(ringing doorbell vigorously)
hey!
come inside guys you don't have to be ringing up the doorbell that much but
thank you guys for coming in to my casa today well we're actually gonna be
walking you guys through the entire process of designing a clothing line
from scratch this is a question that I've been getting a lot so I figured hey
why not bring you guys through behind the scenes and actually design a line
from scratch right from the very beginning from logos to the designing
to the brand direction and I thought what better way to actually display this
information and give these resources and these tips to you guys
then collaborating with a creative artist who is a part of this YouTube
community so in this video what we did is we actually collaborated with Mendo
who actually owned the design agency and he builds out a lot of different
clothing lines meant to dude last year or two years ago at MAGIC and I said
dude let's collaborate on something and this guy really came through with some
amazing and powerful information that you'll be able to use to actually design
your brand from scratch all right so the very first thing that we had to do in
order to pull this off is we obviously had to come up with the design direction
right so the very first thing that we did is we went directly to you so what I
did is I actually surveyed it out to the communities tab and in the community tab
we had close to a hundred and fifty of you guys actually vote for the design
direction and with that information we actually sent it out to Mark in order to
take full reins on a design process but as we were actually designing the brand
and coming up with this entire video concept we realized that we could go a
little bit further by making this a two-part series with this video focus on
the designing and the sourcing and the initial steps that it takes to actually
design and actually launch your brand and the second video focusing on the
printing and the options that you have to actually making and launching your
products all right you guys so this is a two-part series and we're super excited
to bring this to you guys so if you're visitor to this channel make sure you
hit that subscribe button right now in that notification belt to be alerted of
the latest videos that will be dropping on this channel to continue helping you
build your brand in business from the ground up
welcome to Salt Lake City
I'm Mark Mendoza aka Mendo first of all I want to thank John for giving me the
opportunity for letting me be in this video but for those of you wondering who I am
in short
I'm a designer so over the years I've had the opportunity to
work in the apparel industry specifically the sportswear niche but
I've had the opportunity to work on things such as product design Tarot
learn tech tags as well as things like sublimation screen printing and I even
had the opportunity to design my own sneaker I've also gotten the chance to
work with different entrepreneurs and other creatives helping them build their
own brand and today we're gonna talk a little bit about the creative process
I'm going to show you how I take an idea and turn it into a final product which
in this case would be a little a couple of designs for some apparel and my
process is actually the same for everything that I do no matter if it's
creating a logo credit graphics or website whether it's designing cutting
so apparel or sneakers or whatever it is that I'm designing I take the same
approach for all my projects so my design process consists of four stages
number one being my understanding phase number two is what I like to call my
research phase number three is when I actually go in and start exploring
designing and number four is refining so let me take you along with me as I take
an idea and we start a brand and how you can apply it for yourself as well so
this is actually going to be the foundation of my brand so this is where
I'm going to get my idea for my logo for all my graphics even for the name if I
didn't have a name so what I want to do is I want to start writing any words or
any phrases that I want people to associate with my brand
once I have that taken care of I start writing things that are gonna make my
brand different and what kind of things and aspects I really want to focus on
after that I start naming my competition writing down some of the people that are
gonna be in the same niche as me so the next thing that I do is start writing
information about my audience start writing down the demographic which is
where they live male or female or anything like that
then the psychographic which is gonna be more like their mentality what habits
they have and what not
and then from there since I understand that I am building a brand I'm gonna
write down what specifically my audience wants and needs and how I could kind of
help them with that and then I also write down what they're familiar with so
that way I can see what ecosystem they are gonna be in and then once I have
that I take the information from both what I want and what my audience want
and kind of see what things they have in common and I start writing what words
would be able to describe the brand and between what I want and what they want
and then my challenge next is finding how high to communicate this
so as we were building this line we had to decide which t-shirt blank we wanted
to go with and we chose BELLA+CANVAS and we
actually chose their Fast Fashion Collection as well as some of the fleece
items that they have available and and the reason that we chose them guys is
they have a very consistent print when it comes to whether you decide to do DTG
which is director government printing or whether you decide to do screen printing
you know how the end product will look very great quality feel and obviously
the the cuts and silhouettes will really accent what mark created and is creating
when it comes to the designing of the line so now that we have our t-shirt
blanks we're one step closer to actually launching this brand so now I'm actually
going to jump onto my computer and start the research process of this project I'm
gonna start off by researching my competition I'm gonna take a look at
some of my competitors what it is that they're doing and I'm gonna write down
every little thing that I notice about them so everything I'm like what kind of
photography they're using what kind of pictures what kind of colors kind of
