Music Merchandise Design: Thought + Process

1. Trailer: Hey guys, I'm Brandon Rike. I'm a graphic designer and I specialize in band tee graphics. Throughout my career I've been able to design graphics for hundreds of bands inclding Pearl Jam, Beastie Boys, Mumford and Sons, Nine Inch Nails, Deftones and Blink-182, to name a few. In this Skillshare class, I'll design graphics for the band Twenty One Pilots. I'll actually sit down with the lead singer Tyler and I'll get to hear his direction for the shirt. What he wants to see in the merchandise and all that. I'll absorb that direction and I'll apply it to sketches and of course the design moving forward. In this Skillshare class, you'll get to follow along with me throughout my entire creative process, through the brainstorming and research, to the sketches, to actually executing everything in Illustrator, finalizing it in Photoshop and of course, mocking it up for presentation. You'll be able to get an inside look at the way that I do almost every project. To make things even more interesting, students are able to submit projects based on the client's directions. So, you'll watch me design graphic tees for Twenty One Pilots but you'll also get to submit graphics for Twenty One Pilots based off Tyler's direction. Maybe I got it wrong, maybe I got it right but you can do it better. Either way, I want you to submit your projects and I want to see what you can come up with. Twenty One Pilots and myself will actually select one to get printed and to be sold on tour with the band. So, you get a real life experience of what it's like for kids to go to a show, buy shirts that you design and wear them around. So, this class I've put together, this is the most honest way for me to show you what it's really like. What my day to day operation is really like. You're going to see the entire process and you're actually going to have your stuff put up for critique and possibly get chosen to be printed. So, enroll now and spread the word. I can't wait to get this class going. I'll see you soon. 2. Client Interview: All right. So, we established this logo with your merch this year. We did all these logo shirts, established your colors, all that stuff, so you went through a whole year of this logo-driven merch, what do you want to establish next year? What do you want to keep going for this coming year here? Man, as an artist, it's always hard for me to figure out what I want my merch to look like, but at the same time, I realize I don't really buy band merch. So, I'm always trying to find someone to help me figure out a balance there where I want to have creative input but at the same time I realize I'm trying to sell to people who are looking to support me, which I'm not that person who is going to go and buy my own shirt. So, it's a weird thing. But you don't have to buy a band shirt, I mean, you buy Roca stuff. Yeah. So, what brands do you think are your favorite brands? What do you find yourself wearing, or what do you find your fans wearing, and which one of those is more important to you? Are you trying to figure out what those fans like, are you trying to figure that out or are you just setting, this is what I like, this is the way my merch should look? The people who buy my merch are going to walk around wearing it and I'm very interested in how that starts conversations with people or just gets my brand out. So, I like a design and I like merch that could potentially start a conversation or get someone else's attention. Not necessarily someone feeling like they look sweet, as much as I want people to ask what does that mean or what is that. What's Twenty One Pilots, what is that band? Or I've heard of that band before, what is it all about? It's something that would grab someone's attention. So, the whole idea of a logo that might not a logo that doesn't have the band name in it, Yeah. That was the spirit behind having a logo is to start a conversation, to get someone's attention, and then hopefully, work towards people associating the name to a logo. So, I know- Do you feel like that's happened yet or do you still want to establish this logo, or do you think that the logo is so intriguing that you want to continue using it in everything? Because I'm cool with that. I like that idea. I do feel this past year we've established what the logo means and it stands for and everything. If we were to lay out a few designs, I would be a little sad if we didn't have one with focused around the logo, but at the same time there's so many other ideas that I don't have to, because sometimes being married to a logo, really, it ties your hands on what you can do with designs. So, I don't want to do that. But that parameter isn't so bad. Right. Well, the logo is going to be evolved, so do whatever you want to do with the logo being involved, which makes me when I think of that, I think of stuff like brands like Burton and Harley. Well, maybe not as much Harley but like a lot of those brands that have such a distinct mark that it's so good that you want to keep using it in as many ways as possible, but I think that if you're so concerned with, okay, this logo starts conversation, it's something no one's seen before, and they're going to ask about, well then, maybe you're not as concerned with creating a traditional band tee, you just want to create a cool something. You know what I mean? Because whatever band tee is has dissolved. There's not like a standard for band tees anymore because with so many graphic tees like the fashion world you get like, there's a big photo of lips, and that's it, that's all a T-shirt is. You know what I mean. Or just like a palm tree, or just flowers, or whatever. If you want to write lips down, we can do lips. Just let me repeat this. I was thinking about an idea that may not work, but I really liked the idea of negative space. I like that when you look at something, you see the shapes that are actually the border of the thing you're trying to say, All right. But not creating a border around those things so that negative space is super outlined. So, just that concept is something I think is interesting because it plays with what is it that you see first type of thing. So, there's something else there other than what you're seeing at first? Right. Okay. So, we have the bar logo, which we've made sure that we've got a circle around it most of the time now, so we've really introduced the circle in it. But then I notice that you have meaning to your tattoos and your meaning to this Columbus thing, and then all these little things. So, do you think that's a theme that you want to continue through this? Is that something that represents you, that you want to bleed over into your shirts? It's a good question. Or do you want to keep that to yourself? It's a good question. You know tattoos are- Because I think it's a pretty unique thing that you do with your tattoos and that you have such random symbols. I know what that means because I was at that show, but no one else knows what it means but it means something to you. Right. Everyone at that show knows what it means. Right. Which is cool. So, you have a connection with those, all those people. Yeah, I got tattooed on stage. What of it? It's super punk rock. It was pretty punk rock, I saw it happen. I don't know, I want to probably keep it to myself. Okay. A lot of artists that operate under a band name have to figure out, okay do I want my name, my individual, my personal style to be influenced by merch? Right. Do you want everybody to dress like you dress? I've always thought it was weird, like these bands out there that have like a picture of the lead singer standing there. You know what I'm talking? You don't want any big pictures? You know what I am saying? Just the guy standing there like this looking. It's like- Yeah, I know. I do a lot of them, unfortunately. Do you, really? I don't want to, but I have to. You have to do that? The questions that I always have and these are the questions I ask about the artists without the artists being around, and I don't even expect you to answer these, but, how does the artist perceive themselves? How does the artist want to be perceived, and how do the fans perceive them? So, what do you mean to your fans or do you want to dictate how you perceive yourself and emulate that out or do you want to give the people what they want or do you want to dictate what they have? That's a big question, I don't really know- It is a big question. Well, I will say that; what I would like our fans to view me is a lot cooler than I am. Okay. Which is the standard answer I think, even if you admit it or not. If you're watching this right now, you're thinking this guy and his band are really not that cool because you're watching an interview. If you go online and you watch any interview of any band, and you're just like, "They're not that cool at all." But if you were to go to a concert and watch them do their thing- They get really cool. You'd be just like "Wow! They're really cool." So, I think that merch could definitely be something that represents the band in a cool way, cooler than that I am sitting right here. Represents the band in the best like. Yes. That's a good point All right. I feel like I'm in school. Are you stuck on your colors, red and blue, black and white, or would you ever have a green shirt? It's a good question. But you did have a green shirt. I didn't design it. We had green in it. Oh, okay. It's yellow and green. That's right, yeah. I didn't design that one. I will say this. As we move forward, the music that I'm writing genre-wise, it sounds really adventurous but has a bit of a reggae feel to it. Okay. So, there's a whole style that goes with that, whether that be like old [inaudible] Jamaican something rather. I'm realizing that some of these pasty white dudes that do Jamaican music, like they don't have any right to be doing that and so I figured, why don't I do that too? You don't have a right to do it either, so do it. I am not from like the motherland. Well, The Police weren't from Jamaica either, but they have a ton of reggae stuff. Yes, but then I think a lot of the designs, and the merch, and the aesthetics surrounding you, give you that credibility to be making that type of music. Okay. Interesting, I like that. That was a curveball, the reggae thing, but that's good. Yeah. My label's going to think that too when I show them the new music. That's good. I think that's it, man. Yeah? Is there anything that you think back to the merch that you see at your table, is there any times when you're looking at the other bands merch and "Man we need more stuff like that." Is there anything like that? I will say that I'm very interested in sales and numbers, and the simplest shirt with the band name. It's just like, it blows my mind. So, I know you know that, but- It's simple stuff that establishes and that's what's funny about being a band tee designer is that you can try all day doing something super in-depth, and super detailed, and all that, but you can go and watch the merch sale, when you see what people go towards and everybody walks away with that logo shirt, and that's it. Again. It's like, "I order that one again?" Why did I try so hard on the other ones if really all they want to do is represent their band in the most direct way