Freelance work!

I have been offered a job with a gym in Edinburgh, they are keen to update their logo and are wanting some t shirt/hoody designs created as well.
This their current logo:

The brief they have given is quite open but with certain ideas in mind;

• Involving the words Athlete Training Systems.
• Something fun people would want to wear, bought for the design.
• Geek culture, games, fitness and sport.
• Clients are very sport but also very into comics and games - tie the two together.

I have gathered some images to start of my research, including current gym apparel, games related apparel designs and gym logos.

Christmas Phone Cases!

My sample cases came and I think they came out really well! Here are some product photos I have used on my website;

I have already sold a handful of these cases to a wide range of people, with the most popular choice being the design on the left with the christmas trees. Which was not what I was expecting! 

Experimenting

Something I noticed from my previous post of male designs was what appeared to be oil printing designs, implemented onto t-shirts. Oil printing is something I have done previously and still have the images I created. So I decided to play around with those images again but this time thinking about what I have discovered with my research, regarding what is currently on trend in mens clothing.

To create these designs;

• I took my previously scanned oil printings I did, I then looked at the shapes created in the printing and working what would work out the most effectively. I then erased the areas which where not working to create a new shape. 
• I then played around with the colours/saturation etc until I came to a set of colours I thought worked well and would perhaps be appealing to people. 
• I then set the design to either the top of bottom of the page, similar to the designs I have been looking at in my previous research.
• I then applied them onto phone cases.

I really love how these have come out and hope to develop these designs and method further.

With the last image I decided to have some fun with it and add a spaceman character to the oil print. I think the oil prints are similar to *space/galaxy*, so that was my thinking when it came to drawing a space guy.

Male designs

I really want to start exploring a wider range of target markets, particularly men. So I have collected a whole range of tshirt/accesory designs from a range of brands, including Topshop, Zara and River Island.
I noticed that there was three obvious groups of design;

The first group I noticed was where the design/pattern was only in one part of the garment. Either the top, bottom or to the side. This is something I have not tried yet so I am excited to implement this idea into my own work and see what happens!

The second group I discovered gave me great delight! As it appears there's a lot of traditional art being implemented into designs. It looks like a lot of paint inspired designs, along with tie die and other general paint marks you can achieve with a variety of tools. I'm not extremely excited to create markings and maybe try out tie dye and see what kind of patterns and designs I can achieve!

The last group I discovered was the obviously computer aided design. Some vector patterns along with digitally drawn images. Mainly in black and white, regarding the images but the patterns included a fair bit of colour but not too much. This is the group which I am most familiar with, so I will continue to practice work similar to this and learn from my research.

Created these moodboards has helped me look at everything at once and really get a feel of what is currently in the market for men. Particularly 18 -25.

Regarding the overall colours used throughout all the designs it is mainly;

• blue
• grey
• black
• white
• red
• green 

Pixel art...

I accidentally stumbled into the world of pixel art, which I know a lot of people don't enjoy but I've actually been really enjoying it! I originally tried it out because I was wanting to make a pixel pattern phone case for my brother but ended up doing much more!
Since christmas is soon and I was already planning on creative a christmas line for Blackhoney I decided to play around and create some christmas designs.
I was heavily inspired by nordic and the famous christmas jumper phenomenon and this is what I came up with!

I am really pleased with how each design came out, especially since this is the first time using this technique!
I'm also please because I think even though they are each quite different, the style and technique helps tie them together. Which is great when I'm considering using them in my christmas line!
I have ordered some phone cases, a mug, pocket mirrors and a bottle opener with these designs on. I'm really excited to receive them and hopefully get some really good product photos!