Digital Design: Photoshop and Illustrator

Overview
Digital Design: Photoshop and Illustrator is a 60 hour program that teaches both tools together, built specifically around fashion design work. You start in Photoshop, learning the interface, tools, and layers, then move into drawing and rendering fashion figurines, working with skin tones, hair, fabrics, and prints. Partway through the program, Illustrator is introduced so you can trace your Photoshop sketches into clean technical drawings.
By the end of the course you will have practiced the full workflow a fashion designer uses to go from a hand drawn sketch to a finished, presentation ready design, including rendered figurines, garment pieces, fabric textures, accessories, and full technical flats for both the front and back of an outfit.
What You Will Learn
- How to navigate the Photoshop and Illustrator interfaces and set up new documents by size and purpose
- Working with layers, locking, grouping, and organizing a design file
- Drawing and rendering a fashion figurine, including skin tone, shading, facial features, and hair
- Rendering garment pieces and using filters and brushes to represent fabrics such as velvet, silk, leather, and denim, and to create prints
- Scanning and tracing hand drawn sketches into both Photoshop and Illustrator
- Using the pen tool, grouping, blending, pathfinder, and align to build clean vector garment tracings
- Producing technical drawings for the front and back of a garment, including construction details like stitches, darts, and pleats
- Assembling a final collage and a complete outfit flat and technical drawing using everything learned
Course Curriculum
| Module | What you cover | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Photoshop Interface and Tools | Discovering the interface, setting up new documents by size, and drawing basic shapes, followed by placing and modifying images and working with layers, locking, grouping, and naming | 6 |
| Photoshop Figurine Design | Creating designs by adding shapes onto a figurine based on fashion history and timeline, then scanning a hand drawn figurine and tracing it | 6 |
| Photoshop Faces and Rendering | Introducing skin tone colors, brushes for blending light and shadow, drawing faces, eyes, hair, and basic garment pieces, plus an introduction to filters | 6 |
| Photoshop Fabric and Prints | Rendering fabrics such as velvet, silk, leather, and denim, and creating prints using filters and brushes | 6 |
| Photoshop Finishing | Drawing shoes and accessories, then assembling a final collage using all the Photoshop techniques learned | 6 |
| Illustrator Interface and Tracing | Discovering the Illustrator interface and tools, drawing with the pen tool, tracing clothes drawn in Photoshop, and saving and printing files at print quality | 6 |
| Illustrator Sketch Tracing | Transferring hand sketches into Illustrator, using live trace, and grouping, blending, pathfinder, and align to trace basic garment pieces | 6 |
| Illustrator Technical Drawing | Producing technical drawings for the front and back of a garment, and checking that front and back pieces match | 6 |
| Illustrator Construction Details | Drawing garments with construction details such as stitches, darts, elastic waists, pleats, and ruffles, and handling different silhouette lengths and cuts | 6 |
| Illustrator Final Project | Drawing a jacket as a technical drawing with buttons and cuts, then producing a full outfit as a flat and technical drawing using all techniques learned | 6 |
Who This Course Is For
This course is built for anyone who wants to develop fashion design and illustration skills using Photoshop and Illustrator, including students working toward figurine rendering, fabric and print design, and technical garment drawing.
Target audiences
- Aspiring fashion designers and illustrators
- Students who want to render figurines, fabrics, and prints digitally
- Anyone who wants to produce professional garment technical drawings