Iceland Trip 2019 Shirt

Traveling has been a goal of mine for a while, and this trip was the very first time I’ve been able to get out of the country on my own! So what better way to commemorate that adventure than with a custom shirt design?

After talking with the girls going with me, I decided to undertake the project of creating a t-shirt design for all of us. They all completely trusted me to create something we would all love, and I’m happy to report everyone was really excited about the final shirts!

Process Stage

My general process for projects I’m excited to start with a very rough draft of placement. I can see the final project in my head in terms of how well does it achieve the objective. In this case, I wanted it to be:

• Happy and playful in tone

• Capture the main parts of the trip we’d encounter (or planned to)

• Have a limited color palette

In my trip journal, I collaged the various post-it notes and the final design so I could see that transition for myself of rough to final.

Final Design

The final digital illustration came out so well! While I had initially intended a single color print, after discussing with my friend who has a history of screen printing T-shirts, I decided a 2 color edition would be even better and would help bring out the details. Additionally, in this whole process, I like to clean up the sketches digitally because it’s easier, in my opinion, to be more precise. So throughout I cleaned up various Trees, redrew a few of the buildings, and even just erased a few detail lines.

In my original vision, we’d have long sleeves (because Iceland is a cold place) and the logo would be smaller on the front. We also ended on two colors for the shirts in order to meet the minimum shirt requirement from the vendor.

So all in all, did I achieve the original goals I set out for myself? Yes! The girls on the trip loved the shirts, and even a few of the locals gave me compliments on the design which feels great!