My concept for this t-shirt design was: what if gladiators were plastered with logos like today’s athletes (especially Nascar drivers).
After creating a pencil drawing of a gladiator’s breastplate, I then had a blast imagining and creating the logos that would adorn it. The final design was composed in Photoshop.
This t-shirt design appeared for scoring at Threadless.
As you can see from the original drawing of the breastplate below, I initially didn't intend to include the lower flaps of the gladiator's skirt and, therefore, bleed the design off the bottom edge. But without this change, there was too much contrast between the scalloped edge of the skirt and the t-shirt’s color, which was taking focus away from the breastplate and the logos on it.
To create the drawing, I taped together four sheets of 8 x 11-inch paper, so I could later separate the sheets and scan the drawing into my computer (alas, what a joy a large scanner would be!).
I thought of the upper logos as being “premium logos” that would have been carefully designed and supplied by their companies. Alternatively, for the lower logos on the skirt, I imagined them as “spot ads’ — meaning, there would be a set format for the design and the companies would only supply logo images (of varying quality) to be inserted in the center circle area.
To design the logos, I used a combination of hand-drawing/scanning, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop.
With the “Griffin Doors” logo, I couldn’t resist paying homage to one of my favorite fictional characters: Harry Potter.
