Tag: illustrator

  • trying out t-shirt design

    This summer has flown by so fast! One thing I like to do every summer is some sort of craft. So I dug out my fabric paint and made some sick custom t-shirts. There’s something cool about bringing a sketched out design to life and then being able to wear it out and about.

    Here’s the sketch w/some of the shirt in the background

    My chosen playlist for this project: click here

    But yesterday I finished a sketch and thought it was decent enough to actually mock up in Adobe Illustrator. It reminded me of a similar project I did last semester at STC. The goal was to create a school club t-shirt that could potentially be sold in the bookstore. We considered graphic placement, fonts, and school colors.

    My goal with this design was to create my own fan merch that was simple and true to the artist. Instead of a actual picture I opted for a silhouette. I used bold contrasting fonts to convey the song lyrics complicated heavy message.

    I brought the sketch into illustrator and started tracing it. I liked my initial design, but it was a bit hard to read the bold font.

    After some feedback, I expanded the size of the halo to include the text and tried a solid color font.

    I like the reworked design (above) but I think the halo could be thinner. The contrast of thickness seems a bit off and the halo and the text seem to be competing for dominance.

    Here’s the initial mockup! I added the Ethel Cain logo to the back because some of her merch includes it. (example of her merch below)

    I’m gonna look for some more free tshirt psd mock ups, clean up the design and then share the final product with you!

    Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts and check out my posts below.

  • trying sticker design

    In an effort to stay in Illustrator, I messed around with the idea of making stickers. Usually if I wanted to buy stickers, I’d scour Etsy or Redbubble. But sometimes the stickers I want aren’t there, hence me trying this out. For some reason, I decided to build off of my tattoo idea from this previous post.

    Gathering Resources

    I started looking up youtube videos and came across two semi helpful ones. (video 1 and video 2)

    After getting some insight on how to merge shapes, etc. in Illustrator I dug out my original sketch.

    Designing

    Then I started designing, keeping the lyric in mind as well as typical interstate signage references. I wanted to keep my sign looking accurate as possible. I discovered that the font (Highway Gothic) was created by the United States Federal Highway Administration for all road signage.

    Here’s my first draft, not too shabby. But not the right font.

    I really wanted the sticker to feel more fun than just a white and green sign. I think adding the additional lyric “I can’t leave it be” in graffiti type font helps elevate it, adding variety.

    Currently I’m rocking with either of these two designs. I think I like the sticker without the extra rectangle at the top right. I can’t decide on the graffiti font, but the texture of the bottom one seems to catch my eye. I like the idea of the state number crest, but it might be too much. Let me know your thoughts!