Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

Typography for t-shirt designs

Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

T-shirt design process – Greg Abbot

Here are a lot of ways an illustration can be ruined, and a big one is line work. The line work is almost like the skeleton of an illustration, because you build everything else from it.

There are a few very simply steps you can take to take your line work to the next level.

I’ve started off here like I do any drawing, with just a basic rough sketch where I lay out the form and maybe some shading. Sketching is a very important step because it helps you determine placement and gives you something to reference when you’re doing your lines.

Okay, so I’ve traced over my sketch with some lines. Now obviously, this is my example of some bland line work. The widths don’t change, which leaves it looking flat, and there isn’t really much detail. So lets take it to the next level…

Above is an example of a few things that you can do to spend just a little more time with your lines. Varying line thickness makes the piece more interesting to the eye. You also want to use light and dark spaces to you advantage to give the illusion of depth, like with the eye sockets and nose cavity on the skull above.

Adding details is another good way to sell the viewer. Even if you aren’t going for photorealism, making the subject believable will make it that much better.

The more time you spend with your lines, the better you will become at getting a feel for how things should look to keep it interesting. Cheers, hope this was helpful!

Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

Line Work for t-shirt designs

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Coloring Tips for T-shirt Designs

Art Doesn’t Sell

In my experience as a designer and curator, there is a truth about the apparel world that has become apparent. If my hunch is correct, this probably spans the whole world of art:

Artsy fartsy doesn’t sell in a mass consumer market.

I don’t wish to discourage any artist from designing in their own voice, but typically, people enjoy simplicity; generic ideas, easily understood and recognizable.

By artsy farty, I am referring to esoteric ideas, themes, and execution.

For example, my best selling shirt at shirt.woot.com was Death on a Pale White Unicorn.

Whereas Death took only 1.5 hours, the piece over which I labored most, Plunder All, was received with only mild enthusiasm by the shirt.woot market.

Whereas Death on a Unicorn is easily understood, “haha, I get it, its… Death on a Unicorn, plain and simple, but whats this pirate about? He has brass knuckles but he has Love tattooed on his fist? And whats with the octopus with the keyhole in the head?”

Plunderall is not.

One may argue that shirt.woot is a vacuum in which the preferences of the consumers are very specific, but this is not the case.

In most avenues I’ve observed, there is rarely an exception.

Teefury.com started out attempting to be like their sister company Designbyhumans by starting out selling very artistic designs, then over time, the market tended to gravitate towards a Threadless-y Woot-y genre but uniquely Teefury-y.

It seems every business tries to dictate it’s theorectical market, but eventually the consumers from the web will eventually put them into a niche.

At Teefury, since we sell a different shirt every 24 hours, we still have a wide selection of genres we offer, but the obvious winners are pop culture related.

I’ve sold over a dozen shirts through Teefury. In the beginning, I started with artistic designs which took hours to create, and years of refining my skillset.

But to date, wonder what’s been my best seller? Ceiling Cat and Darth Tut. Both pop culture references.

What made my artsty fartsy designs fail? Frankly, unless you are in a niche market like Design By Humans, the majority of the population does not have the palette or affinity for esoteric expressions. They simply don’t have the ability or desire to understand a different language.

We are still very much like animals. We still exhibit the fight or flight tendencies in our decision making. We desire social validation and acceptance as community beings so if you apply this theory to products, we want a product that communicates a positive and acceptable message to the rest of the world. We don’t want to scare anyone into thinking we are different.

To wear something that is difficult or even unable to be understood, you might as well be wearing something with a foreign alien language.

We live in a world of symbols. Male/Female bathroom signs are universally understood. The color red, a sign of urgency, skulls typically represent death, etc.

As artists, we can help to create new symbols, but we must teach the world first before they understand it and are at ease with it. So there are two paths.
1. Design using symbols that already exist.

2. Be the forerunner in defining a new set of symbols, or way of expression, until it becomes accepted, if ever.

The latter is the true artist’s journey, so it is most difficult.

But it seems, that once you define a way of expression, you will have defined your niche, so you can rarely deviate from it once settled into popularity.

BTW, did you know that even with gallery art, the top selling designs are typically generic? Landscapes, abstracts, dogs, and portraits.

So what should you design to be successful?

It depends on your market, but typically

1. Look at trends. If you observe enough of the market, you will see consistency, an affinity for certain topics, or specific design aesthetics.

2. Include pop culture references. It’s a no brainer for Marc Ecko and Adidas to be partnering with Lucas Films to create products that are Star Wars related. Star Wars is widely understood and enjoyed.