possible? Yeah. So, maybe if they only have one clear choice, then that's my fault, and I should have something where, "Oh, I just want to say Twenty One Pilots and their logo on there." "Oh, they all do that." You know what I mean? They all do that in the same volume. Okay. So, we're really, really, simple stuff, just create what we know will sell. There's no sense in dancing around all these other ideas when you know that this is what they want, so why do I try to give them something I know I'm not interested in, constantly. It's different with music to merch. Merch is like, "I got five seconds to decide a T-shirt, it's that one." Yeah. So, you have to cater to their impulse. Yeah, and I think most importantly for me this is where your job is really your job. When I see it, I'll know whether I love it or not. That's where you're going have to take this small amount of notes and try to come up with something for me to look at. I know you gravitate towards Roca, are there other brands that you think, I mean, I guess it goes back to the same thing. Since you buy Roca stuff, would you want your shirts to look like Roca? I don't know if I really like to associate with a specific brand as much as some people would. Okay. I'm more inclined to turn my own shirt inside out, but that's just because I'm- Because you're cool. I'm so cool. Especially when you're on stage. Yeah. I mean you're okay now, but when you're onstage, you're so cool. Compared to me on stage, I look like a nerd right now. But the balance of on-stage versus normal life? Right. You can afford to be a nerd every now and then. If I was wearing what I wear onstage right now in this casual interview, you would think- I probably wouldn't do that. Yeah. 3. Research & Brainstorming: Okay. So, we've heard, from Tyler, from Twenty One Pilots. We've heard his direction, we've heard what he wants his band to look like, how he wants his band be represented. We've heard has different points of views on, he wants this logo, that they've established. He wants that to start a conversation. So those merchandise can start a conversation. It can be, something that is straightforward enough, that fans want to buy it but something that's interesting enough, that they want to know what this is, they want sort of decode it. So, he want to grab attention of his fans, and he does want to continue to keep it low or focused, because they have established this mark that, it's different. It's an odd band logo, and I think he likes that it's an odd band logo, and establishing this mark more and more just sort of, makes you feel like there's something going on that you need to know what that means. So, in a way that a graffiti artist would tag something, you would keep seeing, this icon or this mark and it would interest you to know more about that. In this case, their band's logo, we'll make someone want to know more, what does that mean? What is that? He mentioned negative space, which was interesting to me, that's a very useful concept, a very useful input. Having negative space, so negative space is of course everything that isn't the thing. So, there's hidden shapes in there, kind of forces you to read between the lines. Again, every bandy that I do, I'm going back to these questions of, who does that band think they are? How does that band want to be perceived? How do their fans perceive them? So what do the fans want? What is the band actually and how do they want to be perceived? So, you kind of have to be sensitive to all that. So sometimes there's a band that, basically wants their merchandise to look exactly like the clothes that they wear and that's useful. Then there's bands that, they have this whole other idea with what their merchandise says and it has nothing to do with necessarily what they wear. In this case, I think Twenty One Pilots as the latter. They just want to create merchandise that, people are going to see at the march table, they're going to be interested in. It says the band name, it says what they want to represent quickly, and it's not that challenging. But then hopefully when they're out there wearing the shirt, and in the wild, people can see it and be interested in it. So he mentioned his new music. It's going to have a Reggae feel. So you think of Reggae and he talks about Adidas, and that whole entire vibe which is interesting, and I don't know how I'm going to put that into the stuff, but that's the challenge. So, taking some elements like Reggae, establishing the logo or being logo centered, and then being sort of, cryptic where there's a message, a read between the lines thing. Those are three little pillars that I'm going to have to bounce between, as I go through the sketch process and figure out what the heck I'm actually going to be creating. So, that's pretty much my brainstorm and my research. There's a few images that I found online of the band, and then there's of course the stuff that we've established already that I can reference, to kind of say where we're going to go from here. Okay. So, to reference some of the older stuff that we did, some of the logos stuff that we already established. We have, this is a lot of the merchandise that we did for 2013. So, we established the logo, which is this. So, they've had this bar logo and I sort of, just tweaked it a little bit, so that made it a little more sense from a screen-printing perspective. Which means that all the colors don't touch, and you can kind of show some separation between stuff. So, this was the logo that I establish for them to use throughout 2013. So, a lot of the merchandise that we create in 2013, it was the goal was to establish this. So, we put together this cool hoodie, with stripes and of course the basic logo t. They did a snap-back recently. Then there was the ones that got a little more, that branched out a little bit more. Where, they really try to create a community with their band and they tried to involve everybody. So, this sure is for the fan to wear, that says "I am Twenty One Pilots". Then, more of a vintage sporty type of look, that kind of just coincides with what people actually wear. Then just some stuff that's a little more graphic driven, or a little different straying from the logo a little bit more. They wore ski masks on stage, from time to time, so I establish this ski mask icon. They also like Japanese characters. They have a lot of shows in Japan, and they're kind of taking a little bit of ownership of that. So, they use a phrase it says,"Power to the local dreamer". I used that in the design, and I also use the Japanese characters, and establish the ski mask logo. Which, I loved the mask logo, I think they love the mask logo, so I might revisit it and some of these designs. So moving forward, this is shots from there tour, and different things they've been doing this year. This was a TV appearance, lately Tyler has been wearing this big robe that's got these pink flowers on it. So, that's kind of odd and different, and I'm kind of going to take that idea and keep it in mind when I'm designing. Then you have the fans, and what the fans are connecting to. So you got a couple of fans here, that they put the ski masks on. They're taking ownership of that whole thing. This is one of their shows, and you can see how prominent the logo is, as their huge backdrop and, that people are really identifying them with this logo. And then you can see how the logo's being used in one color, and more subdued vibe for this House of Gold video. Again, just them establishing this logo, on the live shows here. Now they have some video screens that are playing back there, and of course the kick drum head has the logo, and of course the huge backdrop that sits behind them most of the time. So, with all those things in mind, these are going to help me moving forward with what I sketch. Then of course after I sketch it and we're going to actually start creating this stuff. 4. Sketches: Okay. So, now this is the sketch process. I'm sure a lot of designers would want to go straight to the computer because you can create some stuff straight on the computer, you can come with good ideas right in computer. The problem is that the nature of Banties is pretty quick. So, I think a lot of people will be pretty surprised with some of the turnarounds on this. It's not uncommon for me to get asked on Tuesday to have something by Tuesday night or by Wednesday morning, that happens a lot. So, while sketching seems kind of gets in the way, it makes everything so much quicker before you get on the computer and actually start executing because the equivalent of what my sketches are going to be, are going to take me 10 times as long to actually carry something out in Illustrator. One idea and move to another idea, because you use the pen tool to draw lines but use a freaking pencil to draw lines here. So, I want to stick with sketching because you can get out the ideas, and just think out loud, and think on paper very very quickly. So, I encourage you to sketch even if your sketches are very very minimal and very just scribbles that only you can make sense of. At least sketching out your ideas and having a plan of action before you get on the computer, is going to be pretty beneficial. So, in this case, I'm going to take all this information and I have no idea what I'm going create. I'm going to take all those information I got from Tyler and I'm going to sketch some ideas. So, the first thing I'm thinking of is this negative space thing. So, the negative space is going to be this whole area that's everything but the Logo. So, you have this icon. So, if you put a box around this circle and fold in the space behind, that's can be a neat little things, where the actual thing gets printed are some random shapes where everything that isn't print is the actual logos actual point. So, in that case, it would be a sketch like this and then maybe you could fill in Twenty One Pilots up here. But it's all filled in the background. Hopefully that makes sense. It don't make sense if I execute it. So, that's one thing. We'll call this neg space here, negative space. Then, the other thing is establishing this logo but I kind of want to establish the logo in a way that's a little more current with some of the trends that I personally like. Now, I know that this is one of those things where you step in, is like, "Okay, so is this what you want to do brand or is this what the band wants to do." Sometimes there's an element about what you want to do that's going to get you excited about the project. But if you have enough consideration for a client, you're going to know what your parameters are, that you can work within, where you're not going to show them something and be like, "Really this is all I want to do, I know you're not going to like it." That's a waste of time, don't do that. Keep the client in mind, keep considerate of the client. The client's paying you. They deserve respect. So, designers who sort have this idea that the client is this monster and this adversary, they're going to have a tough career. So, you have to learn to love your client and love their direction and love the parameters they give you. So, we're going back to that circle logo. Now the circle logo, works without the circle as well. So, we can draw these bars and then the circle can be there. I personally