Rabu, 27 September 2006

T-Shirt Design Inspiration: 2008 Presidential Election

Well, I just heard in the news that the 2008 GOP Republican convention will be held in my home state of Minnesota this year ad the Xcel Center, home of our hockey team. It will be officially announced later today.

I imagine this would pose great opportunity for my fellow Minnesotans, Left and Right of the isle, to make some T-shirts and sell them around town. (hint, hint...get designing, buy in bulk w/ your discounts, and start selling!)

Now's the time, too, for T-shirt designer in any state to get those political CafePress stores up & running!

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Selasa, 26 September 2006

T-Shirt Spotlight: Owl Movement

"Gee, Thanks"

I thought this design was so clever & well-executed, I had to post it! It was designed by Rachel Geiger, a talented 17 year old from New Guinea. My favorite detail is the fish bones pattern in the wrapping paper and hats. Very nice touch, Rachel.

Thanks to Teees for linking up to Owl Movement. Be sure to check out Owl Movement from time to time to see their creative series based artist tees. I look forward to watching the T-shirt line grow!

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Sabtu, 23 September 2006

"Does CafePress Suck?" A blog post worth reading...

Though I don't care to use that "s" word myself in polite conversation, it is the topic of this post.

I've been all over the internet this week. Reading forums, exploring blogs, uploading some new designs to my CafePress store, starting a new blog (I'll announce that later!), learning more about blogging from Dave Taylor (really, you must sign up for his weekly newsletter...it's a gem!), and recovering from a cold (yay, fall in Minnesota!) when I came across this blog today: thebrooke:theblog.

How could I resist a post titled, "CafePress Sucks"? Though it starts out as a bit of a rant about what a "rip off" CafePress is, read on & you'll find quite an interesting conversation emerging from the post that began at the end of July this summer. People came out of the woodwork to comment, cheer & jeer various print on demand companies. Casey, the president of a young, but growing print on demand company, Printfection, even posted a challenge for anyone to take. You'll have to read the post to see his offer!

The writer (or should I say, "the brooke") continues the post into a "Part Two" and actually has plans to review several other print-on-demand companies similar to CafePress. It's a good read and worth checking out if anything, to see who else is out there and what a few people are saying about them.

In the meantime I'm continuing to grow my CafePress stores and will be opening shop with Printfection soon. I'll begin coverage of my experience with them in this blog as well and can hopefully offer some tutorials similar to my CafePress tutorials eventually, too.

So, does CafePress stink (we'll be polite now)? My answer can be read on thebrooke's blog.

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Kamis, 14 September 2006

T-Shirt Spotlight: Fashion Club

I found another good place to check out to keep an eye on the latest teen T-shirt trends for girls. The FashionClub.com website has a shop with a handful of nice designs this fall. Bookmark it to keep an eye out for the latest trends in teen T-shirts for design inspiration when you're designing your own shirts for CafePress.com or Threadless.com.

The Fashion Club is a production of FIDM, the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising which was created to address the interest of teens who are into design.


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Selasa, 12 September 2006

Promoting yourself through Threadless: My T-shirt design, "Flavors of Freedom"

Well, to update an earlier post about Threadless I went ahead and entered a design! So here's my "shameless plug" for my design, "Flavors of Freedom."

I wanted to take the approach to the theme, "We all make choices, what's yours?" with a little flavor. We have so many choices in life that even the smallest ones are significant and shouldn't be taken for granted...even choosing a flavor of ice cream. So feel free to stop by and score my design and ENTER YOUR OWN into the contest!

The winning T-shirt will be worn by Zach Braff on Scrubs!

"How can Threadless help me grow my web site audience?"
So far I like their service. What kept me from entering in the past is that they will own the rights to winning designs. But if your design doesn't win, you can request to have the rights to it to sell yourself. And if it does win, you do get a cash prize, which makes the effort worth it. Enter your own design and it's a great promotional venue for your own web site, CafePress store or blog. You're allowed to list a web site URL with your user name and they have a section in your profile to put a feed to your blog or myspace account. Just another place to get your name out there.

