My First T-Shirt Design

I don't know why I forgot to post something about this until now, but this is what late night thinking ends up doing to a bald man trying to make a living. A few months ago my editor at the Community Review newspaper came up with a sales idea: buy an ad and get a t-shirt. She came to me with the basics of what she hoped to do for a design, using both the newspaper's name and the Shalom Neighbor phone directory's name, too, for cross marketing. In my free time at the magazine I kicked around a few ideas for the design, keeping in mind the basics of her request: it had to be on the back of the shirt (maybe like a circle shape similar to the Community Choice Awards logo I created late last year) and it had to be one color for printing purposes.

Originally I thought the design would take a little more time than what it ended up taking. Admittedly, at moments I was attempting to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. In the end, though, we decided to keep the Community Choice logo involved in the overall design.

Above is the promotion that's been running in the Community Review over the last couple of issues for the Shalom Neighbor Directory as well as the t-shirt offer. Honestly, the one thing that I'd say I'd change is that I think the design would work best on the front rather than the back of the shirt. Still, I'm definitely proud to say that I finally created my first design people can actually wear.

As a side note, but still in keeping with my design work on Community Review, you can check out older issues of the paper by visiting this website. The site has a very in depth archive of all of the past issues from the last year up through the current one from last week. Hopefully you'll see how the design has gotten a little better and grown into something that really identifies itself as the newspaper for the Jewish Community of Harrisburg.

This reminds me that I would still like to create an Octoberson Design t-shirt and see if people would like to purchase them. It would not only make me proud to promote my freelance chances, but also it would be really cool to finally have a shirt in the closet that I know I designed. I know Anne has admitted to me she'd love to have one and would even wear it (I'd be more than proud of her modeling my work!). I'd love to know if anyone else out there would like to own their very own, limited edition Octoberson Design t-shirt. Feel free to comment or to email me at shawnskvarna@gmail.com and let me know!