Immediately, when people see the symbols or imagery related to Star Wars, cha-ching. You know it’s $$$$ MONEY $$$$.

If you look at Threadless, you will see alot of other topics that are pop culture/cult following related products.

Video games, zombies, tv/movies, etc.

Piggy-backing on something that’s already popular is the easiest route to getting sales, and attention.

There is a legal issue here. You must parody, or coyly design in a manner in which will allow you to skirt copyright infringement issues. Thankfully, parody is a route.

3. Keep it simple stupid. Don’t deviate too far from the normal way of expressing ideas, and don’t be complicated in artistic expression. Solid low color designs are king. You want to create a design in which, someone walking by in a second understands what they are looking at. This is related to symbols. Symbols are simple images. Just as we recognize a smiley face with a cirle, two dots and a semi circular line, you want your image to be almost just as simple.

*** Addendum by @Hydro74 Twitter
4. Emulate popular styles/trends. “uniqueness is rare and not demanded by consumers or companies thus emulate what sells with a splash of creative twist.”

…..

Recently, these are a few submissions I’ve seen at different sites which are obvious winners if they are printed. These are full of win. Obviously, it doesn’t take a expert to recognize them as good sellers.

Although, the skills exemplified by these pieces are professional, I would chance to say that, concepts sell most shirts, so these could have been done by a crappy artist, and they would still sell.

…..

This is the way of the world peeps.

One of the only places I’ve been successful with my own brand of art has been Designbyhumans.com, as it’s market gravitates to being somewhat esoteric and artsy fartsy. It’s built its consumer base as such, but if you notice the shirt of the weeks/months, you will also notice that it’s not necessarily the most artistic designs that win. It’s mostly allovers, abstract designs, and designs that have a wide appeal by being mildly trendy, but not overly similar to trends already existent in the apparel market.

It doesn’t necessarily take extraordinary artistic ability to win.

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How to Design for the Apparel Market

The Project:

You’re hired to create a “sick” t-shirt design for a major label Metal band. Their fans also listen to Metallica, Slayer, Slipknot, and Mushroomhead. Describe how you would make something that would appeal to those fans and sell at stores like Hot Topic or Spencers and what software you would use to create it. (Keep in mind the look of those bands merch and how you would create something similar).

The Process:

1. Familiarize Yourself

The first step is to get acquainted with the project and familiarize myself with the bands, fans, and the merch referenced in the brief. I’m don’t need to be a fan of the band I’m designing for, nor do I really have to be a fan of any of the others. But I like to at least listen to the band, maybe check out some lyrics, and their previous merch to see what has been done before.

2. Determine Style

Determine the design style. My main responsibility is to understand the vibe and aesthetic. This entire process really only takes less than 5 minutes because I’m already familiar with the bands and know exactly what style I’m to design in. In this case, I know I’ll be drawing something. What am I going to draw? My instinct tells me it’s going to be dark, demonic, and scary on a black t-shirt. But I shouldn’t be so quick to assume that, maybe the band wants something different. I better go back and reread their brief. Brb…

3. Read the Brief

OK, just read the brief and it turns out they want nothing new. OK, just like I thought. The brief says “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here. We just want something sick, that will appeal to people are into metal. You know, skulls, roses, blood, blades, etc.”

4. Assess The Budget

Talk to the client and assess budget. At this point, I would normally talk to the client about what subject matter they want in the tee and propose some ideas. Once I have a good idea of what they want and how much they can afford, I’ll get to the sketch phase. I suggest that maybe we use some of their lyrics about collecting dead birds and how it relates to a broken heart. I don’t need to REALLY understand it, but I can use some of those images in my sketch. Client likes the idea, so I move on.

5. Concept Sketches

Sketch up my concept. I’ll flesh out my approved concept on paper and I’ll show the client. This way they can give me feedback on overall composition, the meaning, the subject matter, etc. Just for sake of this article, my sketch might be a dead bird lying on its back autopsy style with a beating heart inside. Around the design I might add embellishments like graphical spikes, flourishes, grunge, etc.

6. Go Digital

Digitally ink, color, etc. I like to move to the computer after the client has approved my sketch. In this stage, I will likely use my Wacom tablet to digitally ink my sketches. I’ll gather reference material for the subject matter I am creating (in this case birds and hearts). My linework usually is black and I limit my color palette to about 3-4 colors. I’ll might use some stock vector elements from the Arsenal if I’m adding in decorative vector ornaments, flourishes, tribals, etc.

7. Proofs

Post proofs and mockups: Once I have a design finished how I like it under the budget they have given me, I’ll mock up the shirts on our photo-realistic t-shirt templates so the client can better see how the design will look on a shirt. I’ve found the more realistic you can present their idea in the real world, the more approvals you’ll win.

