This past week has been all about Shirtember (the kickoff of selling original artwork t-shirts in my shop). In chatting with a few folks about what is needed to get files ready to print, I thought it might be interesting to see how some of the artwork is put together.
It’s like showing “how the sausage is made” but not as unsettling and afterwards you won’t seriously question whether you can ever wear t-shirts again.
One of the shirts that has been getting some love is Silly Goose; here’s the original print artwork. As you may have noticed, a big part of the style of my lettering is creating a layered effect.
I really like the visual texture that comes from overlapping the elements. You don’t even want to get me started on how each individual piece on it’s own is just a quirky shape, yet together they create something greater than they could by themselves. (…oh yeah, I’m deep like that.)
However, for some of my artwork I prefer the simplicity of using just one color. For this original artwork, I used only magenta for the shape of the goose, and then reversed-out the type.
“Reversed-out” is just graphic geek talk for the type being white, and since the artwork was being printed on paper that worked just fine.
However, as we looked to create shirts, I didn’t want to limit this artwork to only being created on a white shirt, therefore I needed to modify the artwork.
For this particular graphic I decided to explore losing the layered look and instead have each letter become a single shape. The first step was merging all the shapes that comprise each letter
Once I did that, I could see that there was going to be some problems with hierarchy. Since the g was currently lowercased and thinner weight than the two o’s next to it, I didn’t feel it read well. Therefore, I decided to make it a capital G and also increase the thickness of the letter.
Additionally, I was concerned that the linked o’s were going to be a problem. With the direction I was taking the artwork I thought that the small shape in between the letters began to look awkward.
To solve that problem, I scooted (yes, that’s the technical term) the o’s further apart. They still overlapped, but not as much as they originally did.
Finally, as I looked at the L’s in “Silly”, it seemed wise to simplify those shapes. As you can see in the original artwork, the base of the L hung to the left almost giving a serif-quality to the letter. (Serif’s are those finishing strokes on letters. Like an additional accent or flair to make a letterform look fancy…Ooo, La La!)
The serif needed to go because it was complicating the visual. One might say it was too fancy (gasp!)
But, it needed to be done, so I trimmed and tightened up (if only all things were that easy to trim & tighten up) resulting in a graphic that worked much more effectively in one color. The goose graphic would be white and the negative space of the words could be any color which would work with almost any color shirt.
To take a look at all of the possible color options, you can simply click here to choose your favorite.
And yes, it does look like the goose has pooped out my logo. That was intentional… totally intentional.
So, that’s a little peek into how this fun shirt was made. Remember, there is one week remaining to take advantage of our Shirtember offer to Buy One, Get One @ 50% off. Click here to be taken to the shop to make use of that code before it’s too late. Remember the sale is only active through the end of this month!
In addition, we added another shirt to the shop (also in a Men’s/Unisex version) yesterday, because we are kinda on a roll for doing this. Be watching for more to be added before Shirtember is over.
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