1Pulse Orlando t-shirt design

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On June 12, 2016 our City Beautiful changed forever

A 29-year-old security guard, killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a terrorist attack/hate crime inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. He was shot and killed by Orlando Police Department officers after a three-hour standoff, surpassing Seung-Hui Cho's 2007 rampage as the deadliest mass shooting in the United States.

We were a small SEO marketing company located in the center of Downtown Orlando. This attack happened right in our backyard and we wanted to help in any way we could. I received a phone call from my CEO the next day stating that we needed to do something immediately to raise money for the family. His idea was to design t-shirts and give 100% of the profits to the families of the Pulse nightclub victims.

The following Monday morning, I gathered the design team and we locked ourselves in a room to put our heads together and come up with a design that captured an idea that we were ALL one. We also wanted a design that would show our love and support for our huge LGBT+ community in Orlando. After two hours of constant debate, reiteration, and tears (we were still shocked that this happened to our community), we came up with our design.

Originally, our plan was to sell just a couple boxes of shirts at the candle light vigil and donate the money to the families of the victims of the Pulse nightclub shootings.

We 250 shirts in less than 10 minutes...

We were not prepared for the out-pour of support and the demand for these 1Pulse Orlando shirts. After that night, we decided to mass produce the shirts and sell them online to anyone in the country who wanted to show their support. We quickly setup a website and spread the word around social media; the orders immediately starting to pour in.

We were floored by how quickly word spread. We heard advertisements on the radio, TV, Social Media; everyone wanted to purchase a shirt to show their solidarity and give back to the the families. In the end we sold over $80,000 worth of t-shirts and donated all profits to the families.