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Assignment sheet

Places to print

Vector template

Brief

You are required to design a T-Shirt graphic for people aged 16-21. Your target market is your peers, so you will need to find out what they want. Do they want bright or dark colours? What styles do they like? Should there be a theme? What message do they want to send?

You need to follow the design process (brief, research, concepts, development, solution, evaluation, presentation), and will need to use Adobe Illustrator to produce your final design. There should be no raster graphics in your design, all elements must be vector.

Present your final design and documented design process in your folio (visual diary). You also need to submit an actual printed t-shirt with your design. Remember you are designing the graphic to be printed on the shirt, not the actual shirt itself!

Your final t-shirt may be displayed in the upcoming Arts Exhibition (Week 14).

You need to submit:

• Your design process in a logical order, displayed in your Visual Diary

• T-shirt with your design printed on it

Your design process should include:

• The original brief (from this sheet) with written specifications, in your own words with your target market in mind

• Research

• 3 Concepts, hand drawn and annotated

• Hand drawn and/or computer generated development of your chosen designs - DC shirt and Own Design (showing placement on t-shirt)

• Final Solution of own t-shirt graphic (Printed T-Shirt)

• Final evaluation of design explaining the design and all design decisions, approx 400 words

Concepts

Development

Evaluation

Koi Design: Continuance Is Power

To demonstrate our flexibility to a client brief and creativity, this client task is asks the Graphic Design class to design a shirt that people among their age group (16-21) would like. The only notable specifications for this task are that the design must be created in Adobe Illustrator and be vector. Everything else in the task are completely open-ended and thus will be explained in this evaluation.

In order to devise a design to create, research was necessary to find ideas that people between 16 and 21 would enjoy. The first half of research was about gaining the opinions from others, as well as looking at recent fashion trends. As noted above, my peers stated that designs they liked were comical, floral and typographic. In terms of a wider-scale audience, shirt trends in 2020 include rainbow themes, animals, as well as most of the ideas my peers mentioned (alignment tells there's a similarity in preference). A summary of this would be that peers around the 16-21 age enjoy simple but effective designs.

To narrow the focus of this open-ended assignment I decided to research about what makes a shirt timeless so trendy at all times. This second half of research was about why some shirts feel like they can be worn years into the future without feeling 'out of style'. I found that, in in terms of psychology: this emotional meaning combined with (visual) information is how memories become long-term. For instance, nature-related designs are timeless because we thrive in nature; a lot of people feel for it. This led me to the idea of animals - a theme that prints have been using for a long time, and based on vote I decided to use the koi fish. This species in particular allows me to add symbolism as they symbolise of perseverance, determination and luck in Asian cultures. The lotus flower, a common symbol seen with the koi also represents this and therefore will be a good supplement. Overall, the planned design was to aim to be create timelessness through the themes of koi and other Asian-culture references.

The 'final design' images above show the final designs against a t-shirt template and the back design. Because the front design is a snippet of the back design, the evaluation will focus on the back design.

This back design presents two koi (a kohaku (red and white) and a kawarimono) swimming in the noticeable yin-yang formation beside some lotus flowers and lily pads. These circular forms and shapes immediately remind the reader about yin and yang - symbolising peace and balance. The roundness of the lotus flowers and lily pads continue this visual trend. In terms of lines, charcoal outlines were used to denote a calligraphy brush (like traditional wall script art, which are painted with such brushes) to create a certain mood via texture: traditionalist and rustic, but also a little bolder, perhaps as charcoal is bold and unconventional. The aim of these shapes and lines were that they were to illustrate a simple but symbolic composition to these symbolic elements while conveying a rustic mood.

Colour scheme was used to further enhance the mood as well as make each object more identifiable. To reflect the rustic feeling, the colour scheme needed beiges, and to identify the koi (unique to their colours) was red, white and black. This resulted in a defined colour scheme (as shown above): roman red, sisal yellow, dorado brown, Carrara grey and mojo red - a scheme that would be associated with Asian culture because of the reds. Other than using them for base colours, they were combined to create gradients (in the plants) as well as depth where the koi's scales were 'shined' with blending effects of soft light and screen. The main purpose of these colour techniques was to hint at the Asian style and finish off the identity of each object with their respective colours - simple principle work.

Complementing the koi and the plants is the typography, where the text at the top states: "継続は力なり。" literally meaning 'continuance (also) is power/strength' (so 'don't give up') in Japanese (koi being a Japanese word). With the koi and lotus representing perseverance, this text was chosen for understandable reasons. The particular font used - TA-kouran - is a calligraphic font which hopes to reflect the traditionalist style (like wall script art) to fit in with the rest of the painting. The red square underneath is also known as the signature in similar Asian paintings, where the character '林' (lin, meaning forest) is just my last name written by (Illustrator's) paintbrush. This typography was necessary to fulfil the 'entire' traditionalist experience as real traditional art also includes text like this.

Composition and arrangement was responsible for wrapping these elements together. When it comes to back shirt prints, designs are generally better centred or with a clear direction - I decided to use a negative direction (text, koi then lotus) because the first and third elements seemed to fit around the koi in this way. Aside from direction, I hoped not to include too much negative space as this back design will be large in print - it may seem too plain if there's empty space. I achieved this through larger shapes and the petals as a 'filler'. On top of that (literally), I used a downloaded whitewash texture to cover the entire design to make it seem a little worn - supporting the idea of 'timelessness' and the theme of traditionalism.

These above elements aim to create a rustic and semi-detailed print themed around the koi which symbolise perseverance. My confidence in this design comes from how I regularly checked back with peers on the progress of this activity as well as my individual opinion.

As for what I could improve on, most aspects would be unspoken of but noticeable to the detailed eye. This includes the slightly inaccurate shape of the top koi (the body bends but I didn't make it that clear enough) and shape of the petals (very inaccurate but hopefully not consciously noticeable). This idea comes back to the concept planning as well as editing-on-the-go to make sure the end result is satisfactory. Otherwise, this design was finished more over-time than I hoped due to detail-oriented edits, not a negative factor but it did stretch out time.

In terms of prepress, the design was converted to CMYK and placed in the appropriate artboard for convenience. This design's 'hardcopy' was ordered off Tee Junction on a white, medium-sized 'Adult Regular T-Shirt'. The white colour was to not overwhelm with colour and put more emphasis on the design. The order should arrive in time for the Dickson Arts Exhibition which these tees are to be displayed in.

Overall an assignment that is very relevant in terms of briefs and very helpful in that it teaches the Graphic Design class the importance of creating something that will be made into reality.

From your freelance designer to you, have a nice day.

• Teri