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September 15, 2008

BarCampMilwaukee3 Final T-Shirt Design

After receiving not a single entry in the BarCampMilwaukee3 T-Shirt design contest, I decided late last week that I ought to come up with a design for the shirt, and quick.

Below is the final BarCampMilwaukee3 T-Shirt design for 2008:

How did I Get Here?

The deadline for ordering shirts and submitting some art was looming, and there were no submissions to the contest to speak of. It was last week Thursday when I opened my sketchbook and started to doodle. What came out in rough form was a design vaguely similar to the design above.

I wanted something a bit organic, fun and round. I remembered that Pete Prodoehl had "tagging" space on name tags at the first BarCampMilwaukee in 2006. I took his idea a step further by embedding the tagging spaces right in the shirt design.

At the Web414 meeting that evening, I saw Jordan Arentsen wearing a charcoal gray t-shirt from a recent Adobe AIR event, and loved how the shirt looked. I checked his tag (with his permission) and found it was a Gildan Ultra Cotton, the same shirt I've been using with all of my projects for the last few years. Excellent!

Design Iteration v1.0

When I got home, I was wired from the Web414 meeting, so I began working with the sketch I had, and generated a v1 design iteration. I quite liked the feel of this first iteration — the rounded shapes and tags, white backing color and the use of the BarCampMilwaukee icon on the back.

As I look back, James Carlson gave me some inspiration with a Wiki character he's sprayed on a large sheet of paper and showed at the Web414 meeting. It had eyes on stalks, which influenced my decision to add similar circles/eyes on stalks to the t-shirt design.

However, I wasn't sure of the dark blue color, and decided to sleep on the design until Friday.

Design Iteration v1.1

In the morning, I had the idea to try another color. Since the BarCampMilwaukee logo takes inspiration from the Milwaukee Brewers Blue & Gold colors, why not try a retro 1980s Brewers medium blue?

That's what I did, and I really loved the feel against the white and the charcoal gray shirt material.

I also wanted to describe the idea visually to the BarCamp core team, so on the v1.1 iteration, I added some sample texts in the balloons for my name, Twitter handle and 5 tags that represented my interests.

Design Iteration v1.2: Final

Feedback from Web414 and BarCampMilwaukee people was very positive this weekend, so tonight I've finalized the EPS art for t-shirt printer, complete with the sponsor list for BarCampMilwaukee3.

Thanks to everyone who helped with this project, especially Pete! I will follow-up when the shirt goes to print with photos of the shirts hot off the presses.

September 15, 2008 11:40 PM | T-Shirts | add to del.icio.us