Four color t-shirt design

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

Here's a t-shirt design I am working on for a local business here in my town. I started with a pretty low res photo of the car they wanted on their shirts. I traced it with Corel Draw X5 and rendered the halftones in Photoshop. I also did color separations in Photoshop. The beach graphic is from the Mega clipart collection set 1. For all the time I put into the car I should have put as much time into creating an original background but this one works really well. I'm not so sure that beaches with palm trees are "Illinois" but they sure are nice scenery and just sorta fit with the old classic car theme the customer wanted. Any input on any and all aspects of the design and ways I could make it better would be much appreciated. Also, I thought the background color would be a nice color for the shirts. It makes the red on the wheels really pop nice and the customer seems to be leaning toward something blue. Any other suggestions? Also I'm thinking the lettering for "UFTRING" should have not been italicized and I think I could have found a better font. Any suggestions for that? Thanks for the input.

 

[Mosh]

Looks good, IMO car club stuff is PITA customers and I turn them down all the time.

 

[JoshLoring]

Car looks great. Ditch the palms and draw up a nice pinstripe for the background. It will for much better.

 

[TyrantDesigner]

your grey scale gradients blend entirely way too much with the white border, I would push the tone more and not have any white in the gradient, (5% k is the lightest I would go) the "Automotive" blends together from letter to letter due to the white outline, i would kern that ever so slightly to add a little more of a black gap in the lettering. Minonk is in the middle state of illinois ... don't think there will be too many palm trees around for that to be accurate.

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

your grey scale gradients blend entirely way too much with the white border, I would push the tone more and not have any white in the gradient, (5% k is the lightest I would go) the "Automotive" blends together from letter to letter due to the white outline, i would kern that ever so slightly to add a little more of a black gap in the lettering. Minonk is in the middle state of illinois ... don't think there will be too many palm trees around for that to be accurate.

Thanks for the input. Taking what you said into consideration, I have to agree with you on all accounts. I never noticed the white in "automotive" and how it all seems to run together a little too much. It does make it harder to read. The sad thing is that word was created from a clip art alphabet rather than a font, so the kerning was done by hand, as was the scaling and positioning of each letter. I simply could not find a font in my collection that I was happy with so I had to do quite a bit of manual adjustment to make this one work. Does anyone have any suggestions for a font that looks very similar to this? Seems this type of scriptish brush font is very difficult to find. I did find a lot of "close...but not quite right" fonts though.

As for the palm trees, can you suggest something that would be more appropriate for Illinois? I'm having a lot of trouble in that department. Somehow crop covered plains just doesn't do it for me artistically. Maybe it doesn't need a background at all, but I like the way it looks better with something to at least add a little more depth and interest to the subject. I'm drawing a blank as to exactly what would look good though. The only thing we have here that adds interest to the flat landscape is tall buildings and windmills. I guess maybe something along those lines might work. Or perhaps a semi passing the car on the highway. Lol. God I really hate the landscape here sometimes.

Did you know where Minonk is or did you look that up? If you are from Texas and you know where Minonk is I'm impressed. Most people, I'm sure, haven't the slightest clue.

 

[Farmboy]

Where is your fourth color? I see Red, White and Black. And if you're going to shade the car you might want to carry that over to the tires, rims and engine.

 

[knucklehead]

Rat Rod = Pinstripes, not palm trees.

 

[mikefine]

What is Uftring? Does it warrant so much weight in the design?
It is not clear to me what services they provide, and why someone should call them.
You might consider distinguishing the "automotive" text.
Suggestion: Can you place some text or graphics on the car?

 

[Craig Sjoquist]

Likes the design layout this is workable, fonts and contrast need improvement to me a more readable script on Automotive.
As for background color a light Turquoise would be for 50s rod maybe with a corner to corner racing stripe left to right.
Take out the Palm Trees --replace with a pinstripe design with a border around the ad in some 50s fashion.

 

[Jillbeans]

I love your car illustration.
The shirt color should be a more darker blue as if you would add a bit of white to a navy.
I have been taught to never use that shade of blue with red as it makes your eyes vibrate a bit.
I think maybe the name would have worked better in caps and lower case, with the Automotive tucked in underneath.
I would have done the fancy effect on one or the other but not both, because if you highlight everything, nothing stands out.
I would have liked to see Illinois not abbreviated (I like to see the state name spelled out for some reason)
There are some good striping motifs by Bob Behounek at Express Clip Art (you'll have to page through the designs)
But all in all, I think it has a lot of potential with a few tweaks.
Love....Jill

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

Where is your fourth color? I see Red, White and Black. And if you're going to shade the car you might want to carry that over to the tires, rims and engine.

The design is done in black, white, red, and grey. The grey you see isn't halftones, but areas of grey ink. It's probably impossible to distinguish that from the resolution of the image I posted. I really wanted to keep the car illustration as simple as possible, so I would have preferred no halftones but with the car being all black I tried to make it at least a little more interesting. My thought with doing halftones throughout the entire car was that it might be too busy and take away from a lot of the details. But without halftones on the body, the car just looks flat and not very interesting at all. I guess the same could be said for the red rims and the black tires. I toyed with the idea of halftones on the rims and tires, but I just like the way they jump out at you.

