The company I've been keeping...

After literally being consumed with t-shirt design and printing for nearly two months, I've taken a break and gone back to my print design roots to work on this exciting project for Sells USA. Sells Goalkeeper Products has developed an undeniable brand across the pond- their gloves are worn by high profile keepers like Ben Foster of Manchester United (pictured above). My friends at Goal Sporting Goods have become the exclusive distributor for Sells here in the US and I have been fortunate enough to be able to design the US marketing materials.
Pictured below are some of the spreads from the catalog we're working on. Nothing quite validates the product like having the big guys wearing the gloves on the same page you're selling them!
Oh, and about the title to this post... I wish





Below is a full-page ad for Eurosport. The future of goalkeeping is in good hands. Good to know.

Duke's Closet: First Printing

It was a big day in the print shop today.
The t-shirt designs I have been working on for months on end finally went from my computer screen to ink on cotton, so to speak. While years of experience in the graphic design industry have prepared me for what to expect when my designs go from computer to traditional print, I was somewhat apprehensive about what the results in the screenprinting shop would be.
The ink colors, chosen from my trusty PMS swatch book had to be mixed from our screenprinting inks by eye without the advantage of any formulas.
Flip did an awesome job, I compared his Tupperware containers of inks to the swatches and decided we were ready for the next big step- putting them on cotton.


At this point I'm still unsure though as to how these colors will "sit" on the t-shirts. Will they need an underbase of white to show their true colors? I didn't plan for that. We had enough screens to burn already without making extras for a base coat of white for each design.
Time to stop second guessing and ink up!


We started with the Ladies' collection since most were one color. We had a couple of t-shirt color options for each design and tested colors on additional t-shirts just for future referece. Overall, the results were just as I had envisioned them.
Yay!


Now for the challenge of the mens' collection. Most of these designs are three color, and the images themselves are more "complicated". This is one of three screens for the "Woodies" design.


We ran into a little glitch on this one. While I like the colors, the design. particularly the Woodies in the background became a little difficult to read. This one is going back to the art department for some revisions. This is R&D!

more found art

Apparently Justin is making good use of his vacation week time. I love this artwork-a combination of two photo images turned graphic. I could learn a thing or two from this kid. The best creative discoveries are made when we have the time to play and experiment. Those times are just too infrequent.

wip

a couple for the guys

Stock image converted to grayscale, bumped up contrast and bitmapped, combined with surfer silhouette- traced in Illustrator from another stock image. Waves scanned from a surfing magazine, contrasted and otherwise manipulated in Photoshop. I don't suppose I could retrace my steps if I had to, but that's the gist of how this evolved. Now, how to translate to a t-shirt?

Same basic technique here. (RI highlighted for the Rhode Island surf crowd)

Ladies’ Collection

That's it for now. We can expand from here to offer different color t-shirts and hoodies, but it's time to pull the design plug and start printing samples. "BEACHTOWN USA" is the "placeholder for the name drop. Five weeks to showtime! (click on any image to enlarge)

weekend work

Some early proofs of the new men's line for Duke’s Closet. We have a booth at the Cape Cod New England Gift Show in March. I'm really scrambling to get some samples designed and printed. And I have all sorts of ideas about how I want the booth to look. Did I mention that it was March 2009, not 2010?