![\"\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/a7d44bc1c7.jpg\")
This post was originally posted on June 17, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n
Each week for a year, I’m designed a shirt and released it on my Threadless store. This is the final design of the year.
\nThis is it. The final shirt of my 52 Shirts project. This project has been everything I hoped, letting me explore a bunch of new ideas, techniques and inspiration. I’m almost sad to see it end. My sketchbooks are full of unused ideas. I could probably keep rolling for another few months without any problem.
\nI’m ready to move on to my next project, though. I’m starting a new blog and podcast: Bold Fish, Big Ocean. I’m excited to look at the people, things and ideas that inspire and shape me.
\nBold Fish, Big Ocean is not quite ready yet — I’m still finishing up some things on the shirt project and need to work out some of the specifics for how I want to set up my new blog. But the logo is ready. This bold little fish has been hanging around for a few months waiting for the shirt project to wrap up.
\nThe rest of this week, I’ll be posting some more reflections on 52 Shirts project. And look for my bold little fish to launch in early August.
\nYou can purchase “Bold Fish, Big Ocean” from my Threadless store.
\n![\"52_bold_little_fish_thumbnail.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/5294b303af.jpg\")
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He just finished a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-06-16T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/06/16/bold-fish-big-ocean.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/06/10/dont-give-up.html", "title": "51/52: Don't Give Up", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on June 10, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"51_dont_give_up.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/9563a46d2a.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 51.
\nIt’s been a rough year. I don’t talk about it much, but 2017 was challenging. A few months ago, I had a rough day. I was frustrated. Aimless. Struggling. And then, out of the blue, I got an invitation from a friend to grab coffee. It was precisely what I needed at that moment.
\nWhile I was leaving, I heard Peter Gabriel’s Don’t Give Up at the coffee shop. I hadn’t heard the song in years, and thanks to the magic of Apple Music, when I got back into the car, I was listening to the original Gabriel/Kate Bush duet.
\nIn this proud land we grew up strong
\nWe were wanted all along
\nI was taught to fight, taught to win
\nI never thought I could fail
The whole song is beautiful. If you haven’t heard it, listen to it. Basically, it’s a duet between someone who’s lost their way and someone who cares about them.
\nI wrote a version of this blog post that day and designed the shirt to accompany it. But as I edited the post, I worried what people would think. I wanted to be honest about how I was feeling, but was I being too honest? I shelved the post — and the shirt design — and released something else.
\nAfter this week’s suicides by Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, I’ve been thinking about mental health and how scared we are to talk about how it impacts all our lives. Especially within the creative community. I thought back to this shirt and blog post.
\nRest your head
\nYou worry too much
\nIt’s going to be alright
\nWhen times get rough
\nYou can fall back on us
\nDon’t give up
\nPlease don’t give up
I’m really lucky to have a bunch of wonderful people around me. Encouraging me. Supporting me. Loving me. Reminding me that there’s a place where I belong. I can’t imagine life without my support system. And if it weren’t for my wife, kids, family and friends, I don’t know how I’d be able to handle everything. Especially my wife, Liz, who manages to always be there for me when I need to talk or vent.
\nI don’t post much here that’s deeply personal. I don’t talk about my challenges. I don’t discuss my failings and flaws. Part of this shirt project is trying to open up. To write things I wouldn’t normally write. This post is not something I would normally write. But I look around me and I see friends struggling. People dealing with much more than I am. Even in the face of my own struggles, I hope that I can be someone that encourages others, as so many have been there for me.
\nThis week’s shirt is “Don’t Give Up.” I’m biased, but I love it. I’m thinking about ordering a bunch and wearing them underneath my typical business casual attire. Just as a reminder that I’m never alone.
\nDon’t give up
\n‘Cause you have friends
\nDon’t give up
\nYou’re not the only one
\nDon’t give up
\nNo reason to be ashamed
\nDon’t give up
\nYou still have us
\nDon’t give up now
\nWe’re proud of who you are
\nDon’t give up
\nYou know it’s never been easy
\nDon’t give up
\n‘Cause I believe there’s the a place
\nThere’s a place where we belong
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently nearing the end of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-06-09T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/06/09/dont-give-up.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","Merch","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/06/03/analog.html", "title": "50/52: Analog", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on June 3, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"50_analog.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/74501a8919.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 50.
\nMy entire childhood was essentially analog. I grew up with records, cassette tapes, VCRs and rabbit ear antennas. I took pictures on film and developed them in a darkroom. When I did research for papers in high school, I used the card catalog in the library to find resources. I sent people letters. And they wrote back. I didn’t have a mobile phone. And smart phones didn’t exist outside of science fiction. We had computers, but they were very simple and barely networked. I didn’t have to worry about social media or texting.
\nWhen I got to college, the internet was just taking off. I got email my freshman year and by the time I entered the workforce, everything was different.
\nI’ll be honest, I wouldn’t go back if I could. I love technology and I love all the things that are possible because of the advancements we’ve made over the last three decades.
\nBut I loved my analog childhood. I feel like I’ve had the best of both worlds. I was able to grow up in a world with a lot less pressure and stress than kids have today. And then, I was able to fully benefit from the internet in college, when research and connectivity were more important. I appreciate how “easy” we have it today because I remember what it was like before. I think it makes me more thankful for the technology and capabilities that we have today.
\nYou can purchase “Analog” from my Threadless store.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently nearing the end of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-06-02T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/06/02/analog.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/05/27/orions-belt.html", "title": "49/52: Orion’s Belt", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on May 27, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"49_orions_belt.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/890ae82db8.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 49.
\nAt certain times of the year, when I walk out my front door, the constellation Orion is directly in front of me. Orion’s Belt is easy to spot — three bright stars aligned in a row. I learned all these constellations in Cub Scouts in elementary school, and I had a star field guide at some point. I’ve forgotten most of them, but I remember Orion. I tend to look for it whenever I’m somewhere I can see the stars clearly. Now, my kids and my wife look for it, too. My son, Ryan, is still convinced it’s called “Ryan’s Belt.”
\nI’ve been thinking about constellations lately. How ancient people found shapes in the night sky to tell their stories… and how we don’t really do that anymore. Our ancestors shared their ideas widely as they traveled and traded. Other cultures took and shaped the stories to fit their traditions. And now, we know stories that pre-date written history. It’s impressive that their narrative is alive today.
\nWhat constellations could we find today in the night sky to pass onto our future generations? What grand stories do we even want to pass along?
\nThis week’s shirt is Orion’s Belt and you can purchase it on my Threadless store.
\n![\"49_orions_belt_thumbnail.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/a57886fefa.jpg\")
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently nearing the end of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-05-26T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/05/26/orions-belt.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/05/20/sand-dollar.html", "title": "48/52: Sand Dollar", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on May 20, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"48_sand_dollar.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/19d62d0344.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 48.
\nLiving in Columbia, South Carolina, we can easily make a day trip to Isle of Palms to spend the day on the beach. It’s a relatively easy drive when I-526 isn’t under construction. Other times during the year, we’ll head to Hilton Head. And whenever we head to the beach, our kiddos are somewhat obsessed with finding sand dollars.
\nFinding a sand dollar isn’t always easy. If the beach is crowded, it’s going to be tough to find one. You want to find a sand dollar that’s in one piece — the beach is littered with fragments of sand dollars. And it can’t be alive. Sure you can take a living sand dollar off the beach and bleach it, but that’s cruel.
\nWe’ve got more than a couple that we’ve collected over the years. And they always remind me of the family beach trips we’ve taken in the past. We’ll take another day trip soon, and hopefully we’ll come home with a perfect sand dollar souvenir.
\nYou can purchase Sand Dollar from my Threadless store.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently nearing the end of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-05-19T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/05/19/sand-dollar.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/05/13/coffee-run.html", "title": "47/52: Coffee Run", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on May 13, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"47_coffee_run.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/23e262e607.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 47.
