The Design Task
The interactive design task, in this task we have to create a t shirt that covers either a festival, a band or an artist. There is one important factor missing from that list and that is the interactive feature, we of course have to make the t shirt interactive so to do that the t shirt will need to have a QR code placed on it. The plan for this task is to make a t shirt that covers a map of a festival. The festival i have decided to cover is Coachella. I have never been to this festival but i can imagine it is quite a large get together. With it being so large it comes with a lot of opportunities to get lost, this is where my idea to create a t shirt that has a map on it comes into play. Creating a t shirt that has a map on it holds a lot of challenges. One of those challenges it making it fit the theme of the event and also make it appealing to the target audience. If i was just to stick a map onto a t shirt it wouldn't appeal to most people but by making the design fun and entertaining makes people want to wear the t shirt. Adding the QR code shouldn't be too hard, it also enables me to add a link straight to the line up that is happening. Due to the current events happening in the world i am going to go off previous years line ups. Therefore the interactive aspect of the design does what i want it to do. All of the ideas i have just spoke about will be placed on the back of the shirt, this enables me a lot of room to add a design on the front and even the sleeves if i wanted too. For the front of the t shirt adding something small i believe would benefit the design. Due to the magnitude of design on the back of the t shirt adding something small would help balance the two sides of the design. For the front i could add the main Coachella text but still follow the design scheme from the design placed on the back of the t shirt. There is also one more feature that i really want to add to the design and that is a small feature on the sleeve. I would want this feature to be minimalistic but also hold the same design features as the rest of the t shirt. This could be the year the event is happening or even where the event is taking place, therefore it gives the owner of the t shirt a memorable aspect.
Inspirational Research
I know your probably thinking that the image on the right of this text has nothing to do with my plan but to me it does. Looking at this design helps me visualize what the map of Coachella is going to look like. I see more that one vital piece of information this t shirt enables me to gather. One is where i can place the map, and two is what features of the design looks good and what looks bad. I see that on the t shirt the main map works well, the pieces of information below that text doesn't really fit in with the main design and also the main logo at the bottom of the t shirt doesn't look good. So by pointing this information out now i am seeing where i can place the features i intend to add to my design. The features i like about the design is the fact that the map is the main focus of the design, this is what i intend to achieve with my design.
I decided to use this as my inspiration as it uses an unique style of design. Looking at the t shirt it is clear to see what areas work well and what areas don't. What i like about the design is the border that separates the design from the
t shirt, it seems to flow nicely into the design. This is something in particular that i want to achieve when it comes to contrasting the map to the rest of the t shirt. In some areas of the t shirt i find it hard to read the text displayed. This is due to the colours being used and also the fullness of the design. To make the text visible i would consider changing the colour of the text to a more bold colour therefore your are helping it stand out and also help viewers understand what it is saying. Another area of the design i like is the background design that is used. It seems to be a pastel effect, using this technique makes it easier on the eye. I would consider using this in my design as it is something new to learn and overall could be quite interesting to use in my own design.
This piece of inspiration research is vital to my design, without it i wouldn't know where to begin. As you can see it is the map of Coachella, this map has a unique background, however the background will not stay for my design i have in mind. Due to the previous inspirational research item i have decided to use a pastel background. Looking at the background gives me another idea, instead of getting rid of the background design completely i could use that form of design and turn it into a pastel design. As you can see on the map there are loads of different locations you can visit in this event, but i don't want to copy this piece of work completely i want to create my own icons. The icons will fit the theme i am going for and that is of course using pastels. There obviously isn't too much i could change about this design as it is a map so the only real improvements that could be made would be on my own design. The map even as a key but looking at the location of where it is i don't think it works to well, i think if the background design was left throughout and covered the area of the key it would work a lot better, this gives me some clear improvements already on my own design that i need to include.
This is the final piece of inspirational research, like the previous piece of work without this i wouldn't be able to put together the design on the front of the t shirt. Looking at the logo i really like the form of typography used, this is something that i wouldn't be able to change in my design. The only feature that i would like to change is colour scheme used. Like i mentioned earlier i want the design to flow throughout the t shirt. So my idea is to start with the design on the back of the t shirt, find colours that best suit it and then copy that through the design. Therefore it helps everything tie together, i also mentioned earlier that on the sleeves i wanted to add some additional text, maybe the year the event is taking place or even the location. This text will be created with the same typography you can see below, it might be a challenge to match the typography but I'm up for it. This is where one of my improvements could come into play, instead of creating it on an Adobe software i could create it with paper and pencil and copy it in. As you can already tell i wouldn't be able to add any improvements to the design below the only thing i can improve like i mentioned earlier is my own design.