8. Revisions

Turns out the client liked the design, but they just want some color changes. So I’ll go back and make those changes, log my time spent on them and show the client new revised proofs. If they hate the design (unlikely, because they already approved the sketch and concept) then we reassess the budget and how much they can afford to start over. This rarely happens.

9. Final design

They give me a final approval on the design, then we send the invoice for the remaining hours. Once they’re all paid up, I prepare the final files for print. Usually that just means organizing the PSD or AI files, saving out flattened high res versions, etc. I don’t typically do color separations for tees, we save that job for the printer.

10. Send the files

At Go Media we like to burn everything on a disc and mail the final files to the client. We also send them online via YouSendIt. Both ways to make sure they get the file. We also send out a mini survey so they can give us feedback on how we did. Most of the time it’s 9’s and 10’s but occasionally we’ll get a 7 or 8

Go Media is a creative agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. We specialize in Brand Development, Website Design, and Illustration. We deliver effective designs with legendary customer service, giving our clients an unparalleled experience.
Hire us for your next creative project. learn more | contact us

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Band T-shirt Tutorial

Check out their site it really has a lot of great resources for designers.

Design a band T shirt Tutorial: Introduction

This is a tutorial or a simple “how-to” guide to help you with your design projects. This is not the end-all, be-all way of doing things. We will try to make what is normally a long and detailed process of creating commercial art into a simple and easy-to-follow guide. We encourage your use of artistic license and creative vision to make high quality work for your clients.

I wrote a brief tutorial on Apparel Design roughtly a year ago and it received a lot of good response. But it’s a bit outdated now. We’ve done lots more apparel work, including stuff for Avenged Sevenfold, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Evanescence, Atticus Clothing, Strhess Clothing, and tons more notable bands and clothing companies.

Needless to say, we’ve learned a lot about what’s hot in today’s “underground” fashion market. And when I say underground, it’s actually not so underground. Just take a peek into your local Hot Topic or Pac Sun and you’re going to see some great apparel graphics. And this tutorial will show you just how it’s done.

Everything you see in Hot Topic or Pac Sun these days features some combination of skulls, flourishes, splatters, and miscellaneous grunge effects. Why? Don’t ask me, but I’m sure it’s got something to do with the recent rise of popular screamo, metalcore, and hardcore bands into the mainstream. With bands like Avenged Sevenfold and My Chemical Romance paving the way for that ultra sceneXcore aesthetic. Which can look ultra lame if done bad, but hella cool if done right. And I’ll show you how it’s done right.

Design a band T shirt Tutorial: Before You Begin

How do you make all those flourishes, splatters, and other design elements? Well, some do it by hand and draw their own flourishes, wings, skulls, etc. But what most t-shirt designers are doing these days is using stock design elements and clip art. Old floral graphics and whatnot. It’s a quick and easy way to get that cool look without actually doing a lot of custom work.

We at Go Media prefer to create our own elements. But to make it easy on you, we’ve created a bunch of stock vector elements for you to get started right now. We’ve created custom shapes to destroy and beat up your designs at the highest quality possible. And just about every trendy element today is covered such as wings, crests, tech shapes and more. And they’re freakin cheap as hell. So if you want to skip the hard part and go straight to designing kick-ass apparel graphics, then check out our vector packs:

» kick ass stock vector packages – for that ultra sceneXcore aesthetic!

Design a band T shirt Tutorial: On With the Tutorial!

You’ll need these:
– Photoshop
– Illustrator CS2

So with that said, let’s get on with the design tutorial! First you need to open up Photoshop and Illustrator, as you’ll be using both. Mostly Illustrator. So get that Pen Tool ready!

1.) You need to decide what your client wants. Or if this is a personal project, what YOU want. Your client should give you some ideas. But I find that quite a few just want something “dark” and “scary.” So that’s what we’ll give them.

2.) Come up with an original idea! You’ll be tempted to use skulls or other typical dark imagery, but you really should try to come up with something new. If you want to sell shirts however, skulls are so trendy right now it might make you some cash. Skulls never seem to go out of style. In fact, they are becoming “pop” ular if you know what I mean. Little girlie skull underwear, etc. But anyway, think of an original concept and go with that. That’s the best way.

3.) Get out your sketchbook or open up Firefox. Once you have an idea, start sketching around. For those who can’t draw, search the internet for a stock photo. Or take your own photos, whichever works. Chances are, you aren’t a photographer, so manipulating stock photos is always an option. I’d draw something in this tutorial, but I’ll save that lesson for another time. For the sake of this tutorial let’s stick to photos. We can make that work!

