I started designing t-shirts to save money.
In 2006, my band Brighten started touring and instead of paying a designer to design tour merchandise, I learned how to do it myself.

Long story short...

Brighten did a walk through at Fueled By Ramen records (FBR) and met some of the staff while we were in Florida. Our friends, This Providence, had me do some designs earlier for that tour. Their merchandising manager talked to me about doing some more work for FBR bands. Four years later, I'm still working with that label and have been lucky enough to grow outside of that too!

It isn't easy.

I started out doing small jobs that didn't pay anything. This is a very competitive job! Companies will sometimes have 10 or more designers to work on the same thing. Those 10 designers come up with designs for the client to look at. Out of those designs, the band should choose 1. You can see how slim the chances are of getting a bands approval in the beginning, right? It takes time but after a while, you start getting high approval rates and then don't have to compete for jobs. This is when things get real fun!

So here we are...

My job is great now. I set my own hours and am paid to draw. For a college student, or for anyone really, that would be a blessing. So I don't take it for granted and I work really hard! Currently, I've been working on designs for anyone from Lynyrd Skynyrd to David Bowie, Paramore to All Time Low, or from Bruce Lee to Notorious BIG.

Now that we are caught up, next post I'll go on with pictures.
This wont really be a text blog. I'm not really into that. I like looking at pictures! Who doesn't?

On to the next...

This is a blog I have to do for a class I'm taking and thought that I could kill two birds with one stone. I need to post more anyways. So this will be good.

Focus.

I'll be focusing on merchandising apparel. Aside from going to school full time, I design t-shirts (and other kinds of clothing) for merchandising and licensing companies like Urban Outfitters, Hot Topic, Wet Seal, Warner Brothers, blah blah blah. Yes, I said t-shirts. People don't usually think about it, but it really is one of the most common clothing items worn after socks and underwear.

Designing is a really fun job, but takes a lot of thinking and study in areas that you would not normally look into or care about. For example, what color shirts are selling really well this year? What types of designs will girls be looking for in 3 months? Where in the world do the designs you buy in stores even come from? We'll go into all of that.

I'll be posting pictures of illustrations and art I like as well as art that I've done.

Hopefully this turns out well!