T-Shirt Design
Grading Rubric for T-shirt Design
Your finished project when loaded to your digital sketchbook in Filckr should look something like this and include:
1. A photograph of you wearing or holding up the printed T-shirt.
2. The original design from Adobe Illustrator (you will need to EXPORT AS A .JPG AND CLICK USE ART BOARD CHECK BOX IN THE EXPORT MENU TO GET THE CORRECT DIMENSIONS).
3. Any photographs for which you used the Image Trace Feature in Adobe Illustrator or physically traced with the pen tool.
4. An image of any vector graphics you downloaded to supplement the design (you may use the snip and sketch app to take a screen shot for this if necessary).
5. Write a paragraph in the comments field under the actual photo of you wearing the shirt, explaining the process and answering the following questions:
What is your design all about?
Where did you use the pen tool to draw original design elements, and where did you use the live trace feature?
Which parts are from symbols or vector packs?
What part of this process was challenging for you?
6. Turn it in by adding all of the above to your digital sketchbook in Flickr.
7. Your silk screen must be cleaned of both ink and emulsion and restored to it's original condition in order to get credit for this assignment.
Shirt Colors: Sign up here for your T-shirt size
Ink Colors
Check out the process I used in creating a t-shirt design for my group of mountain bike racing buddies. Notice how the design evolves, don't settle for your first idea, work on it and rework it, save multiple copies and try spin-offs of the original, you may arrive at somewhere far better than where you began. Arriving at a quality design can take a lot of creative energy expenditure. I think the final (larger design below) ended up a lot more dynamic and asymmetrical than where I started (even in 1 color).
I actually printed the design below.
Here's the new and improved version that I will try with a 2 colors next.
This is a site called threadless.com where you can upload your own T-shirt designs and if the community of users gives it a high enough score, they will put it up for sale and you will receive a percentage of the profits!
There are some creative designs by a lot of different artists, so the competition is stiff, but it's an easy way try your hand as a professional graphic designer. If you have a good idea, why not take a chance? You have nothing to lose.