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

Rat Rod = Pinstripes, not palm trees.

Okay, pinstripes it is. Or at least something retro to go with the car. I'm not very good at retro design, though. It's something I'm gonna have to work on.

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

What is Uftring? Does it warrant so much weight in the design?
It is not clear to me what services they provide, and why someone should call them.
You might consider distinguishing the "automotive" text.
Suggestion: Can you place some text or graphics on the car?

Uftring Automotive is the name of the company. It's a local business that has been in business for over 25 years that I know of. They do automotive repair and sales and auto body repair. I don't suppose it would hurt if I included something about that. The shirts are for employees, not for advertising, and the car was their idea, so there's not a lot of hope for distinguishing what they do with that alone. They just want a "cool" shirt. I'm sure you know how that goes.

The car is owned and was built by the auto body guy. I'm not sure if he's an actual partner in the business or what, but the boss man wants his car on the shirts. I really wanted to do "UFTRING AUTOMOTIVE" on the door of the car in an old fashioned hand painted font style, but they weren't entirely keen on it. Maybe I can throw 'em both ideas and see if they like it with door lettering.

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

Hey! I figured out the multiple quote thing! Sorry for the multiple replies. I'll try to not do that again.

I would have done the fancy effect on one or the other but not both, because if you highlight everything, nothing stands out.

There are some good striping motifs by Bob Behounek at Express Clip Art (you'll have to page through the designs)
But all in all, I think it has a lot of potential with a few tweaks.
Love....Jill

Likes the design layout this is workable, fonts and contrast need improvement to me a more readable script on Automotive.
As for background color a light Turquoise would be for 50s rod maybe with a corner to corner racing stripe left to right.
Take out the Palm Trees --replace with a pinstripe design with a border around the ad in some 50s fashion.

Thanks for the advice on the lettering effect. Maybe I should just go simple on all the lettering and keep it more readable. I wil also be sure to check the links for some good retro pinstripe art. I need some inspiration.

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

So I redid the layout and simplified it considerably. I changed the lettering up top and went a totally different direction with it. No bells and whistles, just simple and readable. I would like to add "Auto Sales, Service, and Auto Body Repair" and the location and phone to the graphic but it seems like no matter how I try to incorporate it into the art, it turns into 10 lbs. of s**t in a 5 lb. bag. Is there a simple solution for my dilemma that I'm not considering? I was asked to include the Jasper logo in the design, also. Apparently, the people at Jasper will pay part of the cost of the shirts for some advertising on them.

Aside from that, am I taking a step in a better direction?

 

[Joe Diaz]

I like the new changes, but I bet the "Uftring Automotive" would work much better if the main part of the copy were white and if you kept the drop shadow black.

When I have a crap load of stuff to add to a layout. I layout all the type and move it around making sure the most important copy stands out the most. Once you get that the way you like it, maybe try working with additional panels, banners, ribbons, accents and other design elements.

The Illustration is killer by the way. Nice job!

 

[Jillbeans]

I love the changes. 100% improvement on the copy and colors. Listen to Joe about the white and you have a winner.

 

[TyrantDesigner]

I like the new changes, but I bet the "Uftring Automotive" would work much better if the main part of the copy were white and if you kept the drop shadow black.

When I have a crap load of stuff to add to a layout. I layout all the type and move it around making sure the most important copy stands out the most. Once you get that the way you like it, maybe try working with additional panels, banners, ribbons, accents and other design elements.

The Illustration is killer by the way. Nice job!

+1, i would offer the main uftring auto in red and black to the customer while keeping the black drop shadow. maybe also have a version not on a teal shirt ... probably like a soft blue or even a dark red shirt shirt ... if red i would swap the red on the design for a color like blue or yellow and make sure everything has a white bleed on the design so it stands out on the dark color. You don't really need the variation ... it's more for the customer to know they don't have to be stuck to one color scheme. oh and just remember the process, the design you have now is black base, colors on top, on dark shirts is white base, then black then colors so take that into account if you're just passing along the art for reproduction.

 

[Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?]

I made another final change to the design and the customer approved it. I will post the actual t-shirt as soon as we get their order and print them. I would have commented sooner but I've been very busy. Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. I'll try to post as much as I can. I'm hoping to become a better designer. Doing the artwork isn't too much trouble, but my shortcomings are large when it comes to trying to make it all work together. It's gonna be a long road trying to gain confidence in my layouts as well as speed and dexterity but I'm sure everyone here will be of great assistance. Thanks again.

 

[Twisted Images]

have you thought of doing a four color process (if order is large enough) to get more color and make a full scene?
Looks good but i myslef dont like leaving a car by itself, also i would add a windshield reflection so that it doesnt show through the car and the shirt.