what kind of words what their videos look like what their website looks like
so every little thing that I notice about them I'm going to write down and
then I'm gonna also repeat the exact same thing with the brands that they are
familiar with as well so the next thing I'm gonna do is actually jump onto
Pinterest and start saving some images some photos anything that really depicts
a mood or really encompasses the ideas that I had when I was writing down the
words that I wanted to describe my brand and the words that my audience would
also want my brand to be associated with so in the next part of my research phase
I'm actually gonna take a look at color and so I'm gonna jump onto Adobe color
and start taking those same exact words that I was using on my list and start
seeing what colors are associated with them and then I'm actually gonna create
a new a new file on illustrator and start saving some of these colors and
kind of title them what they are associated with once I have all my
colors picked out I kind of start using different combinations I actually start
checking out the balance with certain colors because not every color should be
divided equally some should have more presence than the other and so I play
around with that to kind of get an idea and then once I have that done I
actually jump back onto Pinterest and I start taking those pictures that I saved
and putting them all together in one place that I can reference back to and
this is actually what I call the mood board so my mood board is really gonna
depict in a visual way with everything from colors to fonts to imagery of those
exact same words that I used in the beginning so now I'm actually gonna get
to the creation part of my process so now that I have my mood board I'm
actually gonna continue to reference it and those same exact words that I had
I'm going to try and depict them in a visual way and more of an iconic way
through the logo so I started sketching different ideas I don't really have a
limit to how many sketches I do I always just sketch sometimes I even come up
with ideas that shouldn't belong but I will take them out later once I have my
sketches done that's gonna be my foundation for what
I'm gonna create when I go on illustrator so I actually take my
sketches I start creating them in a vector format
by using Adobe Illustrator and I will continue to do this with all my
different ideas once I have my idea set up I picked the best one and I actually
start refining it so I refine that specific design I start messing with it
until I get a design that I am happy with once I have that design I start
retouching it a little bit making it a little bit more compositionally strong
and then I start making variations out of that same logo and then once I have
those variations done I actually jump on to the design part of the t-shirt the
apparel which is taking the idea from the logo and it's also taking ideas from
my mood board and and everything that I've saved and coming up with different
designs that I would be able to visually communicate that once I have my designs
done I will start putting them on mock-ups so some templates kind of
sizing them up playing with them I start changing the colors based on the color
of the shirt I also start or using different things like positioning things
in different areas different sizes just playing around with it
so my goal here is actually to have something that looks cohesive so I know
that I'm trying to communicate an idea but in that communication part I also
want everything to look like it goes together I want my line to be a whole
collection so that is one thing that I really focus on and then I do that by
using very similar graphics I do that by using a similar color so there's many
ways to kind of do this I really want to do is make sure everything looks
cohesive so now that I have my graphics mocked up on my apparel the next thing
that I got to do is actually have the files ready for print and once I have my
files ready to print sent them out and get them printed
and I could start marketing my brand with the survey results in guys we are
now ready to begin sampling the designs of our products so it's gonna be super
important that you guys actually go out and you survey your designs that you're
thinking about sampling because that's gonna kind of give you a nice gauge as
to what people may want to buy and what's going to be even more important
is to sample those designs in order for you guys to actually show a physical
product and be able to do some marketing before you go out and actually buy in
bulk alright the last thing you guys want to do is buy in bulk a bunch of
designs that you thought people would like and then they don't buy them and
then you go out of business that's really how this industry works a lot of
people go with their gut feeling but they don't realize that gut feelings
don't pay the bills alright so you got to make sure that you're strategic about
it and what I want to do is I want to take you guys into a print shop where
we're gonna go into covering a lot more of this process as well as a lot more of
the printing process for you guys to really know and get information of
things that you really need to consider so as we said this is a two part video
series where we're actually going to go and in the second video I'm just
starting right now we're actually going to go and take you guys to the print
shop and show you everything that you need to know to launch your brand
you guys are a new visitor to this channel I highly encourage that you hit
that subscribe button and turn on the post notifications to be alerted of the
latest drop in the second video we're gonna dive into so many amazing details
that I know you guys will enjoy but if you have any further questions or
perhaps something wasn't very clear make sure you check the video notes right
below the video in order to get additional resources and information
that we may have missed in this video huge shoutouts to Bella Canvas for being
for being a sponsor of this channel and of this video and helping us get this
information out and if you guys need additional training or any additional
resources or tips make sure you download the video guides the PDFs that we have
available on the online academy which are available to you guys for free so
see you guys on the next video