like using circles and using triangles and squares, whatever can get you centered in on the chest and it makes sense on the shirt. The circle, upside down triangle as a base are always, they are really quick and easy way to have the focal point be the middle of the shirt and for it to work with the T-shirt. So, if you look at a T-shirt, an upside down triangle fits on that T-shirt very well. Having a shirt like this, upside down triangle works. It's there. A circle works, a square works, a tall rectangle works. You always want to think of everything in context of the T-shirt. I find it's really funny when I see people do a lot of album packaging, they'll create stuff and then when it comes to design a T-shirt, they have no idea how do that because they're used to working, filling up the entire canvas with something. Whether it's some scenic thing or some texture or whatever. In my case, I'm trying to remove any type of edges and remove any type of box and just make it work here inside the middle. Of course, there are strands where it goes up the side or it's an odd placement or something like that. Most of those trends have came and went and right now I think we're going back to more of a central thing on a T-shirt and that's definitely my taste. So, in this case, I sort of want to use the idea of these lines, just using an outline, and in this way I'll be able to maintain the same thickness for this line and of course we have the phrase, power to the local dreamier. So, that becomes an element that we can fill up some safe space with. So, using it this way, I can see Twenty One Pilots going in a banner above here, and power to the local dreamer can go under this. But I don't know if that's going to be an awesome T-shirt and maybe there's other elements that we can put in to make that make sense. But I do want to at least try to figure out ways to keep one consistent stroke width. So, for you that's familiar with those stroke, You know I'm talking about where stoke width. A lot of that's going to come when we get on the computer. But I just want to think about the stroke width. So, we'll call this design thin line, just to give me a reference. So, here we are establishing the logo with negative space and we're also going to be able establish those colors. Here we're going to establish something that's a little more trendy, a little more of a simplistic subdued T-shirt which is what I like. Now, the other challenge that I have is how to incorporate this reggae vibe and how to appease the fans by just putting the band name and the logo on the T-shirt in a creative way. So, I think about brands like Whurley or Bourdon or Quicksilver that have a pretty prominent mark that's established there, and I need to figure out a way to keep using that logo in a different way and sometimes that's as simple as just getting out logo some like a hand drawn feel or painted feel or something like that and that can be really cool too. Now, thinking about reggae, reggae definitely lends itself to a hand painted thing. When he mentioned reggae, I thought about paint on a wall, like using a paint roller and painting that Logo on the wall. For Banty's you don't actually have time to do all that most of the time, but at least you can fake that in a way that you can paint something and paint the logo and kind of give it this cool feel. I think we can figure out a way to maybe make that work. So, I'm just trying to think. Okay. We have this Twenty One Pilots, lowercase logo established that people seem to like and gravitate towards. Then we have of course the mark again. We'll call this the bomber logo I think. Now, if we would take this basic idea and paint it, it would be a pretty basic thing but that texture gives it a whole other feel. So, simply taking the Nike Logo for example, you can't just have that same shape over and over again but if you use a different application, if you kind of create it in a different way with a different medium, then you might be able to, you know, it's a new product every time and at the end of the day someone just wants to wear Nike swish on their chest. So, give that to them in a way that makes you feel creative, and makes you feel like you did something new. But then is familiar enough to them that they want to keep wearing it. So, this is the challenge with Banties is that the idea behind a Banty is pretty basic, in that the fan wants to represent band what they like. So, as a fan of bands, you might find yourself going to merchandise websites and picking the least crappy shirt or going to a merch table and picking the least crappy shirt because you know you like that band and now you have to decide which one of those shirts you'll actually wear. So, sometimes the creative freedom, you have to be careful where you step in that creative freedom. So, these are sort of the ideas I'm thinking right now. This, obviously in the sketch, you can't really tell, but I could call this Reggae paint and I could make a drip but that's kind of corny. So, I need to figure out how I want to do that and then there's also the power to the local dreamer phrase, I possibly could paint that out where it's like a billboard, but I wonder if the Twenty One Pilots fans are ready to represent a new phrase or if they would just prefer to represent Twenty One Pilots. So, those are things you kind of have to be thinking about. What are these fans actually want, it's not about you, it's not about what you want to create, it's about what these fans are actually going to like and resonate with. So, looking at these sketches, again, the time for most of these projects is quick. So, I can't spend all day here sketching. I can come up with a couple ideas that I think I can maybe execute those on the computer, maybe this one. At this point I'm thinking I will create these two. I might create this reggae painted vibe. If I have time, if I still think it's a good idea after I execute these two designs. But this is a sketch process and after this we're going to go on the computer and we're going to execute these designs and see what happens once they're in Adobe Illustrator and actually have some life and color breathe into them. Okay. So, as a normal project goes, as soon as I step away from my sketch pad, I have another idea. I started thinking about reggae but then let's kind of simplified reggae down into some cool patterns and some neat, I don't know, like almost jungle theme type of stuff, but still sticking with the simplistic bars and lines that Twenty One Pilots uses. So, I was thinking about possible jungle patterns that could do this type of thing but it wont read as jungle, but at least that's where my influence is coming from. So, you have that sort of a zigzag, maybe some little triangles inside there, but then you just sort of have this like hieroglyphic type of shirt, that's kind of going to hit on like a Navajo pattern type trend and give you a bunch of cool ways to probe color and because you have that many shapes going, you're going to be able to give color to each one of them. So, just thinking about that sort of thing. I think this will be on trend with some, I don't know, there's a million new brands doing this sort of thing, but stuff that you would see in most of the stores that Twenty One Pilots fans shop at. So, you're going to be able to resonate with them because they like Navajo stuff or they like whatever. So, just having that in mind, maybe I'll do something somewhat, I'll call it hieroglyphic. It's not exactly the correct name but we'll call this idea hieroglyphic of the top of my head. So, look at it, let's see if we can carry out these three designs in some way shape or form. Then of course, I don't have it all figured out on these sketches, but once again on the computer I'm going to learn more. 5. Adobe Illustrator - Part 1 of 4: All right, So now, this is where the magic happens around the lab. Let me start executing this stuff. I have a bunch of elements here. This is from the previous stuff. So, I can reference this stuff, there's a lot of little Japanese characters in here. Sometimes it's good to give yourself a big tray full of resources, I guess. So, you can always reference it and knowing these elements that are usable, these are some of the previous stuff I did. So, it's good to have one of these. So, I'm going to call this previous and I'll just save it. These little things, I will just save this. I want to get them out of my way. I'm sort of OCD when I work so I try to keep everything as clean as possible if I realize that a ton of windows are open I might lose it. So I want to keep everything pretty clean. Okay, so now we get to the inner workings of my whole entire workflow and how I get everything done. There are other systems that you have to set up to actually turn this work out, to get it done quick enough that you can meet every deadline. I don't miss any deadlines. I have to make sure everything that may make me drag my feet, I speed that up as much as possible so I can at least have fun and enjoy myself with in that creative time. So, I actually had action set up where I can setup a project folder. So, I have this thing called set up schedule project and project title, I of course got Twenty One Pilots abbreviation TOP. It's a Merch project, for the sake of the skill share, I will just leave this blank. Those are the money amounts and all these three concepts and we we'll just make it due today because that's the way the real world is, this crap you got to do it quick. All right. So I have this new folder that I just got set up on my desktop. It's called Twenty One Pilots. Here are some of my work files that I already put. So we got all of those little images that I just showed you of the logos and of some of the other mood board type things, I got that all on this folder. So, my desktop is now very clean. Again, I have templates set up to how I work so obvious I'm doing a tongue t-shirt design so I have a 16 and a half and by 20 and a half canvas in Illustrator. There's a little shortcut in my doc and I open that up and I can get to work. Now, in Illustrator, they set up artboards not too long ago. I think a few versions back. This was extremely beneficial to me. So what I can do with artboards is hit shift O and drag these things out and place them in a way that is going to make sense to me while I'm creating. So I can clearly see okay there are three designs. Here your artboards with three designs. I'll put one up here just to throw some of my elements and stuff. So, going back to the elements, let's get right into it and find the ones that we talked about. So when I was talking about these logos, this is what I'm talking about. This is the bar logo and then this is the stacked type. Then if it's written out straight, it looks like this. So these are all sort of things that have been established. I have to figure out if I want to stick to those because they have been established and they are important to be familiar or if I want to alter them a little bit for the sake of the design. I have to make these decisions as I go along. Then this is that skin mask icon that's pretty cool. I got these sketches here but it's not uncommon for me to come up with a new idea when I have artboards out and just because you don't know how to sketch down doesn't mean you shouldn't