Don't design for them like you do for CafePress!
Of course, I first designed this thing with the CafePress printing in mind (with unlimited colors). When I actually read the instructions more carefully I noticed designs can have a maximum of four colors. So I redid it and submitted it. They have a nifty template you can download for Photoshop with layers and on each layer is a different colored shirt so you can see how your design looks on different shirts. It's a different way of designing, but it's refreshing. I love all the T-shirt color options.

So far it's been fun. I might try and enter one a month and see how it goes. I love throwing my stuff out there to be scrutinized. It's the best way to learn and grow as an artist!


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Minggu, 10 September 2006

T-Shirt Spotlight: Remember 911

Well, it only seemed fitting that I post a 911 T-shirt today.

Never forget.


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Sabtu, 09 September 2006

Get more mileage from your fonts! Illustrator Tip: How to make edgy cool type from a basic system font

"How can I get more fonts for free?"

Well, if you have Adobe Illustrator and a little creative gumption, you can take one of your system fonts and convert it to paths and put a brush stroke outline on it and you've got yourself a whole new set of fonts!

I made the above image using Courier and a few simple Adobe Illustrator techniques.

Here's a way to make a regular font into a cool, edgy font in Illustrator. Keep in mind, this method only works on fonts that have been converted to outlines (paths), so in the true sense of the word "font" I suppose you're actually making letter artwork, not actual fonts. But when you're just making a headline or slogan for a T-shirt, this doesn't really matter.


1) Type the words you want in Illustrator

Open Illustrator and with the type tool, type a word (at about an 80 point size). For our example I'll use the system font that most any computer should have: Courier...


2) Convert type to outlines
Keep your text highlighted and go to the "Type" drop down menu and select "Create Outlines."

3) Put a 1 point black stroke on your converted type.
At this point your color fill is probably black and your outline color may be set to "none" (the box with the red line through it). It should look like this in your toolbar:


To change your outline color, click on the outline box in your toolbar to make sure it's on top of the background color box (it should look like the above picture), then go to your color window (if you can't find your color window, go to the drop down menu: "window" and make sure "color" is checked). It will look like this:


Click on the little black rectangle in the bottom right corner of the color window (or drag the
"K" slider to 100). Once this is done, your color boxes in your toolbar should look like this:


4) Open the Artistic_Chalk Charcoal Pencil Brush Library.
Keep your converted type selected. Go to the "Window" drop down menu, scroll down to "Brush Libraries" and select the "Artistic_Chalk Charcoal Pencil" brush window.



5) Select a brush stroke for your outline.
Keeping your converted type selected, select a brush from the menu. I chose one of the skinnier rough brushes and this is what it did to my converted type:
6) Adjust the stroke width.

At this point the letters usually looks too "fat." So now you'll need to do a bit of adjusting to the width of the stroke. To make it easier to see what you're doing with the converted type while it's selected, you can hide your selection outlines by going to the "View" drop down menu and selecting "Hide Edges."


In your stroke window (drop down window "Window" and "Stroke") adjust the weight of your outline. This will adjust the thickness or width of the brush stroke that's around your converted type. It usually defaults to 1pt (One Point), which is usually too thick. Just tweak the thickness. Try a 0.8...then try a 0.2 or a 0.05 pt. Keep tweaking until you like what you see. Different brush strokes will require different weights in order to look good. Here's what it looks like in the Stroke window (ignore the miter limit and other settings for this project):


Here's what I ended up with:
7) Move letters around, play with it, tweak it and try out new colors!
Here, I simply selected each letter, one at a time and moved them so the words weren't on such a straight base line:
Add a little color, a drop shadow, some background color and here's what I got:

Not too bad for just plain old Courier & a little creative gumption!

