A New Pattern Design Tool That Will Seriously Improve The Way You Create Your Collections

Genue pattern making app

You know how sometimes you have this vision of your next collection before you’ve even started the design process? You’re sitting somewhere, inspired by something you saw, you snap a pic, grab a latte, and rush to your studio for some serious design work. You often wind up with something you’re really excited about and anxiously start planning your sourcing trips. It’s great.

Until it’s not. You hit up all your usual spots looking for just the right print for the skirt or blouse or handbag lining or whatever masterpiece you’re working on and, damn it, nothing feels right. You don’t get the “yes!” feeling. So you return to your studio and plop down at your computer to start playing around with a pattern-making software that you have yet to fully figure out. It’s technical and involved and there goes your excitement and inspiration.

Not too long ago, we met the founder of company called Genue. It’s a new iPad app that makes it possible for independent designers to {incredibly easily} create custom prints and pattern design for your collections from absolutely anything. When we heard this, we were very intrigued. 

What Does Genue Actually Do?

Honestly, designers, we can’t figure out what it doesn’t do.

First, you can be anywhere, find yourself inspired, and whip out your iPad and start designing. You can take a picture of something and turn that picture into a pattern. You can play with scale, direction, color, repeat, and so much more. You can apply your designs to a figure to see what the print will look like on a garment. And you can do it all, really easily.

editor screen with girl sketch showing design modes

Why Do We Like Genue?

  1. Any resource that puts the power in the hands of the designer, is OK in our book. As with everything else about building a fashion business, we are always drawn to resources and companies that have obviously thought a lot about the needs of independent designers and have created a solution that is attainable for brands that don’t have an endless budget.
  2. It’s such a powerful app, we’re always surprised by some new cool feature that we didn’t know was there before.  A recent discovery was the ability to draw a line using a pattern or texture or even an image. It was so cool.
  3. Every time you pick it up, you get lost in a world of design. Honestly, it’s the perfect balance between technology and creativity. Using it, we felt in control of our design direction, we felt inspired and creative but at the same time efficient and in-the-know, like we had come upon something that will drastically improve how to run the design side of a business. Which it will.
  4. It’s only 99 bucks for a year!

How Can Independent Designers Use Genue?

  1. You can design prints and patterns for your collections, starting with anything from a picture to a simply drawn straight line. Your design options are endless obviously, but more importantly these endless options are incredibly easy to create. It’s not fancy technical stuff that requires months of lessons. It’s intuitive and  there to help your vision come to life. It’s not there to cause frustration or lots of googling “how to….”.
  2. You can crowd source your customer’s interest before going into sampling. See what designs resonate most. The money-saving component is major.
  3. You can quickly edit your collection based on customer feedback. Change the color, scale, direction, whatever really quickly.
  4. You can use it as an internal tool for visually communicating design ideas to your team. It doesn’t just have to be your collection designs. Think about how you could create mock-ups for your web designer or send your custom patterns to a stationary designer to make branded invitations to a presentation. You could quickly show your graphic designer what it’s in your head, rather than trying to communicate through words that never seem to get your point across.

 

What Can You Expect to See Soon?

We were excited to learn that Genue is working on partnerships with fabric mills, leather printers, trim companies, shoe manufacturers, and other important resources. Hopefully 2015 will bring a list of resources that will present you with a start to finish option for your designing and sourcing process.

We’re hoping to see the app available on tablets, not just ipads, in the near future.

We’re really excited to share this tool with you, designers, because we honestly think this has the power to change how you run your business, on so many levels.

DOWNLOAD GENUE NOW >> 

 

Though Genue commissioned us to share this cool new resource with you, we never agree to write about anything we don’t think is really awesome. Promise.

Nicole Giordano

Nicole is the founder of StartUp FASHION, an online resource and community supporting for independent designers around the world with building their businesses. A deep love for the craft of fashion paired with an adamant belief that success is defined by the individual, led her to found StartUp FASHION, where she helps independent designers and makers screw the traditional fashion business rules, create their own paths, and build businesses they truly love. More than anything else, she’s in the business of encouragement and works every day to remind makers and designers that they have something special to offer the world and that they can, in fact, do this thing!

4 comments
  1. Louise Callaghan

    Hi Nicole

    I am looking for an app that can help me refine some designs I made Recently. The design will either be apapted into silk scarves or textiles or cushions and curtains.
    I am looking to refine repeat pattern, add borders and increase the potential of the current design with additional central circlular patterns or spiral designs. . May be even change the colors into a range.

    I wonder if your app can accommodate this and if not could you recommend something / an app with may help?

    I look forward to hearing from you

    Best wishes.

  2. Cindy

    I found Genue Pro’s sales support to be not so helpful. I had some questions and they’ve neither answered my email or called me back in response to a voice message I left them. Big minus for me. I’ll pass on this app.

  3. Sully

    Wow ! Sounds amazing ! Has any one been using this app that can share their experience?

    • Nicole Giordano

      Hey Sully! We’ve been using it and loving it. We have some designers who are testing it out. We’ll share their experiences for sure. 🙂

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