carry out that thing. Some of the best ideas might just happen, I don't know where. So, let's get into actually making this thing. So my original idea is I want to take this logo and I want to do the negative space behind it. So, let's put this logo up. I want to lock this background layer so I can drag around and I don't touch the black background. Right now, I just make an assumption these are going to be black tees, but we can change color ways later. Right now, Illustrator, it's all about getting the shapes together. There's no texture right now, there's definitely no gradients or anything like that. My style is pretty solid colors. Of course, in screen printing, you have to keep it as low colors as you possibly can because that's the cheapest print. So, I keep everything really bold and I keep everything really straightforward and I try not to have too much detail on anything because a lot of detail gets lost in the printing process and these files get handed around. So, I want to have stuff that's bold and then we're going back to the Merch table where kids walk up to it and they see that icon that they like, they see that band name of the band they love. That's what we're trying to communicate to. So no fluff, no nonsense, no other junk that doesn't need to be there. It works for so many other things, but in this case, I don't think it's going to work for these t-shirts. So, I don't want to have a bunch of nonsense surrounding my stuff. So, my first idea is let's put a box behind this logo and they've already established these colors. They got these red, I'm going to drag this red down into my color palette. They got this blue, I'm going to drag it into my color palette, and of course there is white and black. But now the square behind, we'll make it red right now. Then we'll just take this whole logo where actually take it apart and I'm going to duplicate this little guy. I'm going to subtract it from that. So this is the minus front action down in the Pathfinder. This is, I'm going to minus the front from this joint, and then now we can get rid of that little black bar because it's not. So, let's just take this whole logo and we'll turn it black, just for the sake of negative space. So, right now, you can see the negative shapes popping out of this. I might as well go all the way to the edge on this circle so that this whole thing stays as prominent as possible. This is negative space, but at first glance, it looks a little bit too direct like this band logo, it is right in your face. So, we are going to have to figure out some solution other than just having this big circle. But that, it really shows you how the negative space thing could work. Now let's take this type again, the resonating method. This is a logo I created about a year ago, and it works. So, we're going to just set this on top. I feel like Bob Ross, but have here a little vector's. Okay. So, now, on the same way, that's kind of a black out this, and I guess people call it knockout. There's a lot of terms that people on the graphic design community use, and I'm very happy to not know a lot of them. I think in this way, you would be knocking out the background. That's what that would be called. Bringing this to front. So, now, you can sort of see that there's all this negative space being created. But right now, I don't love this. So, I'm [inaudible] the canvas, horizontal, align center. So, there's that. At least I have establish that this whole thing that I was thinking I wanted to do. Executing it, I don't know if I love it as much. There's definitely other things I can do to it, but we'll this sit here and we can move on to the next then. I've worked on a whole bunch of different designs at one time. So, at any given time, I've got three or four designs in front of me, and if one is not working, then we'll go to the next one. If that's not working, then we'll go to the next. Then there's a time when I can step back and see all the stuff that I've made and be like, "Well, that one would do better this way because that one is already hitting a certain mark or whatever. So, looking at everything in relation to one another is pretty beneficial in this way. So, I'm thinking right now, we're going back to the spin line sketch that I have. So, I'm going to just drag, option drag this bad boy over to the next art board, and I'm going to have this stroke on it. So, we'll do a live deal just for now. Okay. So, I've got these shapes, but this now, for this for the sake of this whole deal, it will look better if these things just intersected. So, I'll take the delete anchor point tool, pen tool and delete all these that I don't need. Now that goes through, it intersects. Now this, this one here, there are two separate shapes, so what I would do is I would draw a shape in the middle of it to connect it. This is all pen tool stuff. If you know it, you know it. If you don't, you'll learn it. But if you're using the pen tool and figure out how things you can do with these vector points, this makes a break a good designer. It really does. So, it's worth your time to just mess with the pen tool forever. Okay. So, now, we just have to straight up stroke on this logo. Put all the stroke in the middle. Okay. So, right there, that's like a six-point stroke, and we're going to center those. Okay. So, I'm going to fill this with black. But of course, that middle one would have to get to the top, the little connecting bar will have to go to the top. All right. Okay. So, I mentioned the triangle thing, and it's a neat shape to put in the background and it sort of can wrap the whole design together. So, in this way, I want to send this to the back like that,. So, now, we've certainly got this shape, this geometric look to this whole thing, which is kind of cool. This is a case where it's something that I think is kind of neat, kind of like creating. So, now we've got this centered. You're always kind of going back to this guy up here, this horizontal line center. All these little alignment guides or whatever you call them, these things just keep everything center and keep everything nice, and of course, you don't want to have stuffs off-centered on your T-shirt if they're suppose to be centered. I'm going to do an offset path on this triangle just to see how it looks. Object half, offset half, I've got previews, so I'm going to kind of guess. Look like 30-point could be it. Minor, no. Maybe 60-point is the right width. Here, I'm trying to match the width of the circle. You to have everything be able to reference something else that's going. Already 65. Okay cool. So, now, we got this old triangular deal and that's kind of becoming something. So, this is kind of a fun way to establish this logo. I'm trying to figure out if I want these to touch. There's a lot of different things I can do. Okay. So, right now, I have another idea to do with this. So, I'm just going to drive to our board. So, if this new idea sucks I can leave this here and I'll come back at it. 6. Adobe Illustrator - Part 2 of 4: Okay. I'm taking this little triangle thing that I'm doing. I have an idea for it. It may not work, but we'll see what happens with it here. There's something about this triangle that conveys secret society or I don't know, Illuminati, whatever you want to call it, and that's sort of a trend going around. I like working within these different ways that row basic shapes can work together, and I think that they're actually really cool T-shirts that people like to wear. What I was wondering is, okay, I'll subtract this or I'll minus this from that and I'll minus this here into its own shape. I'll combine this background triangle with this circle, and that's a neat look. There's a few stray anchor points over here, so I'm just going to use the pen tool and subtract those just so we have a nice clean line and then that straight like that. So, I think this little thing is cool and it does look like a Voltron thing or something like that, which I think is neat. So, I think that fits. I don't know, it's just a new way to use this logo that they really, really like. So, now, there's other elements around this. I always want to do this, but, let me see, flip it around, I always want to flip this on a horizontal axis, reflect it on a horizontal axis, but it ends up looking like the Star of David, usually, when I do that. But it's a decent idea that could work. Instead, let's use a circle and we'll put type on a path here, see how this works. See I lost it because I didn't select everything I meant to there. So now you can keep all these. See, now, this circle is centered in art board, so I want that to dictate everything else. So, holding down the Shift, I select everything else but that. So, I'll drag this guy down in here. You get a perfectly centered look, this circle that's going to dictate everything. So, let's put a really thick line here about the same thickness as all the other stuff. Actually, we got to go thicker, go around this and type in it. This little shape is like a biker gang type of label that go over top of stuff. Again, I'm just coming up with this as I go along here. It's hard to predict the way that stuff's going to go. I'm going to outline the stroke, so it becomes a full deal. I'm going to put a stroke on it just like that and let me see, how is this going to work the best? Let's use this middle point as a reference and I'll select these two and I'll minus the front again. I find myself using this minus front in the pathfinder quite a bit and if you don't know how to use it, you should know how to use it. Okay, I've got an idea. Let's just take this, we'll make this whole thing part of the other shape. So, this gets cut out of here. Minus front again. Let's combine this with this whole shape. So now, we've got this odd little shape coming up above it, which is kind of odd. Put this back to the back and now we'll use this, put type on a path. So, I'm going over to the type tool but you're using the type on a path tool. Type the band name in. Use their blue. Now, you're going to have a font library in your brain, that's pretty much always going to be there, and you're going to know which fonts to use. A lot of times, you'll see designs like this and you'll just instantly go to one. There's a font called Krona that for some reason I was thinking. Now, I want this type to be centered and it's centered on this little cursor here. So, I want to get this cursor up centered in the middle of my circle, which you just have to mess around with for a while before it actually gets right. In this, the kerning, you can set to optical, just if there's a T or an L, stuff like that, an unbalanced letter, it will center it a little bit better. So, this is starting to look really spacey and it's weird and for some reason, I dig it. But, I can't help but feel like there needs to be some, I guess it looks like a slice of pizza. But, we can anchor this whole thing with, I was thinking about using these little dudes, little ski mascots. Of course, there's two guys in the band, Tyler and Josh, so you want to use one of these to represent them. You'll that find using type on a path, that tool gets annoying because you can select an area and you'll be selecting that type, just like I did right there. So again, in this case, I'm wanting to keep things