You will create a one color hand crafted, custom lettered t-shirt design using either Photoshop, Illustrator or Adobe CC Mobile apps on the iPad. You will be introduced to what makes a good t-shirt design. You will evaluate several typographic solutions, learn the steps to creating a t-shirt design as well as being responsible for creating a unique, well thought out type design of your own.
The t-shirt project had been one I was looking forward to for a long time. When I heard that the design had to be a typographic design, and custom lettered I knew the design I wanted to use. I would use my name in Greek. My name in Greek means "and", but in Greek there is this interesting looking ampersand; "ϗ". I have used this symbol in different projects before, and I was excited to have something I could wear with it.
Only a few weeks before the project I went on a missions trip to Guatemala and Honduras. While I was there I saw a lot of graffiti that inspired me to draw a "tag" for myself based off of my name in Greek. Below you can see what I drew up while in Guatemala, the design being inspired by the graffiti(Middle).
The other two sheets are varying designs that I drew up for the project. In the end,I stuck with the design in the middle, because it fit the look I was going for. From the sketch in my notebook, I took the design into Adobe Fresco, where I cleaned up the edges, made the lines square, and made the outer edge thicker so it looked cleaner.
After completing the design, I felt that the shirt would be incomplete without some text going down the side of the sleeve. So to fit the Greek theme, I found my favorite bible verse with "and" in it, and worked with a latin teacher, who also knows Greek, at my school to help me translate. The verse below is what I ended up using, and it is the last part of John 10:10.
"I have come that they might have life and have it to the full."
or
ἐγὼ ἦλθον ἵνα ζωὴν ἔχωσιν καὶ περισσὸν ἔχωσιν
Now that I had my designs I had to make the screens. I printed my transparencies, put my emulsion on, exposed my screens, and sprayed them down all on the same day. The next day I did my printing. The photos below show the process broken up.
Overall, the process worked out great. The only problems I really had was when I was printing. For the main portion on the back, I had to put and excess of ink on the screen because it was such a large design. Then for the sleeve design, I had to flood the screen sideways, pull straight, and the use the heat gun on the sleeve to dry it quickly so that I could move the sleeve to print the rest of the shirts.
Also I made two sets of shirts, I made one design of the blue on the white sweatshirts and white long-sleeve t-shirts. The second can be seen below, and it is white ink on black and navy long-sleeve t-shirts. I gave one of these as a thank you gift to the latin teacher at my school.
In the end the project turned out great, and I am excited to wear these shirts around. The design is clean, and I am so glad to have learned the screen printing process. I hope I can continue doing this through college.
Also me and my cousins had fun taking picture of the shirts on people, as you can see in the pictures above.