4.) Find a photo. I found this one. It helps a lot if you find an image that’s fairly large. Preferably over 1500 pixels. I just searched Google images for this one. Now some may ask about copyright laws and whatnot. For the sake of this tutorial, it’s just learning. But if you want to use these images in your client projects, then it’s always good to ask the owner of the photo. But most times you can get away with it if you are manipulating it beyond comparison which is what we are planning to do. And I’m only using a snapshot of a wrecked auto. If you are worried about it, then purchase a stock photo or take your own photos. I use stock photos because I don’t call myself a photographer. I’m an artist and designer. So here’s the one I found:

5. Cut out the image you want to use. Copy the image and paste it into a new Photoshop document of the same size. Use the Pen Tool and create a path around your image. After you are done, right click and “make selection.” Select the inverse and press delete.

6.) Convert it to 3 colors. Here are the steps. I’ve created an action to make this easier

– Make a new layer – name it “highlights”.
– From the Select Menu: Select » Color Range » Highlights (this selects all the light parts of your image)
– Fill the selection with White (Press “D” to reset the colors to black and white, and the press “Ctrl+Backspace” to fill your selection with white.)
– Make another new layer – name it “shadows”
– From the Select Menu: Select » Color Range » Shadows (this selects all the dark parts of your image)
– Fill the selection with Black
– Make another new layer underneath those two – name it “midtones”
– Fill the entire layer with a grey color
– Ctrl+Click on the LAYER with the original photo you cut out to make a selection around it.
– Select » Inverse
– Select each layer and press delete. You are now deleting any extra color or pixels outside of the object you cut out.

You should end up with something like this:

7.) Live Trace (Vectorize) each of those layers. This is where we take this into Illustrator. And the newest version CS2 has a handy tool called Live Trace. This will save you lots of time! Open Adobe Illustrator and make a new document if you haven’t already. Here are the steps to do this:

– In Photoshop, select the “Highlights” layer and press Ctrl+I to invert it. You should have just made it black. Now with that layer selected, click on your art (not the layer) and physically drag your art (not the layer!) to your Illustrator button on your Windows task bar (keep holding the mouse down until the Illustrator window is active). With the mouse button still down, you should see a little [+] plus sign next to your cursor. You should now be able to drop your art onto the artboard. Release the mouse button and your “highlights” layer should drop right into your empty Illustrator document.

(Note: If you are having trouble with this, try copying and pasting it in. Or saving out a JPG of your highlights layer and “placing” it into your Illustrator document)

– In Illustrator, select what you just dragged in and click Object » Live Trace » Make and Expand (default settings for Live Trace are fine). You will get something like this:

– After you Live Trace something, it will have created a group of vector shapes out of both the black and the white parts of your image. Right click and ungroup it.
– Draw a big dark grey square around your shape and send it to the back. This will be your background or shirt color.
– Now you should see both the black and white shapes. Click on a white shape.
– With a white shape selected, click Select » Same » Fill Color.
– Press Delete. You are removing all of the white shapes and you are leaving just the black ones.
– Select all the black shapes and change their fill color to white. You should now see the “highlights” portion of your art now in vector form!

– Go back into Photoshop and drag the “shadows” layer over to Illustrator and do the same thing you did for the white layer. Except keep it’s color black.
– Go back into Photoshop and select your “midtones” layer. Use brightness and contrast to get your layer to look black.
– Now drag it into Illustrator and repeat the same steps as you did with the “highlights” and “shadows” layer. Except make this one grey.
– Now put the grey shape in behind the white and black layer. You should end up with this in Illustrator:

8.) Add more stuff. Now that you have your primary image Live Traced and converted to three colors, you can now start adding more design elements. So for this tutorial, we’ll use some of the design elements in the Go Media Vector Packs. You can use your own design elements or you can purchase our vector packs.

– Now this is the point where I begin to experiment with different shapes, different arrangements, etc. Just use your imagination. In our vector packs, you’ll find a large amount of different elements that you can be creative with.

9.) I just flipped around the design and started choosing colors.

10.) Added some miscellaneous shapes to give the design some direction and motion. I put them behind the car.

11.) Opened up our Splatter Set from our Vector Packs

12.) Added a few splatters in the background.

13.) Used our destroy set to blend things in and add some dirt to my design

14.) I used a skull from our Skull Vector Set and duplicated it a few times.

15.) Add some flourishes!

16.) I drew some random curvy lines with the Pen Tool.

17.) Used another vector piece from our Tree Set (not yet released).