centered, I'm kind of wanting want to keep things. Everything wind up to something. So, this is neat, but I need there to be some other shape that's making sense, and I don't know exactly what that is. Thinking maybe I can just put another triangle in here. Let me take this background shape and make it solid. Now, I can throw that to the back and it covers up any other lines I have underneath it. There's a lot of these little things I'm doing that I could probably expand on more in another class. But for the sake of this class, I just want to get you through this T-shirt design. I don't know, it looks deco to me, right now. Now, the only thing with this font, there's a little bit of limitations on the thickness. So, you can put a stroke on it, a black stroke on it and then you can mess with the thickness a little bit. I like this, the only thing is that I think that font is a little too distinctive, that it gives it another vibe other than what the band already have established. I don't know if I like these side flanking triangles, but I could link them by design. Again, I'm usually going for a tall triangle and a tall rectangle most of the time. That's what works best on a T-Shirt. Stores like Hot Topic, the way that they display their shirt, that dictates a lot about the way you design, because you always have to think about how that's going to look in a store like Hot Topic. So, we got this going. Let me see if this, if we can put something up here. It's a deco thing going now. But this is the reality of these T-Shirts, is you just have to get in here and play around. I think they're neat. I'm going to just fine tune this with, I'm going to nudge it with arrows here just so I can try and get these widths to make more sense together. These guys are starting to get in the way. Let me see if we can flip those around. The only reason I wind up doing the solid is because that thickness doesn't match the other thickness. So, for now, let's just get rid of those. So, we have this Twenty One Pilots thing. The band name just is a little odd to me that way, so let's try out some other fonts. Of course, a font Gotham is very basic. We'll take this stroke away. It sells what you needed to say, but there's a level of plain that is a little bit too plain for a T-shirt. It works and it's a standard. If this was some standard space emblem, they would probably use something pretty standard like that. So, now what happened to my dudes here? Somewhere along the line I missed my intersection with these. [inaudible] are back. So, I should cut out this one right here. We've got a little circle in the middle of this. I'm minusing it from the rest of this shape. I'm sending these back. So, in Illustrator, of course, you're doing a lot of, sending things to the background, putting something on top of another thing. Let's throw out that whole thing. This is just a guide, this one here. So, let's make it a little dark so it doesn't go away. So, looking at that whole deal, I think that's a cool T-shirt design, just that by itself, not this little line here. Of course, there's other ways that I can inject color in there. Let me see what power to the local dreamer looks like. Right now I'm thinking I'm like The Hunger Games. I'm thinking of the fact that this can, I don't know, it makes sense in some weird way, this is some, I don't know, futuristic type of revolutionary deal. Does that make sense? Send that backwards. So, I already got, it's a little too blunt to just sit right there like that. So instead, let's make a little ribbon that would go across. So, I'll take that, I took a square. I've centered these up together based on a selection, so that these get aligned together. We minus that. Now, let's put this in the background with this one [inaudible]. Now, I'm going to shrink it down so that that width matches the width of that. Again, I'm always thinking about getting these words to match up. But now the problem is that I've created a shape that Gotham doesn't fit in as well, because Gotham is a square, the letters are square. It needs something now that's a little more condensed. So, we got "power to the" on one of them and then I think local dream on the other one, to make them make sense. 7. Adobe Illustrator - Part 3 of 4: Okay. So, I'm looking at this and the font is just a little bit too basic for me. Now, one of the big things that I learnt in design is that you are going to just suck it up and buy fonts and you have to really become a very smart font sharper and because an endless library of fonts, you'll have one in your head but then you obviously want to have those available at your disposal. So, of course there's the free font sides but I think what happens is people get hooked on one font that they think is cool or they see being used and they use it for everything. You want to get away from using the same font for everything. You want to at least look for something different and look for something new from time to time. So, I use a font management program called FontExplorer X Pro and it gives me just a quick way to look through this. A lot of people use Suitcase or Font case or whatever everyone's using right now for whatever reason. I've found that FontExplorer is doing what I need to do. This Mostra font, it looks cool because it's basic but it's got a little bit of something to it. Now, if I would use something like this font, it would get a little too futuristic like Tron and I don't want to do that and maybe the blue is making it look like Tron, but I go through these fonts and I save them into different collections and I have this one called Retro. I have this one called Heritage. So, these are the basic clean fonts that you could see on an old sign or something. There's just this look that I'm looking for and I don't really even know what I'm looking for until I see it. So, I just want to take a quick stroll through my fonts to see what might solve my problem here. The problem being that the font is too plain and I need something that has a little bit more to it, but it's not distinguishable as, oh they use this font there. So, I'm trying to find something that's going to stick with that techie vibe. Okay. So, I have another font called Electric or another font collection called Electric and the reason I call it Electric is because it references those old electric labels like if you saw an all electrical box, some of the type that would be on there. We'll see what's in there. Okay. I went through that. I saw a font in there that I might want to use. This font here, this could work. This has enough of military vibe that can make sense but I'm also looking for width and height and something that will fit into that space naturally. There's this font here I like but I think it's a little bit too thick for what I want to use it for and the amount of funnegling that I'll have to do to make it work properly when it would probably screw up. So, it's just taking a little bit more look to the stuff, seeing if something can just bark. Okay. I've have an idea. This could either look techie or once I get through doing all the treatments, it can make a lot of sense. I honestly don't know and I'm just going to give it a shot, see if I can make it work. So now, we got this and I think this open space here might be begging for that little ski mask icon, we'll see. So, this width of this circle around here has now become pretty much the same width as everything else. You have smart guides on. They all must have been transformational stuff. So, we'll put this little guy in the middle here. Now, my hope is that once I bring this into Photoshop and put the texture and stuff on it, it's going to give it a different vibe. I'm thinking about messing with some of the lines where I could do, I put an outline stroke not outline stroke, offset path on this. We'll put about 10. Okay. So, I'm doing an offset path to this main shape here and putting another area around it. An offset path is more useful than using just a fixed stroke and expanding that stroke, so don't do that. So, now if I got this, then maybe I can take these background elements and give them a red line, use the Twenty One Pilots red, see how that looks. So, I'm changing the stroke color to this red. So now, we start incorporating a little bit more color in here. Maybe, this can become white, the band name, maybe, we go back to their logo which blue on the left, red on the right. So, let's take these blue on the left, red on the right, just stroke color goes and then the middle area here is a white stroke. So, we'll do an offset path. Black moves around a little bit so it's got enough separation from the rest of those. It's very possible. I'm going to change the colors of all this stuff and they are in Photoshop but at least right now, this is the most exploration I would do with the colors. So, it looks spacey but I think I like that. I haven't saved any of this. So, if my computer just shut down, I will be screwed. So, save your stuff. I just save it as designs and I have a little folder called work files. That one's fine. We're going to leave that alone and I think I like what I did with it enough to delete that. So, now we can come back to this or we can think about this hieroglyphic thing. I think you guys get the idea of where I'm going with this but for the sake of the Skillshare, this might be a little boring but in reality this is the type of thing that will sell. So, you have to balance between that. Let me see if I can do this little hieroglyphic design that we talked about on the sketch before and see if we can make something out of this. So, again, I'm using this, the pen tool and I'm doing some cool stuff with lines. Let's shift and I'm going to use shift option and the arrows. Okay. So, we're going to go into this little concept that I sketched out. I'm going to try and sketch this out as close as I work this out as close as I can to what I sketched because what I've sketched might be cool, maybe not though. Okay. So, that looks neat. Now, we'll take some triangles again I'm using a polygon tool. I'm going to put these triangles and here, looks like Space Invaders right now. Now, I could draw a line and then apply a zigzag filter, but this might be more controllable. So, I'm establishing a distance that everything is exactly apart from each other. I'm going to group those and center them on the canvas and I'm going to group these and center on the canvas. So, I don't want the full triangle but I do want this zigzag. So, let's see if we can find the area here, actually. Yeah. All right. I am going to combine this whole deal. Well, actually I'm going to use outline on the Pathfinder. So, I do that and now all these strokes become independent of each other. Take off this bottom line because all I want is this zigzag line and then I can cut. Using the Scissors tool, I just cut up here right in line with this little dude. I'll cut over here in line with that guy. So, I should be able to delete this, delete this, and delete all these crap down here, and then join those out. Enough fill, all right, cool. So, I'm starting to do a little bit of what I thought I was going to do, and now maybe I can put these triangles in here. Let me draw a line here. So, this is just basic Pinto line illustration. It's fun to just try something that you haven't done