A Day in the Life of a Technical Designer

Raw Denim Jeans

 So, it’s one thing to explain what a Technical Designer’s job description is, but I figured it would be more interesting (maybe?) to go into detail on what I do on a daily basis. Below I wrote down what I did yesterday at work, which is what a typical day is like for me.

9:15 AM :

I arrive at the office and check my email to see if the shit hit the fan since the previous day. 🙂

I am an Import Technical Designer and all of our factories and vendors are in China. So, with the time difference, they start replying to emails once we’re done for the day.

9:15 – 10:00 AM:

I answer emails and make a few urgent revisions to my tech packs.

10:00 AM – 12:00 PM:

I begin working on my tech packs, giving priority to those with a tight delivery. 

Starting on a tech pack, I check over the sketch done by design and check it against the sample and the information that was given to me by my Technical Design Associate.

My first few tech packs that I was working on, the sketch didn’t match the pattern card or the sample, so I had to call design to figure out which was correct.

After I’ve made the revisions to the sketch, I move on and do my Sewing Details page in Illustrator. I call out all stitching and sewing  information. You can see a sample Sewing Details page here.

 We use WebPDM which makes doing tech packs WAY faster and easier. I upload my Sewing Details in WebPDM, and add label and hangtag information and placements to the tech pack.

The last page I work on is the BOM page. I list all of the fabrics along with the yields, trims, and packaging items and quantities. This is so the Coster knows everything this garment will need in production and get a cost on it. 

After I have my completed tech pack, I generate the final product and email it out to production.

12:00 – 1:00 PM:

I have lunch at this yummy mexican restaurant that has really great lunch specials! 2 hard shell chicken tacos with rice and beans for $5.95 please!  🙂

1:00 – 4:00 PM:

Revisions, revisions, revisions. My revisions had been piling up, mainly due to the fact that they decided to change the fly stitching on a pair of jeans from a cross-over stitch to a regular double needle stitch. It was too difficult for the factory to execute in production which gave me a good 20 styles to revise.  So, this is what I spent most of my afternoon doing.

4:00 – 6:00PM:

Back to my tech packs. I spend the rest of my day finishing up the rest of my tech packs and emailing them out. I get emailed a new list of buys, so I know that it starts all over again tomorrow morning! 🙂

So, there you have it! A typical day for me. If you would like me to go into further detail on anything, leave me a comment!