initial design ideas (sb2)

As i already have a manufacturer for my t-shirts i have a prior knowledge of the size specifications and what is possible. My manufacturer prints digitally and there is a maximum printing area of 11.7 x 16.5 inches. 

As The Prawn Shop already has a distinct design style of incorporating simple line drawings of the female form (as seen opposite), i didn't feel going against or trying out a new one would be very wise in terms of brand cohesion. 
Instead i looked at the characteristics of pre-existing designs which are the best sellers. 
The design which can be seen opposite is called 'torn' this is the largest design available online, i believe it is selling well due to the boldness of the design; including the use of black line. 

 Here is the 'no still means no design', this design is one of the few designs which use no distinctive black line, rather the image is made up of shapes and rather than explicitly drawn objects.
I believe the way in which the words make up both a sentence and a shape work really well, and people seem to really respond to the fact that you have to look at this design for a little bit longer in order to fully understand it.

The girls tee is another best seller, this could be due to the fact that it's the only pink t-shirt available on the website, or the use of colour or perhaps the combination of using negative space and actual line within the design. 

I think that if i am able to come up with a series of designs which are able to take different aspects of these best sellers then that will make for a really successful line. 











I began by sketching different design ideas which could incorporate the quotes. 

One initial idea as seen below was to just use typography on the t-shirt so the focus could be on the quotes provided during the research stage, however this concept just didn't seem very on brand, i also felt there should be some aspect of women within the design as each design is inspired by a woman.

I then began to sketch out different concepts as seen below, one idea was to create a series of 5 illustrations depicting a scene for example a woman watering flowers with the quote 'your dirt made me blossom in to an even prettier flower' beneath it, however i felt that this might take away from the focus of the quotes and so i wanted to find a way to incorporate illustration and the typography together, similar to the no still means no design.

I played around with incorporating type within illustrations of female features, the use of type i believe was appropriate, in the fact that it was able to merge in to the design in a way that is eye catching yet works in cohesion with the rest of the design, however the illustrations were felt to be too explicit for the subject matter, and if the female form was to be used it needed to be in a more subtle way, one that's not overtly sexual.

The concept which appeared to be the most appropriate can be seen below, combining illustration and the use of typography within negative space to complete the image. This was also felt to be a good approach to minimize the explicitness of the designs using the negative space to create the image, more like a silhouette than an actual illustration.