before, and do things in a different way than you usually do on. You need that basic way that you do stuff consistent, but you also need to have a little fun with things, and explore stuff like you did when you first started loving this stuff, and everything you created was interesting and new. Okay. So, I'm just combining all these strokes here. Okay. So, I've created this little tribal deal, our tribal's fine, probably not a good word. Now, how do I guess, but it's a little more techie than regular Navajo, but at least what I did on my sketch, I drew it. I'm just going to like I said, try to create it like it did on the sketch, because maybe I had something there. All right. So, I'm going to use these guys, I've already drawn these lines, so there's no sense in doing it over again. Use this grid up here it's finding different ways to use these lines and put them all together. Okay. So, if this angle is here, then this angle is the same as these triangles. So, there's definitely benefits to keeping angles together as far as the construction of everything because you're going to keep referencing the way you did this stuff. You want all the angles to match up. Freestyle, I want all the angles to match up, everything that's referenced it all looks like it fits together reflecting this on a vertical axis. Now, I might as well let those intersect and divide them, and then I use the Pathfinder Tool again and unite them, trying to use the right terms here. Okay. So, now we've got this cool little diamond that sits in the middle of this stuff, and act as a central point. Again, I've centered all this stuff. Okay. So, there's that, but let me see what else I can put in here that can fill up this space. Okay. I think this little area in the middle here needs to be separated enough. Now, what's cool about maintaining all this stuff, is that your line it all stays aligned with this grid or this, whatever the grid is on your art board. Let's say, so that those little option arrow nudges things that I just did, those are consistent with the spacing up here so that's spaced out the same. So, let's bring this guy down here, so I can take all these here and use a selection tool up here aligned to selection. I'll make them all align to horizontal align, right, so all those things just lined up this way, and now horizontal align left, and they all align to this way. So, this thing, then gets to be brought down here duplicated, but I'm not 100 percent sure if that the right spacing on this. I might as well just line this up and I use smart guides, so that I can see from lining up to the other thing. Okay. Again, I'll align these up together. You don't want a grouping, you're doing a lot ungrouping. You're aligning a lot of stuff, it's construction like you would be building a house or whatever you're building, you just need to constantly check and make sure things are aligned correctly and stuff. Center that on the whole art board like that, I'll group those, I'll group these, center these, put them together. It's not on the whole deal. These two gets centered on the whole art board. Okay. So, now, I have that little separator that I felt like I was missing before. So, now we're getting into this whole thing where we can do something that sort of a Navajo print. But, we can at least do it in a new enough way, that we can just have a new take on it, and feel like it's something we created on our own. 8. Adobe Illustrator - Part 4 of 4: I'm going to reflect the horizontal axis. Then, come down like that and maybe this little dude comes back down there, and that doesn't really anchor that well. I could just leave it. Maybe I'll leave it. Okay. Well, here's all this now, where the heck does 21 pilots come in this whole deal. Again, I love establishing this logo, I must want to do something a little more simplistic with the logo, where this is the official deal. But for the sake of this design, I might be able to get away with creating more simplistic version of it. So, the simplistic version of that logo would be this. Let's recreate, so I'm just going to lock, put this on layer by itself. Actually, I want to start a whole new layer. Shift+O, You can make a new art board, I think holding down Shift keeps at the same proportion as the other art boards that are there. So, that goes like that, let's lock this down. I want to do a circle again, but what I want is a stroke that I can edit and I don't want to be dictated by the width of the logo that's already there, although I dictated that a while ago. So, we've got this stroke that sits right in the middle to that center. Now, let's do a line straight down, mimic that one and then we'll do a line like this that's on that same angle like that one and then we'll do one because it crossed like that all right. We'll do one that goes across like that. All right. Now, this is the new logo or at least the logo that's going to make sense to use here. So, we go back to this graphic, and now the cool thing about doing the new logo is okay, it's that big right now. But since, I have the stroke on it, I can make it the same with these other. Again, I use the Eyedropper tool just to grab that, the stroke that's already there. Now, this is kind of neat because it only hints at the logo and I'm going to put this in the front. It only hints at the logo but it's enough to like you think about how somebody will create a logo. If they needed to put that logo there before the constraints of the material they were working with, like say this is I don't know like a tribal painting or something like that you would put kind of a crude version of that logo. In that way, I think it's kind of neat. I'm going to turn these smart guides off. So, they don't keep snapping this black line to get it a little bit of dimension. Now, we got that little thing in the middle. So with this, I want to have some type of thing here some type of back and forth. I could do power to local dreamer again. I don't know if it would all fit in there. Of course, I can just copy these and bring them over here. Then I run into the problem of it not being the same width as everything else. Being a stickler about the width consistent width on everything, that's sort of the reason I do that is because I feel like that's a kind of it's an amateur thing when the widths are all jacked up and there's not some continuity between everything. But maybe that works, maybe it doesn't. Let's just take this out, let's let it just kind of breathe. I feel like Bob Ross kind of like it, graphic designer knew Bob Ross. I'm going to fill in these little spots with these, with a side of a triangle, I'm going to take an arrow. I mean a box, I'm going to minus this deal, give it a little shape here, just enough to fill out that space. Okay. So, you're starting to see where you could use all these colors. These could be the red, these little triangles could be white line. Again, we can make the logo, to make it white for now, but you'll see in Photoshop I'm going to jack all this stuff up. Let's make this up red, I guess we can make these all white, have a little happy triangles down here peeking through for us. All those guys that aren't join all those up. Never mind. It doesn't matter right now. Okay. Looks like a little bit too much width. I'm going to put this back blue maybe this back blue, and whatever words we bring in we'll put. Okay. So, I got to fit the words and type up here, I think. Obviously, I love great lettering and I love to sit and mess with lettering like crazy. But for the sake of this, you're going to draw the kids attention with the colors and the pattern and all that. Sometimes some relatively simple lettering works the best for that. I have a, let's see, I have a thing called lock up here, where they just put type lock ups. Once I have saved up. See now, this one is different enough that it could work in. It's not a font I use very often. I want something that's a little bit funky. I've got too many fonts. Let's try that one, I think that's weird enough. Now, the cool thing about this is I'm going to be submitting this to the band, but I'm going to also submit a lot of the student submitted stuff to the band as well. You get a real look into the way it actually is. If the band doesn't like your stuff, the band doesn't like your stuff, and whatever. But I want you guys to actually get the real experience of what it's actually like submitting this stuff. So, I'm going to mess with the tracking for the stuff. Kerning and tracking sometimes people get that confused. Kerning is usually talking more about each letter. Tracking is more of a broader thing about how everything is spaced. I'm going to convert that to outlines already and I'm going to use the black line on it to thin it up. So, that line makes sense with the rest of it and I don't think these letters need to be spaced apart this much. I'm going to put a little diamond in between them. Which seems like something that would be somewhat fitting with this. That U is breaking up a little bit there with the stroke. But I don't think I mind it because- let's see, is that better? Actually, that's better. You have to leave a little room for the error in a good way because sometimes the error is awesome. Let's make this white. Let's see if we can make that red. Let's do it. I mean, let's actually alternate these for the head cover. Okay. This is a very odd T-shirt design. Definitely, different than anything I've done for them before, but I don't know. I mean, I'm not saying this is totally goes the reggae way that Tyler was talking about and this doesn't necessarily seem reggae, but there is something about it that seems sort of tribal to me, I guess. I dig that as well. So, maybe I can put this up here. Now, it's not going to be the same angle as it is down there, but I do think it's neat. Okay, so now I messed with this stuff a little bit. Trying to figure out if I'm happy with it. I don't know if I'm happy with the colors yet, but it's enough. So, like I said, you guys know what the whole deal is with this shirt and this is the negative space and all that, and we could make something out of it. It would be pretty cool. Here, let me see if it's salvageable. You know what, I want to do this. This is me going differently where I would normally keep everything in a tall rectangle. But I think I want to go white for some reason with this. At least that's for show you some ways that I use texture and Photoshop. We'll narrow this thing down, bigger there. Keep this line with consistent. So, now we're going with the- I was going to do that, for some reason I think this is neat, just leave it at like that, and then we'll add some texture in Photoshop. So, here's what I've done. I've created these three designs and I got these artboards out. So, that's what I got, Save. So now, we've executed everything in Illustrator. For the most part, our work in Illustrator is done. So, before we do anything else, we're going to take it over onto Photoshop and that's where it's going to get texture and get the vibe of how it's going to look on the finished product. So, Illustrator, done. 9. Finalizing in Photoshop: Okay. So, once everything is in- done in Illustrator, it's time to bring it over Photoshop. We'll just go in this order, we'll take this triangle. What did I call it? Thin