Fashionary

With practically the whole world either in or battling a recession, people are looking for cheaper, more efficient ways of placating their sartorial needs. Customising vintage clothing or simply making your own from scratch is becoming more and more popular with consumers, but for those of us lacking the artistic skills to freehand the ideas on to paper, getting your designs in black and white is difficult to say the least. Fashionary's sketch book provides body form templates as well as measurement charts to help you map out the designs for your own creations. Perfect for professionals or amateurs alike, what seems like such a simple idea, in fruition, is an ingenious one. I talked to Penter Yip, the creator, to find out more about Fashionary.

http://fashionary.org/

What is Fashionary?

Fashionary is a sketchbook tailor-made for fashion designers. The name come from "Fashion + Dictionary + Diary".

It is combined with intensive fashion information and figure templates preprinted on the pages. What makes the book special is that the templates are barely visible so you can use the pages as normal sketchbook if you prefer.

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Tell me a little about the idea behind 'Fashionary', what was the inspiration?

We want to streamline the design process by reducing the time the designers spend on drawing or paying attention to the figure proportion in their sketches. For brainstorming clothing ideas, I think they should be drawn out as fast as possible.

The idea of Fashionary popped out when I was discussing the difficulties of drawing a proportional figure when sketching in our fastest pace, and we agreed that if there were some semi-transparent figure preprinted on the paper, it could decrease much time for sketching. And if there were some handy information about fashion and textile added to the book, it would be perfect.

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What kind of people would you say use your products?

We target professional fashion designers. But to my knowledge, there are stylists and seamstress also found it useful.

You have recently brought out a men's version, what was the catalyst for that?

We had many requests about the male version when we rolled out the womenswear version last year, and hopefully we'll release our new version of womenswear.

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What would you love to see in the future for Fashionary?

Fashionary sketchbook is a continuous project and we will keep it updated according to feedback and trend. Also, an A4 sized Fashionary is planned to release in the near future.

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What is the first thing you think about in the morning, and the last thing you think about at night?

The things I want to do today and the things I want to do tomorrow :)

I would like to thank Steph for offering an interview to me and I wish the new site the best.

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Thanks Penter!