18.) Added the text

So to get to this point, you need to just play around with your design elements and arrange them in a way that satisfies you. This particular example was a concept I did for a band called A Wilhelm Scream. I highly recommend them!

Once your design is done, it’s best to mock it up on a shirt for your client so they can get a good idea of how it will look when printed. So we have a variety of templates to do this. I like this one that a client provided us because it’s pretty versatile:

Design a band T shirt Tutorial: Conclusion:

Part of being a graphic designer in today’s time, is all about finding resources and using them to your advantage. There are plenty of stock vector packs and other elements out there for those of you who have trouble or simply don’t want to create them yourself. I admit that it takes time to create your own flourishes and whatnot. Your clients may sometimes want things quickly and do not want to pay for you to create these kinds of things yourself. And that’s why stock photos and vector art have become such a hot commodity these days.

There comes a time when clients will prefer you create completely original artwork and we love those jobs. We wish we could get more of those! And we will come up with original artwork or illustration and mix in our design elements for a really cool look.

So it’s fairly easy to get a high-end looking piece of apparel pretty quickly with these kinds of resources at your fingertips. Thanks for reading the tutorial and I hope you learned some new things. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I am sure I may have skipped a few things here and there that I take for granted. Thanks!

Resources:
Go Media Vector Packs
Go Media’s Apparel Portfolio

Go Media is a creative agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. We specialize in Brand Development, Website Design, and Illustration. We deliver effective designs with legendary customer service, giving our clients an unparalleled experience.
Hire us for your next creative project. learn more | contact us

Jeff Finley – who has written 200 posts on GoMediaZine.

I’m one of three owners of Go Media and admin of the GoMediaZine. I’ve been designing professionally since 2004 and I also play drums. Follow me on twitter!

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How to design a band tshirt tutorial

Hey Designer and Illustrator faithful! It’s time for another wicked tutorial from your brethren here at Go Media. I had a particular project I was working on recently that I thought would make a great tutorial. The technique I would like to share with you is a little illustration short-cut.

When you need to create something with that hand-drawn look but you’re on a tight time line – this is one way to do it fast. The project I was working on was a t-shirt design for Black Ace Clothing. They’re great guys and pay us well so I am not normally rushing through their projects. But on this particular project I had already completed a large hand-drawn illustration for the back of the shirt. They wanted an additional illustration for the front of the shirt, but I was concerned about the total budget for one t-shirt, so, I busted out this little trick of mine. It saved me time, and saved them money!

The Design

Let’s start by taking a look at the final printed t-shirt:

Here is both the front and the back of the design. The quote on the design is: “Sticks & stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” This is a really cool project because this t-shirt design is destined to be worn by Tiffany Michelle on an up-coming reality TV show. So, given the potential national exposure, we wanted to really hit a home run with this design.

The part of the design that uses my rapid-fire illustration technique is the front design. You can see it here in more detail:

This image shows a 3-color design. In the end production of the shirt you’ll notice that Black Ace decided to keep the front design simple (1 color) as to not over-shadow the back design, which is 4 color with a gold foil print.

The Tools

Just so, you have a full understanding of the entire design process we went through, I will show you how I did the back, then reveal my rapid-fire shortcut for the front illustration. Before I get ahead of myself I should give you a list of the tools you’ll need for this illustration:

• Bristol Drawing Paper (plate, smooth or vellum finish.)
• Pencil, Mechanical Pencil, (I used a Koh-I-Noor Technigraph 5611 mechanical pencil)
• Mechanical pencil sharpener
• Staedtler Mars Plastic White Eraser
• #1 or #2 fine-tip paint brush or crow quill pen (I used a #1 Windsor Newton University Series 233)
• India Ink (I use Higgins Calligraphy Waterproof Black Ink)
• Light Box (Or a window will work too.)
• Scanner
• Computer
• Adobe Illustrator
• Access to the internet or some source of photos

The Concept

Let’s do a quick fly-over of how the back was designed so you can understand what lead us to the front. For starters, Paul Davis – my contact over at Black Ace (and a mighty fine dude if I may say so) sent me over this concept layout.

Now, I know this may look a little rough, but I was actually very impressed with it. Not many clients come to me with such a refined concept. And while this particular incarnation of it doesn’t look so good – I could easily see that this was an awesome layout with great potential and just needed to be fixed up on the production end. Paul asked me to work with this concept, but to also sketch up two additional concepts for this design. Now, there is no shortcut to this early process. This is just a lifetime of drawing that allows me to do a real quick sketch. But as you’ll see later, the details I put into these are really not necessary. All you’ll really need to focus on is placement and size of your elements.