line? We'll call it Voltron or something now. We'll go into Photoshop. Again, I have canvases for a T-shirt. I have 16.5 by 20.5. That's actually a pretty big T-shirt. But I have this. I turn this to black. Again, I'm going to mess with these colorways. I'm not even be messing with the colorways all the way to the mark. So, well see. Now, I'm pasting this whole thing in, this design that I did. Now, everybody has their own little way that they go about doing textures. I've definitely done textures on a lot of my stuff and I have a few signature styles that I do that with. For something like this, you're not going to get a ton of texture inside the lines but you will get texture with the overall feel of how these lines were drawn. For this, my first step is, although I have all this wonderful color here, I'm going to convert it all to gray anyway. So I'm going to merge this with the black. The reason I'm merging this with the black is because I need the things I'm going to do to work in relationship to the black, so merges those layers. So, now you have a layer that is all of this color it is off one thing. Command+shift+U takes the color out of it. Command+L let you mess with the levels. So, I want to get my grays white, and of course the blacks are already black. So here what I'd like to do is just put a gaussian blur on it or gaussian. I don't know. I don't know what people call it. So, I have this blur and it's set at 8.2. So, now this is blurry. Over top of this on a new layer I'm going to put texture. Now, I have an extensive collection of brushes here. You don't need to see all these brushes or any of that, but the thing about these brushes is I made them myself. Not all of them. Well, actually yeah, all of them. I made them myself, either from some digital file I had or from some actual thing. On the block design, I'm going to use the special brush that I texture most of my stuff with. But I just want you to know, make your own brushes. Figure out a way to create your own style of texture because it's a bummer when you use a brush that people know what that brush is from and it has the same texture as other stuff they've seen before. So, you can just make it more your own and you have more ownership of it if you make your own brushes. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to use one of my brushes with black and I'm just going to put it over top of this thing and make it big enough so that you see all these little specs. Maybe put even more on there. Then I'm also going to put something a little more of a gray type of vibe over it so that you're starting to lose the line entirely on some spots. Okay, so I've got all this texture and just to show you what the texture I'm putting over it looks like, it's that. So, all of this crap goes over top of the design. Now, some of that stuff is too sharp for the way I want to use it. So, I'm going to merge these together and I'm going to use a layer mask and thin out some of the spots that are a little bit too rough. This one I'm just going to take down the opacity as opposed to making it too intense because I'll lose too much. So, right there with all that texture, I'm going to merge all these layers together. So, I'm very destructive when I do this stuff and it's for a reason because if a shirt would get weathered, it would get weathered evenly. So, everything gets weathered the same way. So, I'm just going to Brightness, Contrast, I use the legacy version because this separates white and black and you need a separate white and black because you're going to have to print this and you're going to have to separate these layers. So, I turn the contrast all the way up. This line is too thick, so I'd bring the brightness down, and that's where I want to be. So, it's going to smooth itself out. Actually, I'm going to do another little blur. Actually I'll do noise, dust and scratches. I'll mess with that a little bit and let these lines kind of chill out a little bit more. So, I know that I've lost the type power to the local dreamer. That's not a big deal. I'll just go back and get it. Make it white. I'll just use a black box and cover this stuff up and we'll paste that back in. Power to the Local Dreamer. So, that's cool. It's perfect and it's too perfect. So, let's blur it a little bit. Again, when you blur the stuff, you have to have the black attached to it because it will just blur on its own and not have a relationship to the black. Once you get in there and do it, you'll see what I mean. So, you want to take this down a little bit just enough so it's blurred, but it's still illegible. That'll work right there. So, you can actually use screen and it will just go over top of that. So, I've done that and that little ski mask dude. He's lost too much detail as well. So, I'll take him out and I'll put him back. So, I'm just going back in the Illustrator and grab these little pieces. I might not be able to really blur him out at all because I will lose that icon. I think I want to leave it. Just leave it. Just like that. Okay, so now we've merged all that together. Now, this is when we get into color. So, I'm going to leave this Illustrator window open over here to really know what type of color I want to separate the stuff has. So, I know that this big thing here. First, I'm going to select all the white and I'm going to get this whole entire positive space off of the black. I usually just hit the background layer, hit J which you create a new layer from that selection. Command J and then I invert it, so now I got that back. So now, all I have here is this design by itself. Now, I can alter in a lot of ways. So, the first thing I'm going to do is select this big area that I know is blue. At least, that's what I've dictated so far. That's blue all that your final a little shapes here. That's blue, that's blue, that's blue, that's blue. Cool. Then, making sure you still have your little selection area, you can use the rectangle. That power to the is blue and local dreamer is blue. So, I got all that. I can hit J, and now I've got a new layer of just that stuff that want to turn blue. I find it easiest to use the color overlay. I am going to come in here and grab that blue. So, there we go. I'll restorize it up already. I don't know why, I just like to get that stuff out of the way quick. All right, so let's find the red. This is red. This is going to be red. I think all of this is going to be red, and see this is jacked up here. So, instead of using that magic wand, I'm just going to use this trapezoidal lasser, or whatever they call it. As a student, you can continue to call these things thingamajigs throughout your entire career. If anyone hassles you for not calling it the same stuff, you can just tell them to deal with it, because it can always be the magic wand thingy or the pencil thingamajiger. That's cool. All right. So, I'm selecting all these little spots that will be red, command J. Cool. All right, so I'm going to use the color overlay and turn these dudes, this red and restorize those. Okay. So, looks like the only thing we're missing is the white. Right now, we're going to take well, here I'm going to get in close and I'm just going to select this white area, I mean, this area that's going to be white by itself and also the stuff that's going to be blue by itself. So, this will be blue, that's blue, this is red, and then this middle thing is, that's going to be, well here I'm going to have to use the, what's it called? What are they called? A polygon lasso tool. All right. So, now I can't get rid of that. Okay. So, we've selected the words and now we get this little ski mask dude out of here, J, and I'm looking at these layers and I just know what's there. So, it might be hard to tell from the thumbnails what's in each layer, but I just know what's there. So, now I am deleting the final deal. So, we're done with Illustrator in the background, back to being focused on Photoshop canvas. Okay. What I want to do, I can use the autoselect tool. That will be easier because it will tell me which layer is which. So, that's this bar which is blue, I'm pretty sure you. We have blue on the left, okay. Changes color overlay to blue, and I don't really like layer styles. I try to get rid of the layer styles as soon as I can just because for whatever reason, they annoy me. In the in the layers, there's always extra drop downs, drives me nuts. Okay. So, this bar here we're going to turn this one red. Now, the reason I'm separating this stuff is because this is the way it works for T-shirt printing. The printer will do different things to this file, but at least I have the colors separated out myself. It's going to be a lot easier for the other people involved, if I get this stuff as simple as I can. So, here's the two reds. I am setting that layer red. This is all blue. I think that's all the blue, except for that bar. This bar goes up here and those will be blue. This is white. That's white. That's white. So, you can bring all those together, and those are all white. So, that's pretty much done. The other thing we've got to do is mess with these color ways. So, I love putting shirts on a black T-shirt. That's just what I'm used to doing. I think it's the best T-shirt. It's worth it to explore some other ways. So, let's say that the shirt was white. Then, the easiest way to do that is, turn this white to red. Then I think there's blue, is probably going to look better as the red. so then I'm changing the red to blue. Again, I got this stuff sitting in the background, so I can use my eyedropper tool to find the colors. It's the quickest way to find the colors. So, there's that. That looks lame. I don't like it. So, I'm not going to do that. Here's a color. What if it's on a red shirt? Let's make these word white again. I think this, you put these back to white and maybe this background will go black. You see now this is weird because you've really like screwed up everything about what you've designed. So, you're looking at a new context for the first time. This could be cool, but I think the coolest way to do this shirt personally is to make it all white on red, and I think that would be a cool shirt, and I'm going to show that. I'm going to call that one. Again, we're back on desktop here, I got this Twenty One Pilots thing. I'm going to call it triforce. So, TOP triforce red. So, now I know that's the one on the red colorway. Of course, I got the layer, the background layer dropped out, so that when I placed it on a T-shirt, it's going to go off without hitch. So, this will be triforce black. Those are done. So, let's move on to the other designs and kind of do the same basic treatment to them. So, to save you the boredom, I just went through this other hieroglyphic look in Navajo design, and I did the whole texture thing and separate the colors out. So, now we have the blue, the whites, and the red separated out. I think this one is one that I can probably have more fun doing colorways with. So, we'll just save this colorway in its own little group. I'm thinking I can get away with putting this on a red shirt. Maybe not, but we'll try and this goes back to Tyler talking about the reggae thing because I guess in Jamaica you could see maybe something like this painted on the side of a building or on a brick wall or something, and that's my