Design Process
To start the design process i decided to go on a hunt for a map that displays the Coachella Festival. My idea for this was to re-create my own map of the festival but due to the time frame being so short i was only able to re design a couple features. These features will become more apparent later on in the design process. So why did i go for this map of the Festival your probably wondering. Well there were other maps but this one would be the easiest to remove the background. One of the key ideas that i wanted to use in this small project was using new brushes and one of those brush effects i wanted to try was pastel. So being able to delete the background would help a lot when it comes to creating my own background. Like i mentioned earlier this project is on a tight time frame so getting a design that i am really happy with is going to be tricky but I'm up for the challenge. So far there isn't a lot to say about the design as there is nothing that i have actually designed so the next step will be to remove the background and start designing the background layer.
Before starting the design process i thought it would be a good idea to get some of my ideas down in a sketch format. I started of by finding a image of a t shirt blueprint, i then printed that image of and away i was thinking of potential ideas that i could use for this short task. I started off by thinking back to my plan, in that plan i spoke about adding a map to the design so of course i added it to the sketch and saw would it could look like. Obviously this is a rough sketch and all i did was add the space for the potential idea. But at this moment in time i had already made my mind up and i was going to go for map idea. On the front of the t shirt i wanted to include something minimalistic, something that wouldn't take away from the design on the back of the t shirt. So i decided to just add the festivals logo, but also add the pastel background to both sides of the t shirt. Therefore i am tying in both sides of the design, the only thing i have to be careful with is the colour i end up choosing. I don't think i will have any problems with the colours clashing on the front side of the design it will only be the back. The map i suppose will have lots of colour variation so choosing a colour that ties in with it all might be the challenging part of the design process. Moving onto the sleeves for this i had come up with two ideas one to have the place of the event and the other idea is to have the year of the event but have it in roman numerals. Both ideas i find are good and by the end of the design process you will be able to see what ones i go for. Overall i am happy with the ideas that i have generate the only concern is running into unexpected problems but if i do I'm sure i will crack on with them and find a solution to those problems that arise.
As you can see the design has totally changed and has got a whole new look. This design step was a hard one for me, i just felt that nothing was working and how the design looked i wasn't happy with. So at the start of this step the challenge was finding a colour that best suited the map. Due to the amount of colours already in the map, choosing a colour to match them all would be a challenge. The colour that i found that best suit them all was red, now you might be able to see that i have not just used one shade of red, i decided to spice some things up. To spice the design up i decided to use a gradient feature in my design, the centre of the background is a light red and the outside of the background is a darker red. I just found that the design needed a bit of pop, this means that i wasn't happy with the one tone red so by changing it too different variants it helps excite the design in way. Overall i am not to happy with the design i feel that with the tight time frame am not able to produce the work i am able to. But by doing something in a tight time frame it is expanding my skills as in the industry a design might be needed quicker than i can manage so i will need to adapt to the time frame every project that i am given.
To make a interactive design you have to add an interactive feature. The interactive feature i decided to add onto this design was a QR code. To create a QR code i searched on the internet for a QR code generator, once the website had loaded up it gives you the option to enter a URL link. So this could be any website link, for me i decided to add the URL for the festivals website. Once i entered the URL the generator then made me a QR code. Now the QR code was generated i saved it to my files and then i added it to my design. As you can see the QR code looks quite small on the design but I'm hoping if the design was ever to be made properly that QR code would be in good proportion and would be able to be scanned easily. It is always a worry when including QR code into designs because you just don't know how big they are going to be in real life form. I decided to make the QR code go straight to the festivals website because it is all well and good having a map whenever you need it, but not knowing what artists are where is your next worry. So by being able to quickly scan the QR code and find out the locations of your favourite artists are is a worry taken away from you straight away.
After finishing off the back of the t shirt design it was time to complete the front side. My idea for this was to use the Coachella logo with the background design that follows the same design theme as the back of the t shirt. I think i have turned that idea into a reality. By using the same design features throughout the design it is tying everything together. Also having the red background really helps make the logo stand out and make it a real eye catcher for those passing by. Looking at the design i am quite happy with it but i feel that if i was to do this part of the design again i would consider changing the main text colour. Even though i feel that the black contrasts well with the red i feel that another colour could make it contrast so much better. I'm thinking a Yellow, or Orange colour could help with contrasting the two colours.
