Miscellaneous Print Jobs

1 & 2) Santa and those oh so wacky elves he employs… Oh the fun I have with these! The ABATE of Iowa does a yearly Toy Run and guess who gets to design up their shirts? I DO!!! I really do enjoy playing around with Mr. & Mrs. Claus, elves, reindeer, gifts…and who could forget the motorcycles!! The call I get to do this sounds something like this, “Hey (my boss speaking), we need to do a new Toy Run shirt…see what you can come up with.” So I doodle something out really quick and send it off to the head-honcho in charge of getting the shirts ordered for the rough-n-tough members of ABATE of Iowa. If you ask me, my cute-cartoonish characters are not quite the image I have for burly, motorcycle/Harley guys to be wearing…but they really seem to love them year after year (going on my 3rd year of contributing art for this cause).

3) So here is an example of a design with a high school in mind….more importantly, my alma mater Boone High School. At Boone we have a tradition of making t-shirts when the juniors set-up the decorations for prom, usually following the theme for prom (i.e. Pirate/Treasure Island). I was asked to take on this endeavor due to the fact my brother, a junior at the time, and his friends like when I do the designs for their shirts. They told me the basic idea/concept and this is what I ended up with. I think everyone was happy with this one (including myself). Limited colors make for interesting final prints…but I think it worked on this!

4) Another BHS project. This time it was even MORE fun than the prom order. This was for my brother’s senior year football class (for the 2005 football season). Regardless of the Toreador being the official mascot of Boone High, the seniors went with something far from that with lots of fun and attitude for these class hoodies. I have NO idea where they got the idea to do a GIANT gorilla in football gear, but hey, it was a blast to draw. The back had a list of all the cheerleaders, players and their numbers and the quote, “How do we win? It’s none of your monkey business!” I guess there in lies the answer to my gorilla question.

5) The Key Club Convention job can be summed up by, cows, coke, roller-coasters, peaches and fun in the sun! Call me crazy, but I don’t think cows enjoy riding thrill rides….but that’s just me! The customer wanted something sort of comical on this. I’m pretty sure just seeing the cow downing a bottle of coke does it for me.

6) Dead Week with TEKE (Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity @ Iowa State University) was going to be one AWESOME shirt based on how I took the design on an whole new level. I say going to be for a reason I’ll explain later. DW with TEKE was a philanthropy project for the house where they …well I’m not 100% sure what they did, but it had something to do with studying. I think they brought things to you during the dead week before finals to help you study. The concept was to illustrate the exhaustion/ zombie-like feeling you get that comes with cramming for your finals. OH MAN! I remember those days. So this design wasn’t ever printed, but hey, it was fun to do anyway!!!