thought behind it. But, with something like reggae, you want to be careful about going too literal because such a prominent thing and, of course, you can use those kind of the Jamaica flag colors and all that. You can do that whole deal, but instead I'd rather hint at it than to be so obvious about it. So, let's see if this is going to work on red. Just to stay safe, I guess we'll turn this red to black and then we will turn the background layer to the official red, we'll just pop that up behind. Again, Eyedropper tool is the best way to get your colors have some swatch set or something behind you. I realize this red is a little bit orange, but that's their color. Now, the closest I think I want to get to this whole reggae thing is maybe turning this white yellow. Then, you still have the blue or rasterize this. We'll mess around with this blue, use the hue sliders and stuff, we'll take the saturation of the blue down a little bit. Maybe let's look down all the better green. Let's see if we can do green. Let's do white. I'm going to stick with that. We'll do that on a red colorway. So, I'm going to hide that background layer and then we'll save this as TOP. What did I want to call it? I'm going to call it Navajo red. I'll do that. Let's see if we can get it on white too. Maybe not, but we'll try. I'm going to call that layer on red just so I know what it is. We'll see if we can do this white. Of course, this white will go to the red and in this case it's cool working within these parameters because they're fun. I mean this is cool. I guess we'll work on the very least to go work on a girl shirt. Let me rename these to the bluest of blue, the red is a black. I want to soften that black up a little bit just so it fits the same time. All right. So, I'm going to put that on a white shirt. So, call that Navajo white. All right. So, that's two designs done right to get mocked up. We're going to do one more and that's a pretty easy one. The main reason to do this last one, the black one that we threw in at the end is to at least just show you the way we're going to do some texture. So, this is going to stay on a black shirt. I'm copying it. I'm going back into Photoshop, back to our 16.5 by 20.5 canvas. Pasting it right in, we will combine it with the black background layer. We'll take the color away, we'll blow it, that Gaussian blur. The main reason is I get to show you my favorite brush that I use on all kind of stuff. So, let's put a little bit of texture over top of it. I've got this texture from a burned out T-shirt that I scanned through my scanner, I set it on the scanner, and I got that texture Sometimes it helps to actually use a real texture from a T-shirt and it gives it I really neat feel. Burned out T-shirt is something that they've put a chemical through the shirt and a lot of it has been eaten away. That's what a lot at hardy stuff and crap like that of some burned out shirts, but you can find really cool versions of it too. So, I want to crank that contrast. That's a little too dirty. That's cool. I like that. Just too big honking blocks of color. So, now, we select that, might as well center it again at, there's these alignment things in Photoshop as well. I use it like to put it a little higher on there. So, we have that and let's just fill up each side with color. So, we'll make this its own deal, Command-J, its own layer and this its own layer, Command-J, trash that color everywhere on the left side is going to be blue, and color overlay on the right side is going to be the red. Okay. So, now, this is my favorite brush to use. I use this brush most of the time. It's sort of my go-to and that's okay to have a go-to brush. But, I used a brayer like an ink roller and I rolled a little bit out on a piece of paper, and it gave me this really cool shape that you can see the outline of here. So, what I do is I select the shape, and then I feather in, I contract, and I feather in to just select the inside area because if something with the weather, it's very possible the outside edges that would remain intact. So, I'm going to block out all of this area that's selected for the most part, and I can be kind of liberal with it, and just do whatever. So, I do select that and that looks bad, so I put it all back, and I put it back. So, that what you're left with is this real subtle texture and we'll do the same thing to the other side. Now, that you know my brush, you can probably look at a lot of my work, and realize that I did use that brush for that. But, it's kind of fun to have a system and a tool in place that you really like, sort of like your favorite hammer or something like that, I guess, assuming any of you guys build houses. So, that's that, it's just a block. We'll just call that blocked. So, you know what, and since we have, let me see what would work best, black is cool. Well, let's do a blue shirt. I don't want to do a blue shirt. Let's just stay with black. Okay. So, TOP blocked black done. All right. So, our Photoshop work, the designs are done. So, that's a wrap on that and the next step is mocking these things up, and sending them off, and that was next. 10. Mocking Concepts for Presentation: Okay. So now, we're ready to mock-up concepts for the presentation. So, I have a T-shirt mark file that I use for everything and this is something I have accumulated over the years. I've probably had it for eight or nine years and I keep adding to it every time a client wants another garment that I don't have, I'll add to it. So, there's a raglan or there's a certain girl tee or something like that. Of course, the trends change, and you have new garments, and stuff. So, I keep accumulating it. I try to simplify this as much as I possibly can. Sometimes you can find, take a picture of your own T-shirt. You can see a stock photo site and find a picture of a T-shirt something like that. But I just encourage you to make your own because it's cool to see that that person's work is always displayed on that specific template. I think that's cool. If you guys want to use some of those pre-made ones that you can buy online, that's cool too. So, here's my T-shirt. Now, the layer makeup of this, you can see all these different things. But for the sake of this, I will hide all the other layers, delete all the hidden layers here. So, in the cover, you want to have a layer for highlights and a layer for shadow. So, highlights will screen over top and the shadows will multiply. That's a whole other tutorial, but I do think it might be cool to learn how to make some of these templates for yourself. But I have a layer mask over top of this photo where I can place art in there and then I'll be good to go. Then, I have the shirt color and I can do color overlays to change the colors of the shirt. So, the first one I'm going to do, I'll get a file placed, I got to be here in the correct layer. File place. So, here we go. We got this TOP black thing. So, we'll put this "twenty one pilots" block right in the middle. This goes back to Tyler's request for using the negative space. So, the band name and the logo or the absence of space. Command option Shift, save, and you save this as a PNG file, so that way, I can sit transparent over anything. So, the client can put it on their own backdrops if you're working for another art director or something like that. It's just the best file for them for their different presentations they're going to do. In the concepts, I have this mock-up. I'm going to call it TOP blocked black-tee. Easy. So, that's done really quick. Replace that with this knob. Well, I'll do a triforce black since we have a black blank. So, here's this triforce deal. I want to place this right in the middle here as big as I can get it before it starts getting on the seams of the sleeves. Command option Shift S, let's save for a while. Again, the PNG-24 format. I'm going to call it TOP triforce black T.png. Since we already have this here, let's color overlay with this red that they use. You mess with this color slider and all that stuff. So, that's cool. Now, replace this, so it's the actual red file, triforce red. Remember, I did it all in one color. I think that looks pretty rad on a red T-shirt. TOP triforce red-T. All right. Replace. Navajo red since we're already on the T-shirt. So, here's this big Navajo design I did. Bring this down. Actually, I have the layer mask, so that it goes underneath that fold, which is pretty cool. Save for web, TOP Navajo red tee.png. I think the last one we got is white. Replace with the Navajo white. You know what? Let's mock. This is cool. Take the shadows down a little bit while it's on white. Let's see shadows and things. So, that's the Navajo design on a white. I think that could actually work with that light blue being more of a navy blue, but that's something you can mess with later when you get client feedback. TOP Navajo white tee. Save. Close out of your mock-up file. Another thing I do is I go back to Photoshop and I'll run this action that saves all of those files as 1,100 pixel square of just the design. So, this makes it easier if you give it to an art director that they can place on different blanks and it's a lot easier. So, this will go through an automatic action, which I set up a long time ago. It doesn't much work for me. So, I just sit here and let it change the image size of all this. Then, I'll throw this on the folder. They automatically go on the desktop. So, that's how I set out these five files now. So, in my concepts, I have a wrike submit folder, which is already there. That was already in the folder that I created that automatically happens, as well as those little annoying things that you don't want to do. So, you just have your computer be a robot and do them for you. So, what I usually do is TOP dash wrike dash submit the date and I'll upload this with my Cloud app, which is a very handy little tool. Meanwhile, while that's uploading, I'll take all these little mock-ups. It's nice to take a look at them all, throw them up in front of you. So, "Okay, cool." There's a variation there and different things. There are different choices. They might like all three of them, whatever. Then, we're going to throw them all into an email where they can check them all out. TOP merge concepts. Here's what I came up with for the "twenty one pilots" tees. Then, give them a nice little clean folder that you uploaded to the Cloud app and that's it. I'm sending this off, but I want you to submit your student projects too. But what will be cool is if you submit projects based on the actual client, based on twenty one pilots, based on the things that you heard Tyler say, whatever you get from it. Maybe you think that I got it totally wrong and maybe you want to go a whole different direction with it, but submit your stuff and I'll take a look at all of it. Tyler will take a look at all of it. One of those things we can put into production, and actually print, and have the band sell out there on tour. So, go for it. I want to see what you guys can make. I want to see how you interpret this direction. I can't wait to get in there and I'll help you out along the way, critique whatever you want me to critique. I'll take a look at every single bit of it. So, that's it. I'm pressing send and this thing's gone off to the client. We'll see what they think.