Now that the two designs are complete it is time to move onto adding them to a mock up document. The mock up i used was downloaded off Mock-Up world, this is a really good site to use for free mock ups. I am no stranger to this website, but still i find the website to be challenging. When you are on the website you can search for any kind of mock up, so of course i am going to look for a t shirt mock up. You would think that when i look for a t shirt mock up it would cover all sides of the t shirt including the front, back and sides. But unfortunately i could not find a t shirt mock up that covered the areas that i needed it to. So i settled for the next best thing and this was imagining the mock up you can see is the back of the t shirt. I know it isn't ideal but by looking at the design on the mock up gives me a clear image of what the design could look like if printed. After visualizing what the design looks like on a t shirt, i don't know why i was worrying myself so much. Earlier in the design stage i was worried that the work i had completed so far was not good enough and overall i just wasn't happy with the way things were going. But i am happy i stuck with it, i feel that the design covers every aspect that i wanted it too the only concern that i might have with the design is how close you might have to get to view it. However apart from that small aspect i am pleased that all the worrying earlier in the design process had payed off.
I know the previous design stage was a bit confusing, as the design should be on the back of the t shirt but like i mentioned i couldn't find a suitable mock up that i wanted to use. However the image you can see on the right shows the exact way i would want the design to look. It shows the t shirt to be the right way around and also i feel makes the design look a whole lot better when everything is how it should be. As you can see i carried on the design on both sides of the t shirt, i was really trying to achieve that pastel effect. This was something that i haven't tried before so being able to try it on this task was enjoyable. I feel for a first time using that form of paint brush, it went well there were some areas that i feel needed some improving but overall i am chuffed with myself. That's the thing with all these tasks its all good doing the same design features over and over again but i want to be able to learn new skills on each separate task. The design might not come out the way i want it to but at least i have tried and learnt something new. The only feature this design is missing is the short text features located on the sleeves of the design. I am going to see what i can do with finding a mock up specifically for that location but if not i will try and add them to the design you can see on the right of this text. Overall i am chuffed with the way the front side of the t shirt has come out, it would of been very easy for me to over fill the design but i think keeping it simply on the front allows the back of the design to be the main eye catcher.
After thinking about what i said on the previous design stage made me think how possible it would be to add some text of my own to the mock up i am using. At first i was thinking it is going to be a challenge due to the way the sleeves fold and other attributes getting in the way of it looking good. So to start this design stage i wanted to find the exact typography that the festival uses. Therefore everything is tied together and also for aesthetical reasons using the same typography makes it look so much better. So luckily i found this photo of all the letters in the alphabet. Like in my sketch i either wanted to add the location of the festival or even the year in which the festival took place. But after thinking about it i thought adding the location would be the better option. So i got on with cutting the letters out one by one. I used the rectangular marquee tool, to use this tool i created a rectangular box around the letter i wanted and i copy and pasted the specific letter onto another layer. There are some problems that might occur though, these could include the copy and paste option not working. This happened to me a couple times, all that is at fault is you are not selecting the original photo layer. You have to think about it like this, you think you are drawing around the letter you want to copy and paste but you are on an alternate layer, so the tool thinks you are trying to copy and paste nothing. But when you have the correct layer selected the shape knows that there is something you are trying to either cut out or copy and paste like me. So once my word was assembled i adding it to the mock up. This was the nerve racking bit as i didn't know how the design was going to rest. But luckily the extra design features slotted right in, it was almost like they were meant to be there. As you can see in the mock up i didn't use the entire word on one sleeve in particular this was because i wanted to create the effect that the word was wrapping around the sleeve. I know before i have mentioned numerous times that i wanted to follow the same theme but by adding the same theme on the sleeves i think it would of made the additional feature look out of place. Also in this particular setting adding the background effect i believe would of made the feature not look paired with the t shirt. I wouldn't want to ruin the effect i have already, and at the moment the text looks like it was there already. There is one feature i carried over and that was making the text red. Although i was unable to copy the background design over i was able to use the same colour way as i have done for the rest of the design. Overall, i am mildly happy, if i was given the chance to do this design again i would go with the same idea but consider toning everything down a notch. This task had a time limit and being able to adapt to that time limit is one thing that i need to improve on. At the start of the design i was worried that the idea i had gone for wouldn't look good. But i did prove myself wrong although there are some areas that i would do differently i would still say the outcome that has been produced has captured all the thoughts i had at the start of this short project.