Here are the three sketches I did for Paul.

This first one (above) is my interpretation of his rough layout. Now that it’s in this rough sketch phase you can start to see the potential. I KNEW this one was the best of the three, so I pushed to work on this one.

Above are the other two sketches I did, but Paul was wise enough to go with concept #1 (his own original layout.)

At this point I just drew this. There were no shortcuts used on the back design. OK, maybe one—we do own a skull over here at Go Media. Whenever I’m drawing a skull and need reference, I can pick it up and hold it at various angles to see how to draw it. And no, it is not the head of a Boston Red-Sox fan (Go Tribe!)

Above is the scan of the pencil sketch for the back before I inked it. As you’ll see, I left the text off because I knew I was going to drop that in with Adobe Illustrator later. Also, there will be a Black Ace logo in behind the banners. So, that too was just roughed in. As I said before, I’m not going to go into all the details of the back design, just a fly-over so you can see what I’ve done. For all my pencil drawings I use a Bristol paper because it’s very thick. This allows me to erase without fear of tearing the paper. Bristol paper also allows me to ink it without fear of the ink bleeding through to my desk. I use a mechanical pencil, well, just because it feels better in my hand then a regular wooden pencil. I use an HB or H hardness lead. Although the B, B1 and B2 leads feel GREAT when I’m drawing, the lead is too soft. It smudges all over the paper and makes a big mess. So, I use the harder leads.

Inking

Once the pencil drawing is done, I bust out my brush and “ink” the drawing. I use a paint brush because it allows me maximum line weight variation. Or, in layman’s terms – I can make my lines as thick or thin as I want. By varying the weight of my lines it gives the illustration a ton of character that is hard to duplicate on the computer.

You’ll notice a big roll of masking tape near the end of my brush. I put this on my brushes because I have big fingers. This gives me a better grip of my brush.

I make a lot of little shading lines that look best if they start as a thin line and thicken as they work their way into the dark. A crow quill pen can also accomplish the same effect. If you’re going to use a crow quill pen I suggest using a Hunt Artist’s Pen tip #512 and 102.

Scanning

Once this Illustration is done, I scan it into my computer using our flat-bed scanner. We’re fortunate to have an over-sized scanner here at Go Media. This over sized scanner allows me to scan the whole illustration in one single pass.

Not long ago we only had a legal-size scanner. I would have to scan my larger drawings in two or three pieces then assemble them in Photoshop. That was always a pain in the ass, but hey – what can you do? As I am planning on live-tracing this drawing in Illustrator, the higher the resolution the scan is the better. I like to scan my inked drawings at 500 dpi.

Typography

At this point I have my finished inks are in Illustrator and I’m ready to add my copy and colors. For this design I wanted an edgy, almost medieval font that looked like it was hand painted so it would match the rest of the illustration. I did an extensive search and found the font you see here.

I won’t tell you where I got it – ancient Go Media secret. Obviously, it was perfect!

I used the Effect>Warp>Arch tool in Illustrator to get the copy to follow along the shape of my banners. Then it was just a lot of nudging, kerning, stretching and scaling to get all the letters where I wanted them.

Coloring

I started the coloring by creating one single shape that filled the entire design. I made this by simply making a copy of my vectorized line art, selecting it, and then doing the following: Object>Compound Path>Release, then Object>Ungroup, then Pathfinder>Add to Shape Area. Basically this process broke all these vector pieces up, then merged them into one single shape.

Next I pick my colors. Paul was printing this shirt with silk screens and has asked me to restrict my design to 4 colors. I know that I’ll need a range of color values so that I can color both shadows and highlights. Here are the four colors I picked. I would love to give you a long explanation for why I picked these exact colors, but I don’t have one. I just picked some colors that I liked and thought worked well together.

As I was planning on putting this design onto a black shirt, I start by swapping my line art’s black with my darkest purple. It needs to be bright enough to pop off the black, but dark enough to act as my darkest value color. Next I fill the entire design with the middle value of the three remaining colors. This allows me to add shadows and bright spots to the middle. That’s much easier to figure out than any other method.

Once the middle value fills the shape I do my shadows next. If you’re wondering how I decide where to place my shadows – well, nothing magical here. I look at the shape, imagine it in 3D, imagine a light source and give my best guess at how the shadows will fall across the object. If I have a reference photograph or the actual object (like the skull) then I can hold it up to a light and see exactly how the light falls on the object.

Once the shadows are done, then the highlights are fun and easy to drop on. Remember where your light source is!

