Note: half my post got deleted and I later tried to rewrite it.

I've been designing shirts for a while, but I never did any of the pre-press stuff myself. I always just sent my working file to the printers and let them take care of the rest. I need to do it myself right now, and can't seem to get color separations to work right. Anyone want to fill me in on the details? I know I have to go to print, then change the setting to output to Post Script. I just haven't been getting good results.

Biggest question:
What if I use lots of shapes that are the intended background color for the design, and I want them to be "cut out" of the final file to send to the printer. Can I do that?

Any explanation or links to an in-depth explanation would be great. I haven't been able to find anything thorough enough on the internet.

The New Museum's sponsorship of a T-less competition has had me thinking a lot. Mostly about the relationship between T-design and art (as opposed to t-shirt designs and illustration or fashion or design). Who are some artists who think are connected to T-shirt design and why? Can we start talking about T-shirts as Art? Is that okay with you?

1950s/60s-Robert Rauchenberg- Combined pop references with a more high art practice. Combined things in a collage style, possibly foreshadowing digital collage techniques.


1950s/60s-Andy Warhol- Started questioning low/high art divisions, merging pop culture references with art. Screen printed, mass produced work.


1980s-Jenny Holzer- Conceptual artist, Shirts were a big part of some of her "truism" campaigns.


1980s-Keith Haring- Opened Pop shop, which sold T-shirts and other mech featuring his art. He was an early embracer of commercializing art and putting it on whatever could get it exposed to the most people possible. Graphic, illustration/graffiti inspired work.


1990s-Shepard Fairey- Sell out or genius? From the beginning, T-shirt design and popular, "cool" aesthetics important to his art. Bros wear Obey clothing with their tilted baseball caps, Fairey has retrospective in Boston Museum of art.


Add your own.

One last thought:
In general, the 1980's saw the beginning of the collapse of the high art/low art distinction. Many artists navigated freely between mass producing work and showing and selling expensive work in galleries. BUT, will there be/is there currently things we can call art coming from within the T-shirt design community, rather than traditional gallery artists just tossing their stuff on Tees? Is Threadless part of this?

When I think of who my biggest influences have been, both as an artist (I paint and draw and stuff) and as as a T-shirt designer), I certainly do think of traditional artists like Haring and Rauchenberg and "low art movement" associated artists like Tim Biskup, Jeff Soto, or Marcel Dzama. However, I also think about people like Julia Sonmi Heglund and Franx. There really is some new and amazing stuff happening in T-shirt design that isn't happening anywhere else.

Oh yeah, and, shameless plug:

Hey! This is sort of random, but also relevant. As some of you may know, after graduating from college I got hired as a graphic designer totally out of the blue by this company, basically because they saw my Threadless work. They mostly do open source software development and build websites for NGO's like the World Bank and the UN.

I've been there for about a month now, and one of my first major projects just went live! I did all the illustration for the Open Atrium website. Including this:
translate.openatrium.com and some illustrations for the "about" section, like this one:

Get your watercolor astronauts out of my way. I'm bringing back FWF with a vengeance.

Just submitted this:

Just submitted:



Decided to put it on the Organic AA color Galaxy. I'm allowed to do that right?

And... another one. Also featuring a killer whale:

Here's a shot of my final senior show as a studio art major:



Something between religious art (looked a lot at Mayan, Eastern Orthodox Christian, and Hindu traditional art), pop art, and Illustration.

This is the reason I took a 3 month break from Threadless. Now that its done, I have been doing some T-shirt work; two designs should be up in the next few days. I was originally going to have some videos playing animated versions of these guys, but it didn't really work out and I made an oil painting instead.

Thanks for looking!

I told myself to focus on other things besides T-shirt designs a little while ago. Still, I had a free evening, so I spent it converting an old drawing into this here design:



AND...Here's another: