OUGD503 T-SHIRT DESIGN RESEARCH

I began to research into the brief a bit which proved to be quite difficult because it was so open ended. I studied the previous winners design and found out it was very illustrative and was simply an illustration of two birds in a very specific, playful style. It had no reference to anything related to the university or Leeds at all, it was just a well designed illustration. There seemed to be no concept at all, just personal style and preference. I think this would be easy to translate my work into this format as I could use my own personal style and illustrate anything I wanted really.

Something I'd have to consider is what people were interested in in the university, so the design would be something that they'd genuinely like to wear. This could be something that relates to a common aesthetic on the clothing people wear in the university already. By looking around, a lot of students like simple minimalistic designed shirts with either a small logo or clever use of typography. Some of the designs on peoples shirts are heavily influenced by graphic design principles of today and seem like the kind of shirts that could be found on Everpress.

Finally, I emailed the union to gain any other sorts of information I could about the brief as once again, it was very open ended. They replied and the only piece of useful information they gave me was that the winning design would be screen printed. This means my design would have to fit the specific design aspects of a screen printed design, meaning using solid colours and set a limit to how many I use. I'd have to make sure the design would have colours that would be easily separable for screen exposure.

Now I'd start experimenting with designs perhaps relating to my personal interests and taking into account the information I have achieved through this research.