Let the teabaggery begin in the finest, old tradition!

I wish I could explain… it’s just one of those things you read somewhere that sparks an idea, then another, and before you know it teabaggery is involved with a tshirt.

This is a mockup for a full garment printing version of an existing design (available via clicking the image above).

I know, it’s not the most sophisticated or original design to slap on a shirt. However, I was a bit more after color combinations.

I think what might make this work really well would be a glossy finish to the skulls or something with a heavier texture than just letting the fabric of the garment work through.

I’ll admit, I’m currently dreaming of full-garment printing for this design but I will make it available in a smaller format on t-shirts soon at the Tornado Republic store.

I love the uniquely American history of Route 66 in style and culture.

I wasn’t sure if a filigree element would be work or not but I think it’s strong enough without detracting and in the end – I think it works well. Also, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m enjoying the more earthy-tones and somewhat non-standard garment colors since I’ve been so busy with high-impact-color designs lately.

I’ve been doing work for clients lately… lots of bright colors, eye-popping design elements, most geared toward either small format apparel designs or things like wine labels, brochures, etc.

I guess I was just wanting to play around with different elements. Sometimes it’s fun to just go another direction… distressed and weathered, subdued colors, and totally whacked garment colors – something that looks like it was two different batches of dye mixed together. Navy blue and bright colors that pop are great but sometimes it’s fun to just toss that out the window and go with garment colors that probably have no official color-name, big hem-to-hem printing, and a design that looks like it’s been through too many laundry cycles.

If I could find a POD that could give me all that – it could be a dream come true.

My new “H20 Just Add Water” SIGG water bottle.

This was one of those designs that took the long way around to get to where it ended up. I think my brain was stuck on square aspect ratios and circular designs for too long. Once I finally got the color palette settled some of the more important parts of the composition came together.

I decided I wanted to emphasize the “verticality” of the water bottle and keep a bit more focus on earthy, natural colors. Although the blues might be a bit “ideal” I think it worked out while keeping the water-element evident throughout.

I also liked designing for this product due to the printing process… I can have a white canvas which permits me to use soft shadows instead of hard edged ones.

Available to CJ/CP affiliates via “tornadorepublic” unique tags.
Available for licensing inquiries.

Here in our little half of the world we’re getting ready for Earth Day celebrations for Aprill 22nd 2009.
So, recycle that hippie, hug that tree, and conserve organic beer and all that jazz.

This design is available at www.TornadoRepublic.com on new organic apparel, too, of course.

I ought to know. I’ve allowed many pieces of mine out into the wild with the thought “they’re good enough.” I was a bad boy.

A few weeks ago I was having this conversation with a buddy who was beginning to set up a photography portfolio online. He asked me to help him whittle down his masterpieces so his portfolio would be filled with only the finest examples of his work (which all of his photos are exceptional – so it was going to be a daunting project). I warned him that I tend to take whatever people think are their top-10 pieces and destroy them down to two items, at best. Very little survives my “cream of the crop” list-filtering.

It’s not about being brutal or unconstructive. It’s not about being the best of the best (which I am most definitely not in any way, shape or form), it’s not about suggesting the art that didn’t survive the whittling-down were lousy pieces. It’s about distilling the top by category (absolutely best colorful photo, best black and white, best portrait, etc.). It’s about narrowing down what looks best, in his case, onscreen at 800 pixels wide. It’s about picking the best photos that would present him as a photographer worthy of spending money on for the type of clients he wishes to attract. That, in my opinion, is going to produce results that could be very different from a portfolio of someone wanting to show off their best “human” photos or best “landscape” photos. It’s all about the venue and “best” is subjective.

However, it’s still a topic that includes something I hope can be useful to others in the POD (print on demand) world.

I’d like to just start with the best example of what I mean by “stronger” designs because it shows a few evolutions and how the word “stronger” can mean different things – my own work.

Above you can an evolution of a theme I wanted to follow – “pixel pusher.” It’s a phrase I’ve used to describe work I do to friends. The best part of this example is that it not only shows, what I believe, is a great example of a terrible example, but also the cruel irony that a graphic artist (me) would produce such an awful, stinkingly bad piece of art to illustrate being a graphic artist. It’s a great walk-through of painful horrendousness in one graphic. I apologize – I don’t know what I was thinking?

Okay, check out the above thumbnails – at the top – “I Push Pixels” 2007. Behold that little train wreck of pixels. It frightens you, I know it does.

Part of what got me into trouble, and a great motivator for this blog post, is my buddy and I were discussing the pain of sorting through our own art and tossing so many aside in favor of a few, great examples. He wondered how a guy (me) could produce pieces like these and yet have the nerve to display that top, 2007 “I Push Pixels” monstrosity – especially as a graphic artist who pushes pixels!

I don’t have a great answer but I suspect that my explanation will sound familiar. As much as I’d like to claim that I was a noob artist at the time and didn’t know what I was doing… that’s not true. I’ve been an artist since I was a kid and a commercial artist for years. I think I was caught in a frame of mind that was thinking that I needed to stock up my online store (for which that was a tshirt design) as soon as possible… more products – more products! I felt it was “good enough” and probably left it at that. I suppose there was also a chance that I got tunnel-vision in Photoshop that made me get fixated on a design element (or two) and felt I had accomplished my mission when I saw those elements on screen. I didn’t bother to really objectively look at it and realize that just because it matched the written description of what I wanted… it still looked terrible.

Finally, one day I realized it was, indeed a really weak design and brought the neighborhood down in the rest of my storefront. I decided to do a new version – “Pixel Pusher” 2008. You may notice that I carried over one of those design elements I used in the first one (the blotchy splatter behind the text). I don’t know why? I thought maybe, by changing up the text to a variety of fonts, would convey some message but once again… it only served to convey a lack of focus and confusion. It was new, but still a weak design. In all fairness, it looks mildly interesting at full-screen on a black background. The fonts are, indeed, interesting and the broken-lines and negative space give some interest too. However, when all is said and done it’s weak because it’s mostly just text, the slightly interesting bits don’t make sense to the theme (graphic artist), and those bits don’t translate through properly to a shirt like they did in higher resolution on the 30″ monitor. I failed again.

As a special note, I have nothing against text-designs. One of my store-favorites is one that was mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article I was featured in. It’s a simple text design made to look like a rubber stamp Does Not Play Well With Others. It’s hardly an Auguste Rodin original but it works because there’s a point to the simplicity of a stamp that implies its a label – a warning label. It’s become known and is uniquely identifiable (keep that in mind any would-be copycats). That’s why it’s a strong design – it accomplished its mission which included simplicity.

What I do think, though, is that there’s “text” and then there’s “text.” Sometimes, simplicity and message trump design. The words are key and too much flourish detracts from that. Then there’s times that the art and treatment of text-heavy designs gets taken to a higher level with the art. I think, if possible, one should try to push a design as far as it will go while keeping its integrity and purpose intact. Sometimes (as in my case) I frequently have to ask myself if I’m slacking off or if I really gave a design the full treatment it deserved?

It’s not hard to see I took a pretty drastic change in direction with the above. It’s still “pixel pusher” as that’s the theme I wanted but I wasn’t in love with keeping it specific. There was room to play. So, I decided that I’d stop reworking the existing art and just put down the graphic stylus and grab a piece of paper and pen and sketch. Sometimes, when I’m not bound by the mechanics of how I work in Photoshop and, instead, go back to sketching, I come up with clearer ideas of what I want. It’s weird, but sometimes white paper and pen is more liberating than a blank PSD canvas.

As you can see from the newer, 2009 silver emblem it makes more sense. It’s certainly easier to take pride as a graphic artist when your graphic art doesn’t look like poo… which the first two versions did. These next two versions, I feel, are evidence that I did, indeed, have more work to do and I couldn’t defend the previous pieces any more.

Obviously, this is all subjective to my own views. Customers may say otherwise by how they spend their money, family may lie and say it looks great. However, sometimes an artist just has to make an executive decision.

The 2009 silver emblem does have graphics that support, what I believe, are a stronger design on the theme… a graphic pen which makes sense, clean and bold design as an artist might aspire to make, and the extra “digital artist” text brings it home in case someone didn’t quite understand the slang “Pixel Pusher.”

This piece also represents a philosophy I’ve been getting more in-touch with and blogged about earlier – that of Designing for Presentation. In a nutshell, I created the silver emblem version knowing full-well that it had to look appealing at 200 pixels in a thumbnail. It could have had more detail, it could have had more intricate embellishments, but in the end I designed it with the ever-present idea in my head that it had to look good to a customer in the first way they’d encounter it.. the tiny section graphic.

The final piece, “Pixel Pusher Brewery” is not so much about taking a weak design and making it stronger but about playing to a niche market that enjoys, in this case, vintage style signage. It’s a stronger design in that market, that’s all. It’s a passion of mine but I thought others might enjoy the fact that the theme of “digital artist” could also take on some character with a brewery/beer-label style rendition. It narrows the audience, yes, but it can be a devoted following – those who like this style.

Well, 1500 words later and you surely get the point, right? It’s not about a design looking bad. When I say “create a stronger design” I don’t mean the previous one sucks out loud. I don’t mean that at all. What I do mean is that there’s potential that’s not being explored and you’re duty-bound to uncover it. It’s like having a Maserati and never really taking it out on the open highway and putting the pedal to the metal. It’s about creating art that totally jacks up the level of craftsmanship to the point where even you, the most critical artist, will agree the design is fully realized, and ready to unveil to the world. When you work a design up to maximum with text, colors, layout, art, balance, style, and focus… you’ll never have to look back and wonder if it’s good enough. You’ll never have to wonder if it’s your art itself that’s not appealing. Art is subjective – but only when you feel it’s the best that particular piece can be will it be considered a finished piece.

Happy pixels.

Great pizza by the slice or whole! If you’re not on the West side don’t worry – they deliver!

I’ll be honest, I had a pizza craving yesterday and that means it didn’t take long for me to crave doing a pizza design in my vintage sign style with a modern twist. The colors for this were sampled from a photo of a slice of pepperoni pizza – how’s that for die hard?

It’s another one of my fictitious “Any Town, USA” pieces (or, in this case, “Any City, USA”). The skyline is actually a combination of Minneapolis with some hints of Toronto and Boston which, I’m sure, have perfectly good pizza joints and not all are on the West side so please don’t send me any angry emails.

It’s available on shirts, mugs, hoodies, and more at TornadoRepublic.com

Available for affiliate sales using Commission Junction – Cafepress. As always it’s tagged with the word “tornadorepublic”.

Someone suggested that I’m now “the sign guy” and frankly, that’s totally great with me! I’ll admit I have been pretty obsessed with signage-style pieces lately and it’s only a portion of what I’ve wanted to do for a long time. So, there’s only going to be more.

Done mostly for my own enjoyment. I just wanted to do a little “woodwork” style signage and, well, once you throw a little brass in it’s easy to get carried away, right? So, in a long, convoluted way I ended up doing this vintage, 1930’s-1950’s style barbershop sign with barber pole. It’s not exactly correct in the sense that I’ve never seen a sign attached to the pole itself but it works for me. It’s a “Main Street USA” kinda’ thing – Americana, small-town, simpler times, etc.

Thank you very much to those who answered my request for feedback on my work-in-progress. I think I’ve incorporated most of the points as I agreed with them, too.

Available on various products at www.TornadoRepublic.com