\nI was a young kid when my parents got us a Commodore VIC-20. Around the same time, I was exposed to TRS-80 computers at school. With either system, you could load and play very simple games, but you could also write some simple programs. One of the easiest things to do was to write a simple loop, and then the string in the first line would repeat infinitely.
\nI’d go into Sears, Montgomery Ward or Service Merchandise and they had computers out in the electronics department. No one really knew how to display computers, and it was pretty clear the sales people had no idea what to do with a computer. The machines would just sit there. So I’d always write a loop, with “hello” or my name repeating infinitely. Just because I could.
\nIt was also in that Chicago suburb that I learned about coffee. My father was the pastor at a Lutheran church with a strong Swedish heritage. And those church members loved their coffee. Strong, black coffee. No cream. No sugar. I didn’t drink coffee then… I was too young. But many years later, when I acquired a taste for coffee, I always tried to drink it black because I believed that had to be the best way to enjoy coffee. It’s funny how experiences from childhood always manage to loop back around.
\nTwo formative experiences that aren’t connected in any way, but I put them on a t-shirt together, anyway. This week’s shirt, “Coffee Run” is available for purchase on my Threadless store.
\n![\"47_coffee_run_thumbnail.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/74aa00b316.jpg\")
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently nearing the end of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year. Follow Bob on Twitter, Instagram and Micro.Blog.
\n", "date_published": "2018-05-12T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/05/12/coffee-run.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/05/06/knowledge.html", "title": "46/52: Knowledge", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on May 6, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"46_knowledge.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/3a78da2e6c.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 46.
\nMy daughter, Jill, was asking me what I read for fun when I was her age. The answer probably isn’t surprising for anyone that really knows me: I read the encyclopedia for fun.*
\nMy family had a set of World Book encyclopedias. I’d grab a volume, crack it open and look for something that interested me. I liked to read about space travel, other countries and creatures of all sorts.
\nJill, of course, has no idea what an encyclopedia is. She eventually concluded that it was “like the internet, but printed out and never updated.” And yes, that’s reasonably accurate and more than a little snarky. But when I was a kid, the world’s knowledge, as I understood it, was completely contained within the 20 or so volumes that sat on the shelf in the family room. I still love finding a topic on Wikipedia and learning everything I can about it.
\nThis week’s shirt is “Knowledge,” inspired by the encyclopedias of my youth. You can purchase Knowledge" from my Threadless store.
\n![\"46_knowledge_thumbnail.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/f60ad3062f.jpg\")
* I read more than just the encyclopedia. I also loved the atlas and anything by David Macaulay.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-05-05T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/05/05/knowledge.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/04/29/trophy.html", "title": "45/52: Trophy", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on April 29, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"45_trophy.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/563df6d9f6.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 45.
\nMy daughter’s orchestra performed at a competition at Universal Studios this week and won the highest honor. She volunteered to help carry the trophy back to their bus. While walking through the middle of a crowded park, people along the way — even though they had no idea why she was carrying a trophy — congratulated her. Everyone wanted to know what the trophy was for.
\nAs a society, we love trophies (and plaques and certificates). They are a tangible representation of success. For some things like sports or races, the trophies are awarded to the last team or competitor standing. Other things are less black and white — like musical competitions, the Academy Awards and yes, design awards.
\nWe love the validation that a trophy provides. We love to celebrate the moment. But too often, we’re quick to move on, seeking the next trophy. Wondering what else we can win. Never settling. And while that drive is wonderful, it’s also exhausting. It’s always important to keep things in perspective.
\nYou can purchase “Trophy” on my Threadless store.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-04-28T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/04/28/trophy.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/04/26/my-team-rainbow-unicorn-design.html", "title": "My Team Rainbow Unicorn design featured by Threadless", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on April 26, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"jill_and_the_unicorn.jpg\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/5d59c504fb.jpg\")
I’m excited that Threadless has chosen to include in their collection the shirt I designed with my daughter Jill as part of my 52 Shirts project. Team Rainbow Unicorn is one of the cutest things I’ve ever designed, and if I’m honest, it’s all because of my 10-year-old Jilly. She loves unicorns and when we gathered around the dining room table to create this shirt, she had some very strong opinions about what the unicorn should look like — especially the eyes. We sketched eyes in “kawaii” style, working on the perfect placement of the highlights and the eyelashes. The eyes make the design, and that was all from Jill.
\nYou can purchase Team Rainbow Unicorn from Threadless. And they are offering more than just the shirt. You can get the design on mugs, bags, throw pillows, wall art and more. Check it out at Threadless and join Team Rainbow Unicorn.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-04-25T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/04/25/my-team-rainbow-unicorn-design.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","Merch","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/04/22/one-angry-cloud-ruins-a.html", "title": "44/52: One angry cloud ruins a picnic.", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on April 22, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"44_angry_cloud.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/cdaade2daa.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 44.
\nIt only takes one person to destroy what should be a fun time. One angry cloud. One person without perspective. One person committed to making people miserable. One unexpected storm. One person convinced that they are more important than everyone around them. And when that storm hits, it’s pretty much impossible to enjoy the picnic.
\nWhen the rain is coming down, no one will blame you if you pack up and go home. But it isn’t your only option. You can tough it out (and dance in the rain). You can change your plans and get away from the rain. The choice is up to you.
\nYou can purchase “One angry cloud ruins a picnic.” from my Threadless store.
\n![\"44_angry_cloud_thumbnail.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/2db54b40c5.jpg\")
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-04-21T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/04/21/one-angry-cloud-ruins-a.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/04/15/orlandos.html", "title": "43/52: Orlando's", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on April 15, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"43_orlandos_pizza.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/45bebc38a7.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 43.
\nWhen I was a kid in the 1980s, we frequently ate at a neighborhood pizza place called Orlando’s Pizza. I don’t really remember that much about the pizza, but we always wanted to go there so the food must have been good.
\nIn the back of the restaurant was a small arcade. “Arcade” is a little generous. It was at most four or five machines. After I finished my pizza I’d head to the back of the restaurant. If I had a quarter, I’d play. Or just watch the machines cycle through their demo screens. I played Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Galaga for the first time at the pizza joint.
\nIt’s hard to imagine now, when the phone that we carry in our pockets play an endless selection of infinitely more complex games, but those arcade games were my first real exposure to computers. Our family eventually bought several Commodore computers, but my love of video games and technology can probably be tracked back to Orlando’s.
\nThe restaurant is long gone, but I wanted to commemorate it with a redesign, renaming Orlando’s Pizza to Orlando’s Pizza and Pixels. And it was an excuse to turn a slice of pizza into an apostrophe.
\nYou can purchase “Orlando’s” from my Threadless store.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n![\"43_orlandos_thumbnail.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/fb0222e1ba.jpg\")
This post was originally posted on April 8, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"42_dingbot.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/9430875ef0.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 42.
\nTen years ago, I came across a web app called Fontstruct that allowed me to build modular type. I signed up and produced my first typeface, Pixa, which must have been terrible because I deleted it. But I blogged about Fontstruct and Pixa on April 6, so considering the site launched on April 1, I must have been one of the first wave of users.
\nSince then, I’ve released dozens of typefaces through Fontstruct. Some of these designs have been selected as Top Picks and some are pretty bad. Fontstruct designs have served as prototypes for several of my commercial designs. I don’t create much on Fontstruct anymore, but every so often, I’ll show up and enter one of their contests or knock out a quick idea that’s rolling around in my head. I love creating type, and Fontstruct is absolutely fun to create in. I really do need to find time to build more on Fontstruct.
\nIt’s really amazing how the tool and the community has evolved over the last ten years. Users are building increasingly complex typefaces and now with the Google Fonts integration, the better designs might get a wider audience.
\nTo commemorate joining the Fontstruct community ten years ago, I wanted to make a shirt featuring one of my glyphs… but which one? One of my pixel art designs seemed like a good idea, so I settled on my favorite robot from the original “Dingbots and Monsters.”
