feel free to email or post a picture on our Facebook group if you use this service.
6
May

Appliques cut with the cricut and designed with the pen tool

Being a night owl I often times find myself watching those long late night commercials. And I can’t believe that I found  2 of my favorite things to do right now on TV during those infomercials . One of them being Zumba® but that would make for a whole new blog. And the second one is the Cricut® In case you do not know what the Cricut® is: It’s a printer like machine (instead of ink it has a blade) that uses cartridges that hold fonts and images that can be cut out of paper for the scrap-booking community and amazingly it also cuts fabric. When I first saw it, I did a little research online and found a video on youtube showing a lady cutting a cute little cupcake out of fabric and sewing it onto a baby’s onesie. I liked the idea so much and got extremely excited about being able to do this myself. The only thing that was bothering me was the fact that the Cricut® prides itself in being a computer-less product, meaning no need to know any software and no connection to computer required. The Cricut® offers cartridges of which 1-2 are included with the machine and then you have to buy other ones separately. I however envisioned something entirely different. I wanted to draw my own designs inside of Illustrator and then make the Cricut® cut it out of fabric for me. So I did a little more research and found that Provocraft® (maker of Cricut®) came out with a product that is called Cricut DesignStudio ® software. That sounded really exciting until I found out that this product only allows you to use images from the cartridges. I guess it’s a step up for anyone not interested in using a real design software, as I assume that before this software one was only able to cut images from one cartridge at a time? Anyways, after I did some more research I found a website that sells a down-loadable software called “SurecutsalotTM“<<< love the name>>> and tested it out. Well… after deciding which Cricut® to buy (because they come in different sizes) and finding coupons and some Heat N Bond to stiffen the fabric. And  it works! Ha! Here is short tutorial on what I did (see pics above) First I found my inspiration, which happened to be a towel holder with these cute little elephants. Then I took a picture of them and traced them in Illustrator, then I saved them as a SVG. file. Then opened my elephants (one at a time) in surecutsalot.. hooked my computer per usb up to the cricut and pressed cut. Voila… i had my first computer generated appliques. Which will be used for a baby blanket for my friend daughter. There are some important hints and tips for prepping the fabrics and how to apply it to the actual cutting mat of the Cricut® and which blade setting and so on and since that is all information that I forget as soon as I do it, I am glad that there is a huge community of Cricut® users that share their tips online on the Cricut® message board. Here is the link to the youtube video that inspired me. Here is the link to the Cricut message board Here is the link to the “SurecutsalotTM” software And you can download my little elephants as Ai files right here. They are on separate Layers.
5
May

Choosing a web browser that makes your creative life easier

I am regularly surrounded by a great many computers, whether it is during classes at the community college where I teach or during lab sessions at conferences that I go to. I started noticing that there is a difference between which web browsers computer geeks like myself are using and what many Fashion Designers are using. The most important reasons to use a good web-browser are: * Speed * Customization * Organization * Security As Fashion Designers are more concerned about what fabric, colors and trims to use rather than what web browser to use, I thought it is a good idea to make them aware of some other choices that are available to them. Many Fashion Designers are using the web browser that comes pre- installed on their laptop or computer, meaning that if they have a MAC they are using Safari to surf the web and PC users use Internet Explorer. Two more choices to consider are google chrome and my preferred choice which is called Firefox. I started using Firefox about 3 years ago and noticed that the load time for web pages sped up dramatically and it allows me to smoothly hop around  the Internet without stalling. You can install any of the 2 additional options for free right here: * Firefox * Chrome

I also like Firefox’s fun feature called persona, which let’s me customize the look of my web browser according to my taste. Currently there are over 35000 personas I am currently using glitzyglitter. You can install any persona here

In addition to being able to speed up the load time of pages and customizing my browser I  started using Xmarks, which is a plug in to any of the 4 web browsers that allows me to efficiently bookmark sites on my computer and them access these bookmarks from any computer around the world. I can access the bookmarks right inside my web browser and additionally these bookmarks are saved through my free account on Xmarks website and I never have to worry about loosing them. Which unfortunately happened to me once, when an old laptop with many bookmarks died and could not be recovered. Now I create new bookmarks daily, capturing websites that inspire teach and entertain me, without worrying about loosing them.

You can install Xmarks right here.
Xmarks right here.