Colorways and artwork placement specifications are another important section of a tech pack. The colorways page shows a CAD drawing of each color combination being offered for that season. Along with the drawings, there are color chips showing the color of each material in the style – including fabrics, thread, and hardware.
If the style contains placement artwork (such as an embroidered logo, placement graphic, or border print) there will be a page showing where it is placed on the garment. Similar to the label placement page in the construction section, this page would show mockups of the artwork and specify exactly where it needs to be placed on the garment.
This example dress has an all-over repeat print, but doesn’t have any placement artwork. The artwork does not have a fixed, defined placement on the garment. In this case, the actual artwork details like Pantone TCX colors, repeat size, and native file format are typically in a separate document. You’ll need to coordinate with your textile or graphic designer to put together this artwork specs document along with the actual artwork files.
For you as the designer, the CADs on the colorways page are a great tool to use to visualize and plan your line. You can print out the colorways of each of your styles and organize and sort them to get a complete picture of your collection before you even have samples back.
When custom artwork is involved, having the placement information in the tech pack helps you plan what vendors you need to work with to produce the style. Your factory may have in-house printing or embroidery capabilities, but they may not. You or the factory may need to outsource to a third party to do that piece of the production.