Apparel Design

Clash City Rockers | N/A

I made this basketball shirt design comp in order to demonstrate my skills to a custom sports apparel company.  The team name is an homage to punk rock legends The Clash. It also commemorates a district tournament win for the fictional high school sports team.

Basketball shirt design story

First, I chose a red and yellow color scheme reminiscent of my high school alma mater, the Muhlenberg South Suns. Also, the main titles are set in black, which contrasts the white shirt. I made the most of a four color screen print to demonstrate my versatility. I blended many of the colors together in percentages, thus creating gradient effects.

My suggested basketball shirt design lays out on a white shirt along with bright red ringers for a vintage sports feel. I framed the requisite basketball shape with a bold red circle filled with bright yellow stars. Additional black and white strokes give weight to the frame. A burst of sun rays in the background completes the shape.

The word “CHAMPIONS” shines in a yellow to orange gradient, which pops off the shirt with a black shadow. It then adorns a stitched red ribbon in the foreground. I chose to set it in the bold serif Memphis font to give it a traditional athletic feel.

“10TH DISTRICT BASKETBALL” at the top features a white to black gradient with a heavy black shadow. “2009” and “CLASH CITY” display in a heavyweight sans serif font, which is similar to Britannic Bold.

Finally, the word “Rockers” splashes across the front of the design in a thick, painterly script. This gives the apparel design an edge.

One-Inch Buttons | Various Clients

When I started playing in the independent music scene, every band I knew had one-inch button designs. They are cheap to make for a band who may not have the money saved up to record an album yet.

Fans of independent music love to wear these little collectible pins as fashion accessories. I have collected so many over the years that I couldn’t realistically wear them all. When I came home one day, I found that my wife had pinned them all up on my curtains in my office. It looked really rad!

Some of the designs above were made for bands, such as Stellar Kin. I also have designed pins for labels like Bad Apple Records. Other button designs were made just for fun to commemorate an inside joke (“The Locksmith”). I made a few as inexpensive, personalized birthday gift idea for my friends (“April L Rocks!”).

I love that this format has both freedoms and limitations. Basically, I can design anything in Photoshop without having to worry about high printing costs due to the size or number of colors used, such as with screen printing. The small canvas also presents its own challenges. If I make the text too small, for instance, then it will be hard to read.

Button designs for everyone!

Whenever I take part in a new music venture, I always design buttons to get started with merchandise. As I mentioned, they are easy to afford for both buyers and sellers. My friend Matt has manufactured buttons with his company Think Twice Buttons since 2001. He does great work and has a ton of sizes and options to choose from.

Stellar Kin | Bowling Green, KY

I toured with the band Stellar Kin for six years. In addition to writing and performing, I created all of our band merch design. It is a special feeling to know that there are hundreds of these floating around out there with my former band’s name emblazoned on them.

Band merch design story

This shirt design is one of my favorites. I sought out to use an alternative placement from the beginning. Why not wrap the art around the side? The story of how the artwork came together for this jade green shirt is a unique one.

When I lived in Bowling Green, Kentucky, I came home from work one day to find that a neighbor’s home had burned down. Some of the debris had blown into my yard. I picked up a burnt piece of a page from the Bible. It instantly inspired me to create a unique band merch design. Not only did it contain scriptures about how we are called by God to love one another, it was distinctly shaped like one half of a heart. I scanned both sides of the page and simplified it to a simple high contrast solid black.

After I mirrored the two sides of the page to form the focal heart image, the phrase “Love never fails, even when we do.” came to mind. It sums up the main idea of the scriptures, as well as a personal mantra for myself. I set this text in a distressed typewriter font across a grungy faux papyrus scroll.

I distressed the band name “Stellar Kin” as well, featuring it in a pirate style script. Finally, I colored in the background of the art with some hot pink paint swaths to add extra chaos, while still tying the art together.

Main Street Costumes | Greenville, KY

Main Street Costumes needed a mascot shirt design that captured the essence of their local, year round costume shop. The design features a photo of a six foot tall, one-eyed skull. This gross, yet lovable, creature greeted those who drove by the shop, and was a fixture downtown for years. For the design, I surrounded the skull with a familiar cast of characters who were simultaneously both creepy and festive.

Mascot shirt design story

First, the owners Clint and Lori Cobb provided me with a high resolution photo of their familiar skull mascot. Also, they sent vector images of other famous characters that they had commissioned drawings of. These included Santa Claus, Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, a wicked witch, Uncle Sam, the Grim Reaper, and the Easter Bunny. I accepted the challenge to feature these colorful images in front of the shop’s “road sign” logo in a simplified four color screen print.

I reduced the surrounding characters to shades of grey, and simplified the skull to a black and white image. However, I recolored the bloodshot white of the eye, and the blue pupil. This is a great solution to the characters, since they originally needed too many solid colors to screen print at a reasonable cost. This also allows these elements to still stand out, framed in turquoise and surrounded by the colorful text, road sign logo, and hypnotic red circles.

I used a vintage style specialty font for the main text “Home of Giant Skull!”, styled with a red to white gradient. “Mainstreetcostumes.com” is set in light green using the familiar font used for TV’s The Simpsons.