Here are a few more brushes (from the brush library) and color combinations I tried with Courier...
Now bring your cool new type into Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) save it as a PNG, upload it to CafePress and you've got yourself a great looking slogan T-Shirt with custom lettering ready to sell!

Be sure to check out other useful Illustrator tips and tutorials on Creative Gumption.

Have you tried similar techniques to get more mileage out of your fonts? Was this tutorial helpful?

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Kamis, 07 September 2006

T-Shirt Spotlight: Modern Kids T-Shirts by MoMA

This cute little baby tee can be found at the Museum of Modern Art online store, MoMAstore.

And since Christmas is right around the corner, you may want to check out their holiday cards. There's a lot of delightful design there that's very inspiring!


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Selasa, 05 September 2006

The Urban Forest Project: Great NY Banner Design available on T-Shirts!


I just read about The Urban Forest Project over at Design Sponge today. It's a site worth checking out for some design inspiration. Fantastic design by New York AIGA student and mentor teams.

From the AIGA website: "The Urban Forest Project brings 185 banners created by the world's most celebrated designers, artists, photographers and illustrators to New York's Times Square. Each banner uses the form of the tree, or a metaphor for the tree, to make a powerful visual statement."

Show runs September 1–October 31, 2006 and these cool designs are all available on T-Shirts.


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Senin, 04 September 2006

Increase Traffic to your Site: Free SEO Tools from ThinkSeer


As promised in an earlier post about Search Engine Optimization (a great speech by Wil Reynolds at Affiliate Summit East, Orlando, 2006), I'm sharing the free SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools from ThinkSeer.

Here they are. A link to this list has also been added to the sidebar of this blog's home page for future reference. Thanks again to Wil from ThinkSeer for sharing this great list!

Forums

Open Directory Public Forum
Search Engine Marketing & Optimization Tips & News searchengineblog
WebmasterForums Index

Tools

Keyword Proximity Analyzer v1.03
SEOmoz | Keyword Difficulty Tool
ResearchBuzz-- GooFresh
Search Engine Saturation - Search Engine Marketing Tools

Google Tools

Check PR, Scripts that finds quality link partners
Google Datacenter Watch Tool - 56 New Datacenters
Upcoming PageRank value checking tool
Yahoo! WebRank Checking Tool
Google Dance Tool
RankPulse: Keeping the Pulse of Search Engine Rankings
Google Dance Tool
Google AdWords Dynamic Keyword Insertion :SEO Book.com
Keyword Generator.Google AdWords. Overture.
Google w/ PR
Google Trends

Yahoo! Tools
Spider simulator

Lynx Viewer (Show page text)
Webconf's Spider Simulator
StickySauce.com - Search engine spider simulator optimization tools
HTTP / HTTPS Header Check

Link Popularity Checkers

Link Popularity Check - Marketleap Search Engine Marketing Tools
Link Popularity Check

PPC tools

Adword Report
AdGooroo :Home
GoogSpy- AdwordsCompetitor Research by Velocityscape
Yahoo Tracker :: search engine keyword ranking tracker
We Build Pages Anchor Text BacklinkChecker - Neat-O Free BacklinkCheck Tool.

Firefox plugins

SEO for Firefox
SEO for Firefox is a free Firefox extension
which adds many search engine optimization data points into Google's
SERPs and Yahoo!'s SERPs on the fly.

SEOpen: The SEO FirefoxExtension
Free search engine optimization
tools and resources. Home of SEOpen, the SEO Firefox extension.

Microsoft adCenterLabs Presentations
Microsoft adCenterLabs Demonstration


SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
Free Overture and Google Keyword suggestion tool.

SEO Tools - Search Engine Optimization Tools
Similar Pages Checker - Duplicate content checker
Search Engine Spider Simulator
Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker


Class C Checker - SEO Tools - Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization
Class C Checker

PageRank Search - SEO Tools - Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization
A Google META search engine featuring PageRank display and
additional features. Streamline the link building process with this
popular tool.


