Undoubtedly we have a lot on a plate these days. Especially, if you are a fashion designer then you have only so much time to design, edit, pitch, revise, and advertise your designs. Your busy schedule demands an exceptional level of productivity as well as connectivity, without which you may not be able to give your best each day. Besides, with the ultra-fast age in which we are living, the productivity demands have certainly risen.
Worry not. There are a lot of tools and technologies that can help you to not only stay productive but also go the extra mile without putting in much effort. One of these tools is a fashion designing app. Easily accessible via a smartphone, a laptop or a tablet you can do a lot from an app. Right from creating unique and unparalleled designs to keep your followers updated with your latest launches, these productive apps are a boon for every fashion designer. No matter if you are a highly popular and established fashion designer or an up and coming one – these apps have a lot in store for you.
You need these productivity apps that will make your life a lot easier and boost your productivity levels. Let’s have a look at each of them and what they have in store for you.
Pinterest gives you a lot of ideas and inspirations. You can also know about other people’s ideas, inspirations, and even choices. Pinterest tells you what is going on in the minds of people and what interests them the most. Leveraging Pinterest is a great idea to give your creativity a much-needed boost. Also, it is way better than Google images because most of the images are collected and curated by users on Pinterest. Searching trending images on Google is a time-consuming task as Google images have a countless number of pictures from all across the globe.
Moreover, Pinterest is free to use and you can leverage this platform to promote or publish your designs. Hence you can kill two birds with one stone.
Sketch
Similar to Adobe Illustrator yet different in several ways, sketch offers a wide array of plugins combined with an intuitive interface. Likewise, several third-party developers contribute to this platform and keep on adding excellent features that expand the functionality of Sketch. This makes Sketch a great alternative to Adobe Illustrator and a perfect fit for new designers.
Sketch comes with a one-time licensing fee of US $99 which makes it super affordable as compared to any of its alternatives.
Slack
Slack is a platform that enables the members of your group to communicate seamlessly with the help of conversation threads that can be easily searched. Suitable for both large and small teams, slack has definitely brought about a new and unique approach for communication and ease of sharing documents, designs, and files.
Communication plays a crucial role in the development of any organization especially when you are working as a team. With quick and effective communication, the time and effort required to create a design can definitely be reduced, all the while keeping productivity levels high.
Another important and powerful feature of slack is its integrability. It can be seamlessly integrated with Dropbox, Google Drive, and a whopping thousand more applications. Thus, you can access anything via a unified platform which definitely makes life easier. One of the best parts of slack is that it is free to use until 5 GB space. After that you need to pay US $8 per month to continue using this amazing platform.
Techpacker
Maintaining specification sheets has been one of the most time-consuming, tedious and hence a daunting task for any fashion designer especially the part where you need to do repeated data entry and endless corrections.
Techpacker offers complete tech pack optimization. With it, you can create tech packs effortlessly, quickly and efficiently to the point that it’s become an enjoyable task. The process of making tech packs has become visual, prompt, collaborative and easy as the tech packs are simplified into ‘cards’. Thus, moving, reusing, copying, connecting and a lot more things have become extremely easy. You can also integrate Techpacker with other platforms to enhance its usability.
It won’t be wrong if I say that Instagram is a sensation in the world of branding. Being a fashion designer, if you’re not using Instagram, then you’re surely missing out on a lot of potential audiences.
Similar to Pinterest, Instagram has countless images curated by people from all across the globe. Thus, you can also get a lot of inspiration and creative ideas from Instagram. It is also an excellent platform to know about the latest trends and the interests of your audience. This way you can be sure to stay updated at all times.
Besides, it is a great platform where you can gain a lot of followers and it acts as a testimonial to your work as the likes and comments act as a testimonial. Also, Instagram is free to use except for ads and you can easily operate it from your smartphone. What else could you ask for?
Pantone Color Finder
Tired of the endless efforts you need to put in with the manufacturers in order to find and implement the perfect color choices? Pantone has come up with an innovative solution to match, communicate and identify colors. Thus, you can work easily with manufacturers. You can easily find a color on google with a simple extension. You have to use a Pantone color finder to get the nearest Pantone number.
Likewise, with the Pantone color app for android and iPhones you can choose a photo and get the color value directly via the app. Moreover, the Pantone color finder is completely free to use and you can even use it effortlessly on your smartphone along with firefox and chrome.
Shopify
The prospect of managing an online store is both exciting and daunting. However, Shopify enables you to simply set up your own online store and start selling easily. You can customize your store, track orders and respond to it, and even accept credit card payments in merely clicks. Shopify has powered over 350,000 online businesses.
Shopify is an excellent platform for fashion designers because it is easy to use, simple, and highly-integrable and clean. You can integrate Shopify with facebook and amazon and reap the benefits of huge platforms from a single unified platform and work easily from one place.
Shopify is free for one week and comes with a price tag of US$29 per month.
BrandBoom
A wholesale e-commerce platform, BrandBoom helps you make clean Line sheets, receive orders from retailers directly and get payments in easy ways. Once you set up the line sheet you can send a link to showrooms as well as buyers directly so that they can book and pay without any mediators or obstacles. This helps you bypass a lot of communication and lost critical sizes, etc.
It is very difficult and tedious to keep up with excel sheets and Adobe Indesign. The whole process is just too complicated. However, with BrandBoom the complete process has been simplified and you can easily stay updated with it. Moreover, BrandBoom has excellent customer service and you can expect high-end support. Also, the setup is quite prompt.
CLO-3D
As the name suggests, or I’d rather say, hints – CLO-3D is a futuristic pattern creating software. You can envision your sketches in 3D and hence can reduce one of the samples at least. Initially, an avatar or 3D form of body or dress is picked from amongst several sizes and shapes.
Then you can either draw your own pattern from scratch or import your previously drawn patterns. Lastly, you need to pair every seam of the cloth and choose a garment and visualize everything in 3D. You can then alter your designs and customize the pattern in real-time. You can use CLO-3D for free up to one month and then for US$99 per month.
Business of Fashion
We have seen apps that help you create a design, visualize your designs, promote your designs and even the ones that lead you and inspire you to create unique designs. However, there is one app that would help you know what’s happening in your industry, in the world of fashion. Staying updated in this digital world where information is as crucial as it is prompt, is truly essential. Especially when you want to make it big, you can’t miss out on the big and small news!
The best place to know the inside and outside of the fashion industry is the “Business of Fashion”. It is a must-read. Being an excellent daily resource for fashion entrepreneurs, executives, and creatives, it has information on fashion niche from more than 200 countries.
Having a network of well-known journalists and fashion freaks as well as insiders in fashion capitals across the globe, this website covers everything – right from in-depth reports to breaking news and more. You can stay updated with global markets, sustainability, breakthrough technologies, upcoming designers, business intelligence, fashion week, manufacturing, marketing, retail and every nook and corner of the fashion world.
You can register for free and have access to 5 articles a month for free. However, with a premium subscription, you can have access to all the articles along with briefings, print editions, select features, and archives.
Final thoughts
No matter which industry you belong to or where you wish to reach in your life. Without productivity, business intelligence, and technological help, it is not only difficult but also impossible, to some extent, to excel in your niche.
Besides, staying updated with the current trends and changing choices and shifts in consumer behavior is also essential. I have tried my best to compile the list of the ten best apps for fashion designers. I’m sure that these ten apps will help you tremendously with each aspect of your profession and would definitely help you grow your mindset, your creativity, your productivity and certainly your reach and audience.
Which are your favorite productivity apps? How many of these apps are you already using? Did I miss any of your favorite apps?
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