\nYou can buy “Dingbot” on my Threadless store.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-04-07T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/04/07/dingbot.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/04/01/empty-tomb.html", "title": "41/52: Empty Tomb", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on April 1, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"41_empty_tomb.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/3c9029d6fa.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 41.
\nI love Easter Sunday. The sunrise service. The hymns. The special music. The flowers. But most of all, I love the joy and the excitement. After the reflection of the Lenten season and Holy Week, we celebrate — we rejoice — that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.
\nThe release date for this week’s shirt falls on Easter. The stone is rolled back and our savior exits the tomb.
\nYou can purchase Empty Tomb on my Threadless store.
\n![\"41_empty_tomb_thumbnail.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/f95dc79a4f.jpg\")
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-03-31T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/03/31/empty-tomb.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/03/24/kudzu-palace.html", "title": "40/52: Kudzu Palace", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on March 24, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"40_kudzu_palace.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/efd78d9b5c.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 40.
\nWhen I was little, we lived in Stanley, North Carolina. Every so often on the weekend, we’d make the trek over to Gastonia to have dinner, go shopping or catch a movie. We’d drive along a road where every tree seemed to be covered in kudzu. If you aren’t familiar with kudzu, it’s a vine that grows relatively uncontrolled across the southeastern United States. It’s legendarily impossible to kill.
\nAt some point on the trip, my dad would ask us where we wanted to eat. He’d give us three options, but the third option was always “Kudzu Palace.” Kudzu Palace didn’t exist, of course, but every time, my siblings and I would yell “Not Kudzu Palace!”
\nNow that I have kids, I often offer up Kudzu Palace as a dining option. Surprisingly, they never pick it either.
\nWhen I started this project, I actually planned to do a bunch of fake restaurants and brands. Kudzu Palace was one of the original ideas from my first set of sketches. The project has taken a different direction and the designs have been more conceptual, but I’m glad I finally got around to creating a shirt for my favorite fictional restaurant. Now, I’m wondering what’s on the menu.
\nYou can purchase “Kudzu Palace” from my Threadless store.
\n![\"40_kudzu_palace_thumbnail.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/eca94948e9.jpg\")
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-03-23T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/03/23/kudzu-palace.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/03/18/god-and-science.html", "title": "39/52: God and Science", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on March 18, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"39_god_and_science.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/a05969d3a0.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 39.
\nI recently read an article by Don Lincoln, a physicist at Fermilab* describing a potential new discovery that sheds light — pun intended — on the formation of the universe. But what struck me about the article is his discussion of what happened after the Big Bang, how the universe expanded and formed planets and stars.
\nFor some reason, science advocates and religious advocates are diametrically opposed these days. If you believe in basic scientific principles, some people assume that you don’t believe in God. And if you are Christian, some people assume that you believe that science is a hoax and the earth is only 6,000 years old.
\nBut I’ve never felt my faith in God and my belief in science have been at odds with one another. I believe in evolution, climate change and vaccination. I also believe in the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. I feel that modern science is just one of the tools that God has given us to experience and understand his creation. I can believe in God while accepting that the Earth formed in more than 6 days.
\nIn short, I believe in both God and science. And this week’s shirt is a rather direct statement of that belief. Of course, the shirt is only available in shades of gray…
\nYou can buy “God and Science” on my Threadless store.
\n* I grew up in Batavia, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago and the location of Fermilab. I took many a field trip to the particle accelerator in our neighborhood.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-03-17T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/03/17/god-and-science.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/03/11/the-evolution-of-storage.html", "title": "38/52: The Evolution of Storage", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on March 11, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"38_evolution_of_storage.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/68ef0e5319.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 38.
\nMy first computer, a Commodore Vic 20, actually used cassette tapes for data storage. We upgraded to a Commodore 64 and it used a 5.25 inch floppy. So did the TRS-80 at school and the IBM PC at my dad’s office. When I got to high school, the 5.25 in drives gave way to 3.5 inch floppies. And while I was in college, the 3.5 inch floppy was replaced by a Iomega Zip drive that held an “amazing” 100 MB. Zip drives were popular until writeable CD-ROM drives became commonplace. Writeable DVDs seemed to be the natural next step, but USB thumb drives were cheaper and more convenient. Now, everything pretty much lives in the cloud.
\nThere were — of course — storage devices that never caught on… I remember 44 MB and 88 MB SyQuest Drives. Iomega had a 1 GB Jaz Drive and introduced a 250 MB Zip drive to capitalize on the success on the 100 MB Zip Drive. Portable hard drives are still popular with people who need a lot of storage, but USB thumb drives are getting cheaper and increasing in capacity. Writable Blu-ray discs are expensive and take forever to burn.
\nI’ve watched computer storage evolve over the last 30+ years and now, we’ve reached a point where everything is in the cloud and there is very little reason to have physical media at all. There’s a part of me that misses carrying around all my files and projects and a collection of Zip disks, but I won’t miss the fear of losing a disk or having one fail catastrophically. Now, all my files are available to me on pretty much any device at pretty much any time.
\nThis week’s shirt, “The Evolution of Storage” is a look back to the changes of how we store our important files and projects. Starting with 1.2 MB and spanning to the now seemingly infinite cloud.
\nYou can purchase “The Evolution of Storage” on my Threadless store.
\n![\"38_evolution_of_storage_thumbnail.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/235af41b48.jpg\")
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-03-10T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/03/10/the-evolution-of-storage.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/03/04/pens-and-pencils.html", "title": "37/52: Pens and Pencils", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on March 4, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"37_pen_and_pencil.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/7172e98e62.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 37.
\nSeveral years ago, I was looking for new podcasts to listen to. I was regularly listening to Upgrade with Jason Snell and Myke Hurley and Myke mentioned that he had another podcast, The Pen Addict. An entire podcast on pens? I was curious and so I downloaded an episode to check it out. It didn’t take long before I had a collection of different writing utensils, inks, bags and sketchbooks.
\nI’ve mentioned before how uncomfortable I am with my handwriting and writing in general, but with better tools, writing was far more enjoyable. I really like writing with a fountain pen. Choosing the ink and the right nib style. Cleaning and taking care of them. I love the feel of drawing with a good mechanical pencil. I adore sharpening a wooden pencil and getting a perfect point.
\nMost people don’t think about what they write with. They use the pen in the office supply cabinet or whatever happens to be laying around the house. The last wooden pencil they used was a cheap #2 in elementary school. There is nothing wrong with that approach, but I believe the experience of writing changes when you use a good pen or pencil.
\nOne of my earliest sketches for this shirt-a-week project was a short, fat pencil and I refined it into this shirt, Pens and Pencils. I’m going to the Atlanta Pen Show in April and figured I’d release the shirt now so I can order one and wear it to the show.
\nYou can buy Pens and Pencils at my Threadless store.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-03-03T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/03/03/pens-and-pencils.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/02/25/lucky.html", "title": "36/52: Lucky", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on February 25, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"36_lucky.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/9eb6bb2e35.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 36.
\nI was in 6th grade and had saved my paper route money to buy “California Games” for my Commodore 64. I opened the box in the car on the drive home to look at the instructions and found a scratch off game card. Scratch off three circles and if they match, you win that prize. I scratched off three circles and they matched. I shouted in a mix of confusion and joy… “I won a jet ski! What’s a jet ski?” My mom didn’t believe me — and since she was driving, she got my older brother to take a look. He confirmed that I had, indeed, won a jet ski.
\nAnd that started one heck of a lucky streak. Over a couple of decades, I won a bunch of stuff… radio contests, door prize drawings, golf clubs, an iPod, season tickets for minor league hockey, software, a watch, a framed print and more. For a number of years, every time there was a door prize, I knew I was going to win it.* It was fun, although occasionally embarrassing. The streak seems to have ended a number of years ago, but I always wonder if the streak will ever kick back in.
\nIn honor of St. Patrick’s Day and my own crazy luck, I wanted to create a “lucky” shirt. And since my beloved Commodore 64 had lovely eight bit graphics, I figured a pixelated pot of gold was the perfect tribute to my amazing lucky streak.
\nYou can buy Lucky at my Threadless store.
\n*Everyone asks if I ever won the lottery. I have not. Some odds are too impossible.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-02-24T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/02/24/lucky.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/02/18/retweet-responsibly.html", "title": "35/52: Retweet Responsibly", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on February 18, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"35_retweet.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/b27873535f.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 35.
\nThe school shooting in Florida this week was heartbreaking. Heartbreaking because of the loss of life. Heartbreaking because this keeps happening and no one acts to try and prevent it from happening again. Heartbreaking because I send my wife — a teacher — and three kids to school every day and pray that they are never placed in harm’s way.*
\nIn the aftermath of the shooting, social media was … chaos. I know that friends were hurting and angry like I was. They wanted to make a point that something has to change. I get it, and yet, many of them were retweeting things that were false or exaggerated. Bogus stats. Exaggerated claims. Speculation.
\nGun advocates were rushing to similarly harshly drawn conclusions. Recommending “solutions” like arming teachers. Tweeting and retweeting false or inflammatory statements — anything they could do to shift the blame towards something other than the American gun culture.
\nAnd as if that wasn’t enough chaos, Russian bots jumped into the fray stirring up trouble in their own way.
\nHere’s the thing, though. When you push false or hastily checked information, your side in the debate suffers. Even if you are mostly right, the minute you stop offering facts and a path forward, you lose credibility.
\nRetweeting — or sharing on Facebook — information that you don’t know is true, but you want to be true… it does more harm than good. You are as responsible for the things you retweet as the posts your write yourself. When you share something, you personally endorse that you believe it. So spend a few minutes researching before you hit the retweet button.
\nTwitter and Facebook reward the quick retweet or share.** They are designed to allow you to react with minimal thought. Don’t fall for it. Don’t feed the outrage machine — there’s enough to genuinely be outraged by. Think and help advance the discussion, because something has to change and we have to get there together.
\nYou will be able to buy Retweet Responsibility at Threadless.
\n* Heartbreaking because I know the feeling of fear that comes with a lockdown. I’ve been in a active shooter situation twice in the last five years. Once at the University of South Carolina because of a murder-suicide. And once with my entire family at a local mall when there was an apparent shooting.
\n** I’m beginning to appreciate Manton’s hesitation in introducing reposting to Micro.Blog.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-02-17T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/02/17/retweet-responsibly.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Social","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/02/11/rocket.html", "title": "34/52: Rocket", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on February 11, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"34_rocket.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/443f7acbf1.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 34.
\nI grew up fascinated with space. I had books on the space shuttle. I wanted to go to Space Camp.* I watched movies and documentaries about the Apollo program. I remember the loss of Challenger. And the loss of Columbia. As the shuttle program came to an end, I followed along with the International Space Station and all the probes and rovers that we’ve sent out to the solar system. I listen to a podcast about space regularly. But with our future of space exploration in doubt, I admit that my excitement has waned a bit over the years.
\nThis week, Space X reignited that excitement.
\nFalcon Heavy — the largest rocket launched since the Saturn 5 took astronauts to the moon — completed a successful test launch.
\nThe launch was spectacular, but for me the highlight was the landing of two boosters in unison. Online, I saw too many people focused on the Tesla Roadster now floating towards the Kiper belt, or the loss of the third booster. But the Falcon Heavy represents the next step to returning to the moon, and maybe someday heading to Mars. Falcon Heavy is a big deal, and the test was a massive success.
\n\n\n“The launch was spectacular, but for me the highlight was the landing of two boosters in unison.”
\n
I started the day as the only one I knew excited about the launch. I gathered my coworkers around the screen as I watched the launch live — with commentary from Jason and Stephen from the Liftoff Podcast. Some of them weren’t sure what it was a big deal. Others had no idea there was a launch happening. But it was wonderful to share the experience with my friends.
\nLater, after dinner, I shared the video with my wife and kids when I got home and talked about the launch and space exploration in general. Space X and Falcon Heavy have given people a reason to be excited about space again. I hope they continue to push forward.
\nI wanted to celebrate this new excitement with this week’s shirt, Rocket. It’s a Falcon Heavy roaring out of the atmosphere. You can buy Rocket at my Threadless store.
\n![\"Closeup.\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/e7a89edabe.jpg\")
Closeup.
\n* And yes, this probably had something to do with the movie, Space Camp.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-02-10T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/02/10/rocket.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/02/04/obscure-blogger.html", "title": "33/52: Obscure Blogger", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on February 4, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"33_obscure_blogger.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/431fa041d9.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 33.
\nI’ve been writing here on Sketchbook B for ten years this week — about 520 posts. Basically averaging a post a week for ten years. Most blogs don’t make it ten posts, but I’ve kept this site going consistently for a full decade.
\nRecently I started to talk to friends who had blogs, and now don’t. And their reasons for abandoning their blogs were all pretty much the same… it didn’t feel like anyone was reading. No one cared. And so, they stopped writing.
\nBelieve me, I understand that feeling. I’ll craft a blog post that I think is great, and ten people will read it. Being an obscure blogger can be discouraging.
\nOver the last year, I’ve recommitted to writing for myself and I’ve been happier with the posts I’m publishing. Every so often, I’ll look at my analytics and slip into the “no one cares about what I’m writing” trap, but for the most part, I don’t allow traffic — or more precisely, the lack of traffic — bother me. I write for me, and I hope people like it and go away inspired.
\nI wanted to design a shirt to commemorate not just the ten years of Sketchbook B, but also the struggle of the obscure blogger. The person who writes in relative anonymity, because they love writing.
\nThis week’s shirt, Obscure Blogger, I wanted to use one of my typeface designs, so it features one of my Fontstruct designs — SbB Epyx — and the tagline “Entertaining and informing dozens since 2008.” 2008 was the year I started Sketchbook B, but I’m happy to make custom variants with different dates if you want them. Just reach out and let me know what year you started your obscure blog and I’ll add it to the Threadless store, too.
\nYou can purchase Obscure Blogger at my Threadless store.
\n![\"A](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/f107b0fc57.jpg\")
A closeup, since it’s a little hard to read on the mockup.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-02-03T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/02/03/obscure-blogger.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/01/28/reboot.html", "title": "32/52: Reboot", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on January 28, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"32_reboot.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/e655d44ff2.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 32.
\nI love technology. I’ve had a computer around since our family bought a Commodore VIC-20 in the mid 1980s. And yet, lately, I’ve been feeling as though my digital world — with social media, Slack, email, blogging, streaming video — is slowly burning me out. I used to enjoy Twitter and Facebook, but I enjoy them less now. Slack works great for small groups, but I have no idea how anyone can cope with the volume of messages. Email is still email — and work email is still work email — but I feel like I have a grip on how to handle email. I’ve built a system for how to handle my email, but I have no idea how to manage the volume and impact of everything else.
\nIt’s time to reboot my relationship with technology.
\nWhen something goes wrong with technology, 99.9% of the time, the solution is to reboot. Start over. Turn it off and turn it back on. So I’m rebooting my digital world before I burn out. It’s a work in progress. I’ve eliminated many of my notifications — and I need to eliminate more. I’ve started to pay less attention to stats and numbers on my personal accounts and sites. I’m going to start implementing some device-free time.* I’m thinking about shifting task management back to paper.** I’m going to drop services that I don’t get value from and change the way I use the web. I’ve already started some of this — and I can already feel a difference.
\nThis week’s shirt is “Reboot.” I built the word on a five pixel high grid, and then changed the opacity on some of the blocks to degrade it a little bit. You can purchase it in a range of blacks and greys on my Threadless store.
\n* I’m pretty hard core with my kids about device free time, but I need to look in the mirror and put my own phone away.
\n** I’m a devoted Todoist user, so this is a big change. I have my reasons why I think this will make a difference and will write about it soon.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-01-27T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/01/27/reboot.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/01/21/digital-hieroglyphics.html", "title": "31/52: Digital Hieroglyphics", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on January 21, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"31_digital_hieroglyphics.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/0cd0921eb0.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 31.
\nI remember learning about hieroglyphics in elementary school. Hieroglyphics, we were taught, were an early form of written communication in ancient Egypt, less advanced* than our modern writing system. We were given the assignment to make our own pictograms and write messages with them. (I’m pretty sure my daughter had the same assignment last year.) It was a fun experiment, but I remember thinking: Who would ever want to communicate with pictograms?
\nWell, turns out hieroglyphics are making a comeback. This time, they are called emoji.
\nI was a little late to the emoji train. I will freely admit that I thought they were a complete waste of time for a while, but I eventually came around. Emoji are fun and convey emotion and concepts well. I’m still pretty conservative with my emoji use — I rarely use more than one at at time — but I absolutely use them.
\nWe as a society have embraced emoji. One of the biggest incentives for upgrading our smartphone operating system is to get new emoji. There are heated discussions about what emoji should be included in the next Unicode release. Micro.blog is experimenting with using emoji as tags — similar to how hashtags are used on Twitter — and it’s awesome. Communicating with pictograms isn’t primitive. It’s an effective way to get your message across.
\n\n\n“Communicating with pictograms isn’t primitive. It’s an effective way to get your message across.”
\n
I wanted to make an emoji shirt and reference the similarity to hieroglyphics, so I built a pyramid** of emoji. It was tough to find an emoji font that I could use for a product like this one.*** Most charge extra for using their design in a commercial product. I finally found Google’s open source Noto family, which includes two emoji fonts. I didn’t like the faces in Noto, but the rest of the set was great and perfect for my pyramid. I decided to use the black and white version because I fell in love with the high contrast look.
\nYou can purchase “Digital Hieroglyphics” from my Threadless store.
\n* Of course, I later learned that Egyptian hieroglyphics were much more advanced than we were taught in elementary school. I’m pretty sure this is another example of Western cultural bias here. Modern society assumed pictograms were primitive and letterforms were superior. Turns out pictograms can be a powerful way to communicate, too.
\n** I was fascinated by pyramids, mostly because of David Macaulay’s book, Pyramids. For a period of time, I loved to read about all things ancient Egyptian.
\n*** Have you tried to use emoji in print? Let’s just say it’s much harder than you’d think it would be.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-01-20T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/01/20/digital-hieroglyphics.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/01/14/love.html", "title": "30/52: Love", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on January 14, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"30_love_shirt.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/18d918c751.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 30.
\nLove takes many forms. We love our partner or spouse. We love our children, our family and our friends. We love our pets. We love our neighbors, even if they are different than we are. We love others, even if they are in a different part of the world.*
\nWe show love in many ways. We show it through our actions and our words. We show it through our compassion. We use our time and energy to serve others. Love is the foundation of a positive world.
\nTomorrow is a holiday to celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Love was his guiding compass. And it should be ours today.
\nVisually for my “love” shirt, I wanted to take a minimalist approach to the word love. I didn’t want to design anything flashy or do a bunch of hand lettering. Just simple and straightforward.
\nYou can purchase “Love” from my Threadless store.
\n* And especially if their corner of the world isn’t as nice and safe as ours.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-01-13T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/01/13/love.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2018/01/07/first-camera.html", "title": "29/52: First Camera", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on January 7, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"29_first_camera.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/007a60636c.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 29.
\nI was a photographer long before I was a designer. My father loved cameras and had a selection of Minolta 35mm cameras, lens, flashes and other accessories. They were often used for family pictures after church and vacation photos. My parents kept tons of photo albums around and so I grew up with photography everywhere.
\nWhen I started high school, I took pictures for the yearbook and newspaper. I signed up for a class at Midlands Tech on photography and darkroom skills. I worked in USC Aiken’s darkroom some — my high school didn’t have it’s own darkroom — but I eventually got an enlarger at home and printed my own images in the bathroom.
\nI used my dad’s cameras for most of this, but at some point during my senior year, I picked up a used Minolta X-700 to be my camera. I shot a bunch of high school sports and needed a long, but affordable lens so I used an old 200mm f3.5 lens that we purchased from KEH in Atlanta. I borrowed one of my dad’s motor drives and that combo was my primary camera set up for a number of years. When I went to college at the University of South Carolina, I worked in student media and shot football and basketball games with it. I also worked a bunch of concerts with that camera — Beastie Boys, Nine Inch Nails, Gin Blossoms, Green Day and more.
\nI discovered design when I was in college, but photography was my first love and one of my oldest artistic influences. I’m glad I got the experience of shooting on film and working in a darkroom. I’m grateful that I had to learn to shoot with manual focus before autofocus happened. I’m thankful for autofocus and digital photography, but I feel like I understand photography better because I had to do things manually.
\n\n\n“I discovered design when I was in college, but photography was my first love and one of my oldest artistic influences.”
\n
At some point, I switched to Canon autofocus when I purchased an A2E with “eye-control focus.” And then to digital SLRs when my oldest child was born. I gave my old Minolta gear to my dad who collected cameras and he had them displayed with other old cameras he had used or found at yard sales. A couple of years ago, he was cleaning out some things and asked if I wanted some of his old camera gear. I took several of the old Minolta bodies, including my X-700, and displayed them in my office — next to my darkroom clock.
\nI wanted to create a shirt based on my love of photography. And that X-700 kept popping in my head. So I recreated it, taking some editorial license. It’s one of the most detailed vector illustrations I’ve ever done and I had a blast with it.
\nYou can purchase “First Camera” from my Threadless store in a range of colors.
\n![\"29_first_camera_thumbnail.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/de0802c384.jpg\")
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2018-01-06T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2018/01/06/first-camera.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/12/31/perspective.html", "title": "28/52: Perspective", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on December 31, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"28_perspective.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/f913200fe3.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 28.
\nI can’t remember what year of elementary school I was introduced to the concept of perspective. All I know is that once I was introduced to single point perspective, I drew cubes on everything. Later, when I was introduced to two-point perspective, I’d break out a ruler and draw massive cityscapes.
\nPerspective, for some reason, was an early art lesson that made an impression. I think it was because once you understood the concept of perspective, you looked at the world in a different way. What something looks like depends entirely on your point of view.
\nPerspective, it turns out, is more than just an art lesson. Learning to take into account other people’s point of view is critical to understanding and working with other people. Everything is a matter of perspective.
\nYou can buy, Perspective, from my Threadless store. It’s available in a wide range of colors.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-12-30T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/12/30/perspective.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/12/24/doodle.html", "title": "27/52: Doodle", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on December 24, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"27_doodle.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/d30917e14a.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 27.
\nFirst of all, Merry Christmas. Today is Christmas Eve and I wish all of you a joyous Christmas and a Happy New Year. I released a couple of Christmas shirts earlier — First Tree and Secret Santa. I released them early so people could have them in time for Christmas if they wanted to order them, so it feels a little odd releasing a non-Christmas shirt on Christmas Eve.
\nI love to doodle. During a conference call or a long meeting, I’ll fill the margin of my notes with mindless little sketches that just kind of flow from the discussion. Sometimes I’ll sketch ideas out that are stuck in my head. But often, I create patterns. Really detailed patterns that form some kind of shape.
\nThese sketches rarely leave my sketchbook or notes. I once did a massive pattern for an InShow poster, but I don’t use the pattern in my artwork much. When I started to think of ideas for this shirt, I was struggling to finalize an idea that I was happy with when my wife mentioned that she’d love to see me do something with my pattern doodles.
\n![\"Close](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/9eb626af9e.jpg\")
Close up of the pattern.
\nI broke out the Microns and some smooth, heavyweight paper. And I spent the evening doodling the word “doodle.” I photographed the pattern in sections, assembled it in Photoshop and cleaned it up slightly. I really love the look of the pattern and I need to find other ways to use this technique.
\nThis week’s shirt, Doodle, is best in lighter colors. (Personally, I love the black ink on the white shirt…) You can purchase Doodle from my Treadless store.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-12-23T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/12/23/doodle.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/12/17/watch-out-world.html", "title": "26/52: Watch out world", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on December 17, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"26_watch_out_world.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/3642a444f5.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 26 and marks the halfway point for my 52 Shirts project.
\nMy oldest became a teenager this week, so it was her turn to work with me to design a shirt.* We had everything completely planned out, but when I finished it, neither of us liked it.** While we sat at the dining room table trying to improve the design, she doodled on a sheet of paper “Watch out world, here I come.”
\n“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to her doodle.
\n“I don’t know. Sometimes, you need a plan B, right? It’s always good to have a plan B.”
\nIt was, indeed, time for plan B. I took her phrase and shaped it into an exclamation point.
\nNorah’s determined. She’s one of those kids who just won’t quit. Smart, strong and kind. “Watch out world, here I come” seemed perfectly appropriate to celebrate her 13th birthday.
\nYou can purchase “Watch out world” from my Threadless store in a wide range of colors. And happy birthday, Norah!
\n* Now that Norah’s shirt is done, we’ve completed birthday shirts for all of Team Wertz — Me, Jill, Ryan, Liz and now, this shirt for Norah. It’s been fun — and challenging — partnering with each of them on their shirt.
\n![\"team_wertz_shirt_collection.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/cd62cb5088.jpg\")
** The original shirt was going to say: “I’m afraid of clowns, snakes and being like everyone else.” Alas, choosing a typeface we both liked proved to be impossible.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-12-16T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/12/16/watch-out-world.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/12/10/day-one.html", "title": "25/52: Day One", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on December 10, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"DayOne_shirt.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/f1eee06977.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 25.
\n2017 wasn’t a great year for me, but I’ve got a bunch planned for 2018 and I’m really looking forward to the year ahead.
\nJanuary 1, 2018 is the first day of the new year, but it’s also only one day. One day of 365. We pay special attention to New Year’s Day. We make resolutions and we celebrate the start of a new year — a clean slate. But we need to spend the rest of the year making good on those resolutions and living out those best intentions.
\nI also need a reminder that one day is only one day. Some days will be really awesome and exceptionally productive. And others will seem like a complete waste of time. But it’s only one day. I can’t get too high or too low. I need to trust the plan and keep working toward my goals.
\nDay One is my shirt for New Year’s Day, but also for the rest of the year. You can buy Day One on my Threadless store. And here’s to a great 2018.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-12-09T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/12/09/day-one.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/12/03/mountains-and-oceans.html", "title": "24/52: Mountains and Oceans", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on December 3, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"24_mountains_oceans.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/093d4d61cd.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 24.
\nWhen I started this project, one of the first shirts I sketched out was for my wife’s birthday. I liked the concept, but when I went to execute it… It was fine, but it didn’t look like Liz. So I worked on some other ideas and none of them seemed quite right. Liz has been one of the biggest cheerleaders for this shirt project and I really wanted her shirt to be perfect… it wasn’t.
\nI took Liz to Hilton Head* to celebrate her birthday and we went for a long walk on the beach. One of the many topics of discussion was our mutual love of both the ocean and the mountains. Liz grew up out west with amazing mountains, but never really went to the ocean. When she moved east, closer to the ocean, Liz discovered that she loved the ocean as much as she loved the mountains.**
\nI came back to our hotel room and sketched out what would become Liz’s birthday shirt, Mountains and Oceans. You can get Mountains and Oceans — and all the other shirt designs — at my Threadless store.
\n* Hilton Head in the winter is wonderful. I highly recommend it.
\n** Living in Columbia, SC, we are two hours from the coast and two hours from Asheville. For people like us who love both the mountains and the sea, being in Columbia is a perfect location.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-12-02T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/12/02/mountains-and-oceans.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/11/26/im-ok.html", "title": "23/52: I’M OK", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on November 26, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"IM_OK.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/76fbcb4245.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 23.
\nMy son Ryan turned 6 this week. And as I mentioned when I designed Jill’s Team Rainbow Unicorn shirt, I let the kids help design the shirt on the week of their birthday.
\nWe locked in very quickly on what the shirt would say. Whenever Ryan falls, stumbles or gets hurt, he immediate shouts “I’m okay!” He started this when he was very little — pretty much when he started to talk. Once, when he fell and smashed out a tooth at daycare, the first thing he said to me when I picked him up was “I’m okay!” Sometimes, he starts saying “I’m okay!” when he starts to fall, before he hits the ground. It’s become like a catchphrase for him.
\nBut what the shirt looked like, though… that was challenging.
\nAt first Ryan wanted something really complicated, with paper airplanes crashing and little stick figures and a speech bubble with “I’m okay.” But I wanted to do something a little cleaner. We went around and around with other ideas. After all the back and forth, we settled on just having “I’M OK” on the shirt. Bold and straightforward.*
\nRyan’s shirt — “I’M OK” — is available in a range of colors on Threadless.
\n* One variation was a bold “I’M OK” all cracked up into pieces. And while it looked cool, and Ryan really liked it, it looked completely depressing, all shattered and broken. It really didn’t fit the message we wanted.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-11-25T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/11/25/im-ok.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/11/19/secret-santa.html", "title": "22/52: Secret Santa", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on November 19, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"22_secret_santa.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/c95b75861c.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 22.
\nI’ve always loved the phrase “Secret Santa.” Of course, it’s intended to be an exchange of gifts where no one knows who is giving them gifts. I’ve done Secret Santa’s at the office and I’ve volunteered to be a Secret Santa for a local children’s shelter. I’ve always fun buying presents for others.
\nBut I’ve always thought that phrase sounded more like a comic book. Santa delivers presents on Christmas, but the rest of the year, he uses his magic to solve crimes. Something of a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Columbo. Or like the old Disney Channel animated show, Kim Possible. Maybe Santa is a secret agent in the off season, with an entire team based out of the North Pole. More 007 than Sherlock Holmes.
\nOr maybe my Secret Santa comic would follow Mrs. Claus as she moves from town-to-town solving murders. Sort of like Murder She Wrote, but with magic. And candy canes.
\nI think the idea has potential. This week’s shirt features the logo for my imaginary comic book, Secret Santa. You can buy Secret Santa in a range of Christmas colors (plus black, because, secret agents don’t typically wear red or green.)
\n![\"22_secret_santa_thumbnail.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/6f206fcb0e.jpg\")
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-11-18T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/11/18/secret-santa.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/11/11/first-tree.html", "title": "21/52: First Tree", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on November 11, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"21_first_tree.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/3efc8512d2.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 21.
\nWhen my wife and I first got married, we lived in a little duplex in downtown Columbia. Christmas came and we needed to get a tree. I’d never had an artificial tree and was dead set against anything but a real tree.
\nWe went to a little Christmas tree lot on Garners Ferry not too far from home and picked out the perfect tree. Perfect, except for the fact that we still had to get it home.
\nYou see, we had two small cars, and this Christmas tree wasn’t fitting in either of them. The guy at the tree lot didn’t seem concerned. “Happens all the time.” So he broke out some twine and scissors and tied it to the roof of our Blue Ford Focus.
\nThe sight was so ridiculous, that I drew a picture of it for our first Christmas card as a married couple. The tree tied onto the top of our Ford Focus was almost as big as the car. We got back to the duplex and discovered that the tree was too tall and it didn’t fit in the tree stand we had purchased. I had to go to the store to buy a saw to cut part of the bottom off.*
\nOnce we got the tree up and decorated, it looked awesome. But the process… that was an adventure.
