Adventurer, Survivor, Friend

I’ve made my first foray into custom t-shirt design, in this case a one-off for a good friend I’ve known for many, many years. I first met this friend when we worked together in Antarctica, and we’ve had many adventures together since those icy days. He’s a mountain climber, an avid hiker and backpacker, a committed bicycle enthusiast, and a long-distance sea kayaker. And, recently, he’s also become a cancer survivor. He’s beating the odds! So, just for him, I designed a shirt, a mockup of which you can see here (with his name blacked out to preserve his privacy). And, in a couple weeks, we’ll see how the real thing looks when he wears it!

It took a while to come up with the right direction to go with this design, with a number of false starts. In the end, I created four separate images depicting some of my friend’s favorite outdoor activities, thinking I’d somehow cram them all onto the front of the shirt. You can see those original designs here:

Nice images, to be sure, and maybe it would have worked. However, as I was experimenting with turning all that white background into transparent background (because who wants a solid sheet of white ink printed all over their chest!), I accidentally ended up cropping out most of the background on the climber image, and that’s when I realized this could be a powerful effect, both simple and bold. Thus, we ended up with:

And now you can see how the transparency works!

My friend is doing well, recovering from his treatment plan, and soon I hope to hit the bike paths and trails with him yet again.

Let me know what you think of the design, and if you have your own stories to share, I’d love to hear them.