The last step is to add some finishing touches. For this design I added some radial vector shapes from Go Media’s Arsenal. I use these types of stock design resources to finish off a lot of my designs. They’re another fantastic tool for saving time.

And viola! The back design is finished. Last step is to pimp out the design on a sweet t-shirt template and present it to the client. (Designer’s Note: Taking a little extra time to mock-up your designs really has a huge impact on the client. It’s one thing to see a flat design, but to see an actual t-shirt with the client’s design ON it! Wow! Now it’s REAL.) For this, of course I use the FINEST t-shirt templates ever made – Go Media’s of course. And they’re ultra fast and easy to use because the shirt is already masked with the highlights and shadows on their own layer. So, you just drop in your design and poof! It looks like a real printed shirt! (Ok, gratuitous product plugs are done.)

Now for the really good stuff.

At this point Paul was ecstatic with the design (correct me if I’m over-stating your satisfaction level here Paul.) But he wanted a little something for the front of the t-shirt as well. Since he liked the sketch #2 that I had done, he asked me to make that one as well.

This front design was intended to be printed smaller and was also on a very tight budget (since the back had taken so much time/money.) I needed an illustration short-cut. I needed a trick. I needed Go Media’s Rapid-Fire Illustration Technique!

So, here is the way to really speed up an illustration project: just rough-cut together a bunch of photographs into your intended illustration. This will be easier if I just show you.

Rough Sketch

Here is the original sketch.

Rough Photo Collage

Now, obviously, this technique doesn’t work for all things. If Paul had asked me to illustrate a superhero flying with a dog under his arm, well, the likelihood of me finding that photograph would be remote. But this design had mostly common objects – roses, a skull, rib cage, bones and a banner (I couldn’t find a banner in the right pose, so I just left a spot open based on my original sketch.) Also, this is a fairly clean assembling of photos. In truth, it can be way rougher than this. This image is just to be used as a guide to help you get your illustration going. You can clean up and fix all the little details while you’re drawing.

Collage To Sketch

So, the next step is turning this photo montage into an illustration! Start by printing your photo montage at the appropriate size. In this case, I wanted it about 8 inches across. This is approximately twice the size the final design will get printed on the shirt. (Illustrator’s tip: Whenever working on an illustration – create it at about twice the size you’re going to print it. This allows you to be a little sloppy. Once it’s shrunk down to the final size it will look super tight! People will wonder how you got so much detail into it.) Ok, where was I? Oh yeah – turning our montage into an illustration. Now that you’ve printed out your photo montage, you want to tape it to a sheet of your Bristol paper. Make sure the printed side of your montage paper is facing the Bristol that you’ve taped it to.

Now take out your trusty-rusty light box and place your paper on top of it, Bristol paper up! Next, you’re going to draw your illustration using your photo montage like a draw-by-numbers guide.

If you need to change, exaggerate, or edit the photo montage, you can make corrections now. On this design, for instance, I thought the skull’s bottom jaw was waaaay too large. So, no problem, I just ignored the photo and drew it a little smaller.

If you don’t have a light box, you can always use a window during the day! But make sure not to push too hard! I don’t want you falling through your window.

This phase of the drawing doesn’t have to be perfect. The photomontage is there to help act as a guide. While on your light box just get all the major shapes in place. Then you can turn your light box off and finish the drawing using your innate drawing ability (if you have that). You can strengthen your lines, add shading, details, etc.

In this case time was at a premium and I knew I would be inking this myself, so I really just hammered the drawing out quick. I trust my ability to do a sweet job during the inking phase. Here is the finished pencil drawing I did using the photo montage as my guide.

You can see that I invented a lot – particularly the banner. Now, obviously I have years of drawing experience, so it may be a bit easier for me to “invent” details that are not actually in the photomontage.

So, that’s really the end of the “shortcut.” While this shortcut may still seem labor intensive, I can assure you that this will save you some serious time. The photos give you all those little details that you would otherwise have to invent. Also, having the photomontage as a guide completely eliminates the possibility of total failure. If you’ve spent any time drawing you certainly know this is a real possibility. I’ve personally had plenty of days when I simply cannot draw what’s in my head. After several frustrating hours and a waste paper basket full of failed drawings, I’ll usually just quit for the day and start again the next. Using this photomontage technique will leap frog you right over any of these types of problems.

Inking

Now we proceed as we did with the back design. Using Higgins Calligraphy ink and a #1 paint brush, we ink our illustration. Here are a few inking tips. First, your lines should be thinner on the side of your light source. If you have no light source, assume it’s coming from the top. So, if it’s a bald head you’re drawing, the line beneath the chin should be thick and the line on top of the head should be thin. Also, objects in the distance should be drawn with thinner lines. Objects in the foreground should be drawn with thicker lines. Using these techniques will give your drawings a sense of depth and character.