\nEventually, I overcame my dislike of fake trees and now I don’t have to strap a tree to the top of my car, but Liz and I laugh about that first Christmas tree every year.
\n\n\n“Once we got the tree up and decorated, it looked awesome. But the process… that was an adventure.”
\n
So for my first Christmas shirt for this year, I wanted to draw something that reminded me of our first Christmas together. I switched the car from a Blue Ford Focus — who wants a shirt with that car on it — to an old VW Rabbit. This was one of my first sketches that I completed when I started working on this project in the summer. I’ve been excited about this shirt idea for months.
\nYesterday, I saw a similar shirt design floating around Facebook and I was kind of bummed that someone else had the same idea. But then I remembered the words of the attendant at the tree lot. “Happens all the time.” Most people probably do have a memory of strapping a too-big tree on top of a too-small car.
\nFirst Tree is available on my Threadless store.
\nShirts make great Christmas gifts. And I’m offering a 20% off promotion on all my shirts through the end of 2017. It should save you a few bucks per shirt. And Threadless is offering free shipping on orders over $40 through December 15 – just use the code “CHEER10cc62.”
\n* Also, that’s the Christmas we learned that taking the tree to the recycling place after Christmas is much tougher than bringing it home.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-11-10T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/11/10/first-tree.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/11/05/angry-moderate.html", "title": "20/52: Angry Moderate", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on November 5, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"20_angry_moderate.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/ba2447aa0a.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 20.
\nWhen I was in high school, a friend asked whether I considered myself conservative or liberal. I told him that I was more of a moderate.
\n“You can’t be a moderate,” he said, “That means you don’t stand for anything.”
\nIt’s tough being moderate in today’s hyper partisan world. But I think now, more than ever, moderates are the key to stabilizing our country.
\nModerates are not the same thing as independents. Independent voters don’t claim one party or the other, but they’re views aren’t necessarily in the middle. For example, some independents think the Republican Party is too liberal.
\nModerates on the other hand tend to be pragmatic. They look for ways to solve problems for their state or country. They work with people from other parties to craft solutions, not division. Moderates can be Republicans or Democrats (or independents), but they believe you can achieve more by working together than constantly demonizing each other. For many of our problems (but not all*), compromise is a solution to the issues that challenge America.
\nToday, with highly gerrymandered districts and campaigns financed increasingly by SuperPACs and the influential donors, it’s tough for a moderate to make it through the primaries, let alone win a general election.
\nOn Facebook, my political beliefs are listed simply as “Angry Moderate.” It frustrates me that people can’t work together. I’m baffled by political parties that put their needs above the needs of the nation. And I’m completely pissed off by politicians who want everything to be about them, instead of realizing that they were elected to serve this nation, not rule it.
\nBut the problem with moderates is that they typically don’t get angry. There is no moderate equivalent of the Tea Party. There isn’t a group of radical moderates that will band together to defeat a hyper partisan candidate in a primary. People don’t build moderate Super PACs. I can’t think of any billionaires wanting to fund moderate candidates.
\nWhen I decided to make an Angry Moderate shirt, the design approach was straightforward. Pick a sans serif designed by an American** and select a medium weight. Set the type in white and make it available on red, blue, grey and purple shirts. The result is appropriately the most subtle “angry” shirt you can make, perfect for a moderate.
\nYou can purchase Angry Moderate at my Threadless store.
\n* There are many things that you can’t compromise on. Basic human rights, for example.
\n** Proxima Nova Medium, designed by Wisconsin native Mark Simonson.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-11-04T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/11/04/angry-moderate.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/10/29/duel.html", "title": "19/52: Duel", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on October 29, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"19_duel.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/439527e7c6.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 19.
\nI was two when Star Wars came out in 1977. I don’t know when I saw the movie for the first time. Back then we obviously didn’t have DVDs or video-on-demand. We had to wait for the movie to be rereleased to the theaters. But I remember seeing the lightsaber dual between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi, which ends with — SPOILER — Kenobi inexplicably sacrificing himself and disappearing.
\n\n\n“Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
\n
— Obi-Wan Kenobi
\nLater his disembodied voice reminds Luke to use the force when destroying the Death Star. And of course, we find out later he becomes a “force ghost” and continues to guide and help Luke through the next two movies.
\nStar Wars (and all science fiction) has been a major influence on my life. Most of my toys growing up were Star Wars toys. And the rest were Legos that I used to make spaceships. But Star Wars — the original — started it all.
\nThis December, the eighth Star Wars Saga film is released — The Last Jedi. I wanted to shirt to wear to the movie that subtly referenced the first film. And so we have Duel. A rough approximation of the lightsaber fight between Obi-Wan and Vader. Each frame is in a 2.35:1 ratio, the proportions that Star Wars was filmed in. And of course it ends with only one red lightsaber.
\nI’ll be wearing Duel for opening night of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. You can grab one, too, at my Threadless store.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-10-28T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/10/28/duel.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/10/22/fancy.html", "title": "18/52: Fancy", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on October 22, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"18_place_setting.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/da0158c986.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 18.
\nOnce a year, we prepare an irrationally large meal. We make a turkey and use a stuffing recipe that’s been in the family for decades. We cook the same casseroles and side dishes that we have at Thanksgiving every year. My wife makes a Kentucky Derby Pie, which is like a giant cookie, because most of our crew won’t eat pecan or pumpkin pie.
\nWe pull all of the special dishes and silverware out. China that belonged to my wife’s grandmother. Goblets that were gifts from our wedding. Serving dishes that my mom used. We use the fancy table cloth and set the table correctly, with all the silverware in the right spots.
\n\n\n“We use the fancy table cloth and set the table correctly, with all the silverware in the right spots.”
\n
And then we gather around the table — with as much family as we can — and have the fanciest meal we’ll have all year. We tell stories about past get togethers and the time my wife went into labor right before we were about to have our Thanksgiving meal. We eat way too much and have plenty left over. We pack up the leftovers and send them home so that everyone can have turkey sandwiches for days.
\nThanksgiving is a chance to be together with family, and for me, the big meal, with a formal place setting, is a perfect symbol of that. So this week’s shirt, Fancy, is in honor of Thanksgiving — and released early so you can wear one while you prepare your own Thanksgiving feast.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-10-21T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/10/21/fancy.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/10/15/introvert.html", "title": "17/52: Introvert", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on October 15, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"17_introvert.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/6049eff534.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 17.
\nNo one believes me, but I’m an introvert. Yes, I speak in front of crowds without much of a problem. I have no problem talking to people I know. And I would never describe myself as “shy.”
\nBut I am 100%, absolutely an introvert.* Being around people all day wears me out. I struggle networking when I go to a conference or event where I don’t know anyone. Trying to talk to someone I don’t know at all can be paralyzing. After a full slate of morning meetings, I often need to go for a walk and decompress. I have no problem eating lunch by myself. Being in the middle of a large crowd can be overwhelming. And I need my alone time.
\nBecause of my job and the challenges I take on, I have to be an extrovert sometimes. I have to work at controlling my introverted nature. Every extrovert behavior I have is learned. I do a good job of hiding how uncomfortable I am in social situations, but “being an extrovert” exhausts me. And I have to recharge with some significant alone time.
\nI’ve come to accept that being an introvert is a big part of being me, so this week’s shirt celebrates being an introvert in the quietest way possible. “Introvert” is a subtle design positioned in the lower corner of the shirt, almost like it’s hiding on the periphery of a really crowded conference in a vast hotel ballroom. You can buy a copy on Threadless.
\n* INTJ on Myers-Briggs, to be precise.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-10-14T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/10/14/introvert.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/10/08/team-luther.html", "title": "16/52: Team Luther", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on October 8, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"16_95_theses.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/ac313f89a8.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 16.