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Jumat, 01 September 2006

T-Shirt Design Inspiration from the Minnesota State Fair, 2006

Well, I survived another fun annual trip to "The Great Minnesota Get-Together," the Minnesota State Fair. My feet are sore, my tummy is satisfied, and my mind is spinning with T-shirt ideas.

Yes, you can get hotdish on a stick at the Minnesota State Fair!

A Slice of the Midwest
I can't think of a better slice of the good ol' midwest - flyover country - middle America than our fair. It's the largest state fair in the United States, by the way. With the daily attendance record broken at 128,966 people at the fair on Wednesday alone, it serves as a pretty good look at what regular folks are wearing (and eating...but that could be a blog of it's own!).

Good News for CafePress T-shirt Designers
After looking around today during the 8+ hours we spent there, one could safely assume that of those 100,000+ daily attendees, at least half or more were wearing T-shirts. I think the T-shirt market is here to stay.

What are They Wearing?
Since I was there in the morning/afternoon hours, we saw more mainstream families (the later hours at the fair seem to attract a more fringe crowd). I saw a lot of funny phrases...they never seem to go out of style. I saw more skulls and cross bones, Harley Davidson Tees everywhere, kids with shirts about being in band or sports. Overall people are wearing things they're proud of; something that identifies them, whether it's their heritage, their school, their religion, their sport, their political candidate of choice or the latest concert they went to.

Here are a few pictures I took at the Minnesota State Fair today...hopefully they can provide you with some inspiration...

My favorite T-shirt at the Harley Davidson tent. Nice use of tattoo imagery.


The 93X FM (Twin Cities hard rock radio station) booth was selling T-shirts. Lots of skulls and cross bones.

Harley Davidson T-Shirts for babies and kids.

"Eat, Sleep, Hockey!"


More Harley T-shirts.


"FBI Full Blooded Irish"


Another great retro-looking Harley Davidson T-shirt.

Fair fashion at it's best (or worst?).


Some cute signs being sold in Heritage Square. Great T-shirt phrase ideas.


The "Freak Show" in the midway had some interesting artwork. Any T-shirt ideas here?


I was excited to find these old seed corn bags.

In the Ag-Hort Building (Agriculture-Horticulture for you non-Minnesotans) there was a big seed display where corn and various seeds were judged and awarded ribbons. Hanging above the corn on display were these great old seed bags from various seed companies (I think they were all from Minnesota).

Throw sleeves and a neck hole on these and you've got some pretty cool retro T-shirts! Great inspiration for you own retro graphic designs.


Well, that wraps up my T-shirt inspiration from the Minnesota State Fair for 2006.

What T-shirt inspiration are you seeing at your local fairs?

Please Note: Just a reminder that anything posted on this blog is for inspiration only, not copying (or worse yet, stealing!). These photos of T-shirt designs and other artwork are copyrighted material and cannot be used in your own T-shirt design. Use them only for reference, ideas and inspiration for your own designs. You may feel free, however, to link to or blog about them.

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CafePress Chats & Workshops: Using the archives to learn a lot

The CafePress website can be a little overwhelming, to say the least.

And when you want to find answers to questions about running your shop, there are several places you can look: The forums, the learning center tutorials, the help center, and click on any question mark icon in your account to get answers on using features in your account.

But there are also the chats and workshops. If you're like me, you've managed to be unavailable for just about every one of those things, but not to worry! There's a great archive of all the chats and workshops for you to read. Though you can't participate once the chat is over, you'll find helpful info in these chats.

Here's how you can find the CafePress chats and workshops archive:

1) On the CafePress.com homepage (or your account page) click on "Community."


2) On the Community page, click on the "Chats and Workshops" icon.



3) Below the chat room button, you'll see the archives.

Scroll down for chat topics...


You do not need to be a CafePress member to view these chats.

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