Here is the finished Inking of this drawing:

I was always a big fan of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, of course, who wasn’t. But it wasn’t just the brilliant writing. You could see that Calvin and Hobbes had been painted with a brush. Just look at all the character in the line art. You can see the thickness of the line weight varying dramatically.

Compare that to another comic I love: Foxtrot. The writing is still great. The characters are hilarious. But the line art is kind of flat and boring in my opinion. This is the difference between using a brush (or crow quill pen) and using a regular felt tip pen when inking your illustration.

Now we go through the same process that we did for the back design. I’ll break it down into numbered steps for you here. Sometimes that’s easier to follow:

1. Scan the art at 500dpi – save as jpeg.

2. Place the art into Adobe Illustrator.

3. Select the image.

4. Convert the line art to vector: Object>Live Trace>Make and Expand

5. Get rid of all the white shapes that the Live Trace function creates. Using your open arrow tool, click on any one of the white areas of your art. Then select the rest by clicking: Select>Same>Fill and Stroke. Warning! In illustrator this function grabs EVERYTHING that has the same fill and stroke, so if you have other white objects with no stroke in your document, it will erase them too! Once all the white shapes have been selected, hit delete.

6. Make a copy of your line art. Either select it then Edit>Copy, Edit>paste. Or select it and hit control+C, then Control+v. Or, while using your arrow tool, hold down the alt key, grab your line art and drag it to a new location. All three of these methods will make a copy.

7. Create your primary color fill object. Select the copy of your line art and use function: Object>Compound Path>Release. Then Object>Ungroup, then Pathfinder>Add to shape area.

Ok, now at this point you should have your line art and a single shape “fill.”

8. Add your copy. Now, just like on the back we’re going to use Adobe Illustrator to add our copy. It’s a simple text box with an effect>Warp>Arch applied to get it to fill our banner.

9. Color your design. The coloring on this side of the shirt is even simpler than the back. Paul asked for a simple 3-color design, so – that’s what I gave him. I’m going to be using the same colors I selected from the back. So, the line art is a dark purple and the primary fill color is a yellowish bone color.

The one additional color I’ll add will be the shadows.

After an initial proofing Paul felt that the rib cage was not working in the design. No problem! I just created a shape to remove the ribs and then used the Pathfinder>Subtract from shape area. I did this twice – once for the line art and once for the color fill.

And that’s it. Here is the final design for the front of the shirt. I got this entire piece done in about 5 hrs. 1 hr. to find these pics, 30 minutes to piece them together, 1 hr. to do the pencil drawing, 2 hrs. to ink, and 1 hr. to scan, vectorize and color!

I want to give a big shout-out and thank you to Paul and Howard Davis for being such cool clients and allowing me to write this tutorial! For some reason a lot of our clients are overly protective of their assets and don’t let us show off our work! This shirt is NOW available for pre-order at BlackAceClothing.com or click here to get directly to this product.

Thanks for your time and attention. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and learned a few new tricks!

Go Media is a creative agency based in Cleveland, Ohio. We specialize in Brand Development, Website Design, and Illustration. We deliver effective designs with legendary customer service, giving our clients an unparalleled experience.
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T-shirt Design Illustration Technique

One of the most overlooked details in t shirts are their tags. When I say tags, I am specifically talk about the tags hidden away on the inside of your shirt. The tag that never sees the light of day, and is usually an afterthought. So after coming across some incredibly creative tags that in my mind add value and personality to a brand I decided to put together a list of companies that do an incredible job with their custom tags.

Some of these companies use silk screen tags, providing maximum comfort and that non-itchy woven tag and some of these companies opt for the custom woven tag, which to me comes off a bit more professional.  I even found one brand that uses both a woven and a silk screen tag for the ultimate combination of awesomeness!  Whether you prefer the woven tag or the silk screened tag I think we all can agree that the t shirt tag is becoming an art of it’s own.

Here for your viewing pleasure are 17 custom tags from 17 different upcoming and established indie brands.

Companies Shown in Order:
Aplomb Clothing | Zombie Liquorice | Ugmonk | The Printed Mind | Snakes & Suits | Cry Wolf | Seibei | Robata Brand | Rethink | Killbrand | Johnny Cupcakes | Disturbia | Hung out to Dry | Fuzzy Ink | Dance Party Massacre | Skilla | Glamour Kills

Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

The best t-shirt tag designs

Post from: How to start a Clothing Company

How to be a good client