Thursday, October 7, 2010

Thoughts about "Thoughts of Bed"


I've started writing down the stories behind the shirt designs I come up with. All of the designs come from influences or situations in my life, so I thought people might like to read about that.

The first one I started with is one of our most popular shirts... Thoughts of Bed.

This is a pretty simple one but there was a journey to get to the end design. As a freelancer and life-long “night person” I’ve struggled with being tired a lot. And maybe, sometimes, I might be the tiniest bit grouchy when I’m sleep deprived. So, I thought it might be nice to warn, um… let people know in a non verbal way, from a safe distance, that it was one of those days.

I started out with a kind of cartoon thought balloon with a bed in it. The basic idea was already there but it was too damn perky looking. So then I tried making it a little more distressed and fuzzy around the edges, but it wasn’t quite right. It just looked messy. Then I thought of an idea that might more accurately reflect my mood. I imagined dipping a square of potato in ink and pressing it into a design with my sleepy fist. So I translated that image into a method of block stamping on the computer in Photoshop. After some playing around with that I had a design that I felt reflected my “Hmn? Grr” mood.

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