Collaborating with Jay and Amin

Myself, jay and amin met with each other each week to discuss how their designs were going, both of them had many ideas but had trouble being fully happy with a concept, from my experience with designing pieces and collections, i know that feeling finished with a design is almost impossible, as there will always be elements that you want to change but we set a deadline of the 22nd of March for the final designs to be done (as i informed them we have to give at least 2 weeks for the samples to be produced and arrive to us), however when the 22nd arrived i had yet to see the final designs or collaborate on them, both Jay and Amin showed me designs which had preexisting prawn shop designs on them such as the one below which features elements from the 'Mother Nature' tee

After Jay sent me the above design, i expressed to him that i didn't want to include preexisting designs within the new collection, of course small elements are okay like the prawn longo, however to have the center piece of the design to be taken from an existing design didn't feel new and it isn't something that The Prawn Shop does. I told this to jay, and informed him that i would be more than happy to create a new illustration for the piece, i asked him to provide me with art direction of what he wanted, and he did (as seen left). 

I followed Jays direction and created this piece for the back of the t-shirt, to be surrounded by type reading '3 minds are better than one' i think the concept for this design is really strong, theres a deep meaning behind it but to the customer it just looks like a visually pleasing t-shirt with a new design, rather than a preexisting one.  

For the rest of the designs from both Jay and Amin i didn't create any new work, they took elements from existing designs and distorted them to fit the aesthetic of their concept, i didn't have a problem with this as the elements looked completely different in the end however in reflection i would have liked to collaborate more closely on the design, as it came down to seeing the designs once they both classed them as being done, i made changes to the designs they thought were completed however i do think it would have been interesting to do more collaborative work like the above piece, taking art direction from the two of them to create brand new pieces and imagery. 

Jays Final Designs

This design will be embroidered on to the chest of black t-shirts, originally jay intended this design to be printed on to the back of the t-shirt with the outline of a prawn emborodiered on the front (so that it was consistent to his other two designs) however i explained to him that the pieces aren't necessarily going to be next to each other on the website and so having them being consistent isn't vital as the collection is a mix of 15 designs. I suggested to jay that we embroid this design in to the chest of the front of the t-shirt as it sets it apart to the other pieces, he agreed.

The coral t-shirt design i've previously discussed will have the prawn shop prawn logo embroidered on the chest of the t-shirt, with the printed illustration and type on the back. 

Jay has titled this design 'sketchbook' it features the prawn embroidered again on the front, in a colour that will (hopefully once samples arrive) be similar if not the same to the teal on the back of the design. This design uses existing prawn shop elements however he's edited them in a way that makes them look like new elements.


I think that jays designs will be successful on the website, they bring a more gender neutral approach to the designs, where as the current prawn shop designs, although they're all unisex, are centred around women and femininity.

Above are Amins 3 designs, the first is a fully embroidered piece (top left) titled 'don't cry over split milk' Amins inspiration for his designs was very centred around his university experience, during one of our meetings we devised a list of words to inspire us for the design of the collection, words such as habits, repetition, freedom, alone etc are very clear in his designs, such as the white t-shirt which features back to back embroidery which will be titled 'habits', these designs are all original to amin, however there are prawn shop details throughout. The final design (orange t-shirt) came from an illustration i found of amins, the tower block type apartment scene relates to the student accommodation we all first lived in, with my women illustrations being used on the balcony. We're going to wait for the samples to arrive, however we both think that this design will work better on a yellow tee rather than an orange, as it will flow in to the t-shirt more smoothly than the orange and the yellow, however we'll see once the samples arrive.