A shoe designer's bible

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to meet a team member from Fashionary via Instagram. During a shopping trip to Hong Kong, I was able to meet her in person. I was gifted their shoe sketch book, and fell in love with how easy they made sketching thumbnails. Later I acquired their Shoe Designer book, and since then I have been hooked with their products.

After a few years I still use their shoe design book regularly. I like to call it my little  “shoe “ bible. When you’re designing for so many years,  you get into the groove of drawing a side view only. Or for time, you rush thru your sketches, and don’t give enough views in your tech packs.  This book is a great resource to practice different shoe views. It also has a shoe encyclopedia, shoe style library, spec sheet examples, and much more. I’m happy to see that FIDM uses this book as a their textbook for one of the classes I taught. I used that book weekly with my students.

Fashionary also has this bag design book which I used recently to help with some sketching views for handbags. Even though I know how to sketch, I’m always looking for ways to improve or strengthen my skills.

I’m super excited about Fashionary’s newest addition called Poses for Fashion Illustration. I love the templates of different poses. I can’t wait to add that to my book of designer resources.

Some other books I used regularly for reference are this and this.

Do you have any books you love to use?