Its handy to spend the time to illustrate the bags early on in the design process before going to order samples. I learnt the art of illustrating bags when i worked at Puma. I use adobe illustrator to draw the bags and like any new software program it takes a little while to get the hang of the numerously learn the functions related to what you need to do.
The illustrations are useful in providing manufacturing specifications to my factory as well as for other things such as:
* showing customers features of bag
* content for our Goodordering instagram and pinterest accounts
* working out scales and designing the bags themselves
* deciding which bags to put into production by testing out different details
* deciding on colour combinations
Here is a video showing me having a play around with colours and textures of one of our favourite bags - the picnic pannier.
Below are some of the bags that i have drawn recently using Illustrator. I use the fill button and create custom fills to demonstrate the print of the material.
Zips are creating using the STROKE tool and adjusting the dash and the space. To illustrate metal zips i simply choose a light gray colour.
Fills there is a trick to creating your own seamless fills it took me a few years to master but now I can knock them up pretty quickly. The trick is to use a transparent shape underneath your print design and make sure that it repeats onto itself.
Scale: A top tip is to work at the scale of 1:1 that way you can measure the real life dimensions of things such as zips and webbing straps and decide on the correct proportions of the other things around them. Use the 'transform' tool to keep things as close to the real life scale as possible and then when you create your manufacturing specifications it will be a breeze.
