Flat sketches vs. hand sketches
Happy Friday all! Today's post is short and sweet for you. Some of the clients I work with who are new to the apparel industry have asked me "What's a flat sketch?". See the image in this post for a sample I made in Adobe Illustrator, often just referred to as AI. This is called a flat, fashion flat, or flat sketch. All those terms work and are used interchangeably at different places. Flats are cleaned up vector art drawings of your pen or pencil hand sketches. These are important to have in tech packs for the manufacturer to have a clear idea of what the garment should look like, and so that I can detail out all the construction/sewing information. They are also useful later in the production cycle to create different colorways (colors) on a line sheet (sheet with all the colored flats) so you can get an idea of how a whole collection will look. Give me a napkin with a hand sketch and I will make you a flat!