Print Social uni-t new designers 2019 brief (day brief)

The Brief: to design a t-shirt for Print Socials next capsule collection featuring design students and recent graduates. There is no specific criteria for the design however due to the fact that (if chosen) the t-shirt will be released in conjunction with the 2019 London LGBTQ pride the brand have said that they would love it if the design could capture the brands tongue and cheek tone whilst also delivering their message of bringing people together, introspective of their race, gender or sexual orientation, with the message of encouraging people to be proud of who they are.

I decided to use this brief as a day brief due to the fact that i have a background in t-shirt design through my own brand The Prawn Shop, however the difference between the way i normally work within my own brand in comparison to designing a t-shirt for almost a client is the fact that it's not my audience, and so the process of designing for a new audience will be quite different.
The first step i took was to research in to the brand and see the type of designs they already produce, in order to gain insight in to the type of work they like, and the type of designs their audience responds to.

From looking in to the brands instagram posts which include the t-shirts they currently sell i initially when reading the brief thought that nudity (which is a common, and popular feature of the t-shirt designs i produce) wouldn't be appropriate, however from looking through the designs as seen below, nudity isn't a problem. There is a wide variety of designs throughout the brands page, in all different styles with different messages behind them, this is a really good thing i believe as it means that i'm not constricted to working in a certain way, i can produce a design which from my own experience through my own brand, i can feel confident that people will want to purchase it.

Although their are no set out rules for the design, there are some restrictions such as due to the fact that the t-shirt will be screen printed, only 4 colours can be used, and one of them needs to be the brands primary colour (pantone 7404 c). In addition to this, the design can't be lager than 39cm x 49cm.

I began to start designing with the focus of the design being focused around LGBTQ pride due to the release date and the brands personal hopes for the message of the design.

My initial idea was to keep the design quite simple, meaning that it could be worn by anyone for any occasion, i played with the word love in order to celebrate pride and the fact that anyone is free to love whoever they want. Using 4 colours including the brands tone (not exact tone as this was just an initial idea). This design felt too simple, however i did feel like using such a short word gave a lot of potential for further developments.

 I then began to experiment with adding more detail to the word and changing the hand draw type, this design again uses four colours, with one of them being black for line detail. the use of varying patterns within the text has been used to represent the variety of of people in the world and especially who will be attending pride, with the overall message aiming to communicate that everyone is different and everyone deserves the right to love whoever they want to love.

 I thought the above message was effective however the composition didn't work, i designed it with the intent of the word love forming a love-heart however this felt too much, i then took the same concept but changed the composition with some subtle changes to the type and overall patterns however again i felt that it just wasn't right, I read back through the brands criteria and they mentioned that they wanted the design to communicate the 'tongue and cheek' personality of the brand, however again the design felt too safe and something that i wouldn't release within my own brand.

 I tried out the concept for the final time, making the piece more illustrative than before however the concept just wasn't there and so i moved on to a different approach as seen below.

 This design is a lot different to the previous and although i think it's visually pleasing, the design wasn't celebrating the differences within people and so i decided to abandon the 'love' concept in order to focus more on the diversity side of the brief criteria.

I then produced this design. I was heavily inspired by the mention of the brand wanting people to celebrate who they are regardless of their differences to one another and so i decided to try and communicate this through a tongue and cheek way in order to communicate the message of the brand, whilst also representing and staying true to myself as a designer. 

The design uses part of the human form in order to playfully show the beauty in our differences, showing that differences are beautiful and that we all deserve to love ourselves. 

I've used the brands yellow tone and a coral like pink tone as-well as black for detailing, i wanted to keep the colour pallet quite minimal due to the composition of the piece, if i were to use four colours then the sequence and balance of colours would not be as equal is it is in the design above. 

I've found through my own brand, that creating shapes and structure through illustrations works well in framing the design, in this case a square structure has been formed by the imagery which once worn will allow the design to sit nicely on the persons chest, with it all being visible regardless of whether the person tucks the t-shirt in or not. 

Overall i feel that this brief has been a good experience for a days work, it's shown me how working through ideas that i originally thought were going to work straight away is the best way to work, through process. In terms of the design, i feel that it works on a visual level, it's a design that i would be confident in putting up on my own website, in terms of the brief i believe it does meet the criteria set out; it's cheeky, playful, celebrative and bold, it's not exclusive to the LGBTQ pride event, and can be worn all year long, if it gets chosen that is. 

t-shirt mockup in the style and format that is already on the brands instagram, showing an example of how the t-shirt would be promoted on social media if chosen. 

The Uni-tee new designers brief was definitely valuable in seeing how much work I’m able to produce in one day. A variety of although not well enough refined for release, were created and through a tight time constraint my focus was made clearer, and in the end an appropriate and successful design was created. The design is successful due to the fact that it communicates the sense of loving our differences, making it appropriate for the pride event mentioned within the brief, however it isn’t exclusive to the event and so it can be worn the whole year round. I believe my prior experience in designing and selling t-shirts has definitely aided me within this brief as I had a prior knowledge in terms of what works and what sells, however it was interesting to design for another and another, although similar, target audience.