Shirt Prototype

I've been having fun playing around with shirt designs lately. My family and I have been experimenting with different textile paints, stencils, silk screens, gocco, and even the sewing machine. I'd like to someday sell shirts on the website a la Panic, but with a distinctly handmade/ artisan perspective.

The above shirt (prototype) was inspired by the trend of recycling older materials into new items. For example, Re-Sails bags (made for sail cloth) and these Rice & Feed Laundry Bags. We also recently bought some hand printed shirts for the kids from Potato Playground which I totally dig and have been inspired by.

To print this shirt, I cut a large version of the new logo from freezer paper used an x-acto knife to make a stencil. Then I ironed the freezer paper stencil to the shirt and masked it to the seams of the shirt. Finally, I printed the ink using a sea sponge to give it an organic and worn looking texture.

By the way, the shirt is from Edun Live. Check out their intro video.

Let me know what you think!

Bee Docs' Shirts

The upcoming Apple WWDC Conference inspired me to create a Bee Docs' Shirt. Last year, the conference was mostly a sea of humanity wearing black shirts and jeans.

However, the Apple employees had brightly colored shirts that they wore every day. Aaron Hillegass wore his hat most days so he was easy to spot in a crowd, Allan Obgaard wore his Textmate shirt most days, and the Delicious Monster crew were easy to spot in their brown shirts they wore each day.

Other than that, there were like 3,000 people wearing black shirts. I remember the guys I listed above because they were different. This time, I want to be easy to identify and remember too, so I designed the orange shirt with my bee logo you see above.

In the old days, I used to make band shirts by creating a custom silk screen and printing the shirts in my parents' basement. These days, you can just design and order a t-shirt from Zazzle and have it in a few days. It is more expensive for large quantities, but it is great when you want something quick and you only want a few.