Abstract: The fundamental premise of designing structures with laminated composite materials is that the materials can be tailored to meet requirements by choosing the materials, thicknesses or thickness fractions, and orientation angles of constituent materials. Minimum weight, dimensional stability, natural frequency, and thermal conductivity are typical goals. This invention is NOT about the analysis of laminated materials and composites, of which there is no short supply. This invention is about the design of laminated materials, which has traditionally been an iterative event between the designer and the analysis tool. These iterations, if they occur at all, are often the most time consuming aspect of design. The fundamental premise of this invention is that tensor invariants of constituent material properties coupled with a tensor description of the specified material requirements can be used together to design laminated materials.