Back home, I work at this print shop called The Copy Shop. In our shop we have a two person, in-house design team of which I have been trying to work alongside and learn from. This summer, I was able to take on a few design projects for the shop as they have recognized my interest and remembered that I am in fact going to school for design.

One of the tasks I was given this summer was to update this old t-shirt design that the shop had years ago. It was hard figuring out what exactly the owners were wanting from me. The actual owner wasn’t as in the loop about what I was working on day to day but from what I gathered, he was looking for an as true to form replication of the t-shirts as possible. The main problem was that these were the only images I had to work off of to remaster:

It was a double sided t-shirt and I had low resolution images to work off of. Like what I said before, the illustrations themselves are quite charming but as I am a perfectionist, the style inconsistencies from the front to the back bothered me immensely. And also the actual anatomy of the cats irked me on a whole other level. But I did what I could while also trying to fix what I felt were the most egregious crimes. This is what I came up with (not including text):

Now, it wasn’t actually the owner who asked me to take on this project but instead it was his son and daughter in-law who worked at the shop. They both gave me the impression they were looking for something newer and more of an update to the shirts (and something one-sided). So I went ahead and did a third illustration for the new t-shirt. Personally, this was my favorite because I was able to get rid of everything that bothered me and give the copy cat a new life. I also felt that regular type made everything so stale so I did do some bubbly lettering to fit the vibe of the new cat:

To my credit, this was a fan favorite around the shop. But in the end, it was up to the owners to decide what they wanted to use for the new t-shirts. Can anyone guess which one they used?

I can’t be to mad. I knew that this was probably going to be the one chosen. Am I disappointed? Severely. But I’m still excited to get my own shirt once they get printed. I’m glad I was able to finally contribute to something tangible and real. They are all my (ugly) babies and I have to be proud of them!