Composites show two distinctive features that affect the way in which they are optimized. Firstly, manufacturing strongly interacts with structural performance. Secondly, composites can be described at different scales. This article summarizes contributions that address both features. It is shown how design guidelines can be accounted for in laminate blended design through stacking sequence tables and specialized evolutionary algorithms. It is also explained how the optimization can be made more efficient by simultaneously working at the ply and laminate levels.