I've been buying Threadless shirts for years, so when Jill asked me to design one, I was definitely in! I had part 3 of the zombie story, which shows our hero using her superpowers. In designing the character, I tried to draw something that had some obvious superhero flair, but not so over-the-top that you couldn't proudly wear it on the street, y'know?

The first sketch I did had about a million colors. It looked great as an illustration, but as a shirt, it just didn't seem to have any style. You can walk into Target these days and get a pretty decent, vintage-y superhero shirt, so the bar is actually pretty high. I also thought a lot about it being a unisex design. I wanted a shirt that both my guy and girl friends would wear. Since the shirt came out, I have to say it's a pretty awesome feeling to run into someone wearing your shirt!

I took a step back and started to think about the shirt as a whole design and not just an illo. Things started to click when I reduced the palette and softened the whole look. After a little work, I was pretty happy with the drawings themselves butI did feel like the shirt was missing something. A friend suggested the barcodes, which really opened the design up so all the negative space felt intentional. If you scan the codes, they actually say "Threadless" and "Chiang"!

I had a blast doing this, and it's been really cool to see all the other radically different designs that Jill, Tony and Art came up with. Hope I get another chance to play with Threadless again, and I might try to submit something soon. What do you think? :)