KT Week - Roughs

So after a rough start with my thumbnails, I resolved that I would produce some decent roughs. While I didn't go back and do twenty more thumbnails, I did sit back and think about them for about half an hour. I thought about what I would want for a shirt and how I could apply this to the designs. I really appreciate simplicity, and if possible a bit of humor. For these reasons for two of my designs, I chose to leave the logo by itself on the front. It helps people look at you when they're talking to you, rather than being distracted by a lot of action going under your face.
First of all, I worked with my favorite and most promising design, the one with the campus map on the back. It took me a while to find a campus map online, and ten times longer to trace everything with the pen tool. After I got all of the outlines, I went in and filed all the shapes with value. It wasn't as hard to use a range of different grays as I thought it was going to be. I was afraid of ending up with a formless sea of gray. I also change the phrasing to "Where would you like to make a difference?", which connects with the mantra of "Be successful, make a difference." With that text I had a little bit of trouble finding the fonts used in the Kin Takahashi logo. When I eventuallyfound out what they were, they were both fonts I would have had to buy, so I just used very similar fonts. I think it is still just as successful.
For my second design, I thought I would work with the image of a couple of bricks that Adrienne thought could be interesting. The bricks themselves I just traced with the pen tool, and personally I like how they're sort of irregular, as opposed to having perfect edges. No one has ever seen a brick with perfect edges, they've always broken or worn off. I had to to think about how to make it more interesting. I finally came upon the idea of trying to make a little witty caption under the bricks, like a bunch of the shirts you can see being worn around campus. The number referenced is the approximate number that Kin and a group of students handmade for the building of Bartlett. On the back I have the phrase "...but I still made a difference." This works in two ways, one relating to the phrase mentioned previously, and the second way by allowing the wearer make a personal connection. Sure they might not have done something as glamorous as making thousands of bricks, but they still helped, they still made a difference. I really like this design, and judging from its reception during critique, I'll continue to work on this one design. The only real suggestions being for me to move the logo a little further away from the bricks, and try to make the wall bricks look a little more three dimensional.
Last comes my least favorite design. There really isn't too much to say about it. The general idea was to continue with the brick wall theme, while making it more inclusive. I put the text in the different bricks trying to impart some of the virtues and activities the KT Week deals with. But the bricks are too small and difficult to read, and the design feels incomplete on the whole. The only good thing I can say about this is how I got the hand image. I must have spent 15 minutes online looking for a hand that might look like it was laying a brick. I was beginning to get frustrated when it hit me. I'll just take the picture myself! But where would I get a brick? There was one holding open the door! So I grabbed it, positioned my hand, and took a picture with the PhotoBooth. I have rarely felt so innovative.