\n500 years ago, on All Hallows’ Eve, Martin Luther hammered a list of 95 theses on the door of the cathedral in Wittenberg. He aimed to discuss reforming the church, but instead, started the Reformation and fragmented the Christian church.
\nI’m a big fan of Luther, and not just because I’m Lutheran.
\nLuther was a passionate communicator and he used the latest technology to share his message. The newly-invented printing press made it possible for his ideas to spread across Europe.
\n\n\n“Luther was a passionate communicator and he used the latest technology to share his message.”
\n
Luther focused on grace. The idea that we are all sinful and imperfect people and that we can do nothing to earn salvation. Salvation, instead, was given to us when Christ died on the cross for our sins. Today I look at the state of Christianity and I can’t help but think it’s time for another Reformation. One that focuses on love and reflects on what it means to be Christian — and to act like a Christian — in today’s world.
\nThis week’s shirt is Team Luther and features a “95” in blackletter-inspired* lettering. This is the perfect shirt for Lutherans who want to celebrate the Reformation in a really subtle way. Lutherans never want to talk about their faith, so with this shirt, if someone asks you what it means, you can then tell them about the Reformation and about being Lutheran. After all, they asked.
\nYou can buy Team Luther from my Threadless store. I recommend you buy it in red.**
\n* Blackletter is a type style commonly associated with medieval Germany. When I had this shirt idea, I thought I knew what blackletter numerals looked like. When I did my research, I discovered that I was completely wrong. So I drew what was in my head, and didn’t base it on a historical model like I had planned. Hence, “blackletter-inspired.”
\n** Red is the color of the Reformation, and the traditional color of doors in a Lutheran church.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-10-07T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/10/07/team-luther.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/10/01/happy-candy-day.html", "title": "15/52: Happy Candy Day", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on October 1, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"15_happy_candy_day.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/95cfac6cfe.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 15.
\nI’ll let you in on a little secret… I don’t really like Halloween. I’m sure I liked it when I was little, but as I got older, it never really meant anything to me. I don’t necessarily hate Halloween, but I am completely ambivalent about it.
\nMy kids and my wife, on the other hand, love Halloween. They dress up and go trick-or-treating, and I follow along, wearing some sports jersey or something, and pretending like it was a costume of some sort.
\nI wanted to design a shirt as part of the project to wear around with the kids while they trick-or-treat. But my initial sketches were terrible.
\nFinally, I asked myself what I liked about Halloween? The answer, embarrassingly, is candy. The stores are full of candy that you can’t get the rest of the year. And my favorite of the Halloween candy is candy corn.
\nSo celebrate candy — and candy corn — with my 15th shirt, Happy Candy Day. You can buy it on my Threadless store, and since it’s Fall, I’ve even made it available as a sweatshirt.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-09-30T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/09/30/happy-candy-day.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/09/24/combo-box.html", "title": "14/52: Combo Box", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on September 24, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"14_combo_box.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/b2b88b8bd8.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 14.
\nMy kids think that I’m a great artist. But most days, I wouldn’t call myself an artist. Designer, yes. Artist…. I’m not sure.
\nIt’s probably a hangup from my youth, but to me, artists use natural media. Paint and canvas. Ink and paper. I feel completely lost with a paintbrush in my hand. While I work out ideas in a sketchbook, my tool of choice is a computer. And to be honest, I’ve always felt that makes me less of an artist.
\nI’ve talked to many designers my age who feel the same way. But younger designers often have no issue with the distinction between natural media and computer-based creations. They’ve grown up with computers as just another tool that artists use. It’s all art to them.
\nTo complicate things further, as a designer in the business world, I’ve always been taught to base every aesthetic decision on a strategic need. Organizations struggle with subjective artistic decisions, but they love a problem solver. And so designers — like me — often downplay the “art” side of what we do in an effort to show the strategic value of design.
\nThis shirt project is the first thing that I’ve done in a while that feels like an art project. The tools I’m using are the same ones I use when I’m working with clients. The process I’m undergoing is no different than my normal design process. But it feels different.
\nMaybe it’s that I’m creating for myself, or how I’m presenting the shirt project. Perhaps it’s because I’m not trying to justify my art with a strategic foundation. Whatever the reason, I’m now sure that the difference between artist and designer has nothing to do with the tools, and everything to do with perception.
\nSo it’s possible my kids* are right…
\nThis week’s shirt is a little snippet of a computer interface expressing my uncomfortableness with the label of “artist.” You can purchase “Combo Box” at Threadless.
\n* My wife thinks I’m an artist, too. And she really didn’t like this shirt idea.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-09-23T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/09/23/combo-box.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/09/17/ampersand.html", "title": "13/52: Ampersand", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on September 17, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"13_ampersand.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/3789bfcee1.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 13.
\nI released a couple of free typefaces in the early days of Sketchbook B. But five years ago, I took a big step and released my first commercial typeface, Powerlane.
\nPowerlane is a massive typeface family. 20 different fonts. And when you count all of the letters and numbers, foreign characters and special OpenType alternates, the family has more than 8,000 glyphs.
\nI’m proud of Powerlane. I spent years designing Powerlane and learning all about the process of finalizing a commercial typeface. And even though I haven’t sold a ton of copies, I have sold copies on five continents — North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia — which I think is pretty amazing.
\nI’ve released four other commercial fonts since Powerlane: Valdes Clarendon, Power Grid 2.0, Intermodal and Saluda. You can buy all of them on Creative Market. Powerlane and Valdes Clarendon are available on MyFonts, too. You can check out all of my type designs on my Fonts page.
\nThis week’s shirt features my favorite character from Powerlane — the ampersand from Powerlane Outline. The shirt is available on Threadless in a range of colors.
\nAlso, a quick side note… With the release of the 13th shirt, I’m a quarter of the way through my 52 Shirts project. 39 to go.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-09-16T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/09/16/ampersand.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","Fonts","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/09/10/never-trust-a-storm-with.html", "title": "12/52: Never trust a storm with a friendly name", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on September 10, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"12_hurricane.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/aa40a0a161.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 12.
\nAs I write this, Hurricane Irma is about to tear through Florida after devastating the Caribbean. I live in South Carolina, and earlier this week, we were in the path of this beast of a hurricane. Gas stations ran out of fuel. Grocery stores rushed to stock enough bread and bottled water. Irma turned west and now, we’ll likely avoid a direct hit.
\nMy 5-year-old son wanted to know why hurricanes have names. I explained that every storm has a letter. And every year, there is a list of names that corresponds to each letter. The names alternate between male and female names. After a particularly damaging storm, that name is retired.*
\nBut I also think that we personify these storms because it’s somewhat comforting to give a friendly, familiar name to something so incredibly terrifying. Irma, Harvey, Katrina, Andrew, Hugo… These were monstrous, deadly destructive storms, but each of them with a friendly, approachable name. We talk about them as though they are our next door neighbor. And it seems to me that the friendlier the name, the more dangerous and unpredictable the storm is.
\n\n\n“But I also think that we personify these storms because it’s somewhat comforting to give a friendly, familiar name to something so incredibly terrifying.”
\n
So this week’s shirt is a reminder that no matter how friendly a storm name sounds, it’s still a dangerous force of nature. You can order “Never trust a storm with a friendly name” from my Threadless store. And stay safe out there.
\n* Bob was retired after the 1991 storm wrecked havoc in New England.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-09-09T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/09/09/never-trust-a-storm-with.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/09/03/team-rainbow-unicorn.html", "title": "11/52: Team Rainbow Unicorn", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on September 3, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"11_unicorn.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/eb7da140c0.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 11.
\nMy middle child, Jill, turns 10 this week. As part of my 52 Shirts project, I decided I would design a shirt for each child on their birthday.
\nIt was easy to choose what to design for Jill. The girl is obsessed with unicorns. So I designed a unicorn the way I would design a unicorn. Angular and modern.
\nTo be honest, it completely sucked.
\nAnd that’s when I had an epiphany. Instead of designing a shirt for Jill, I needed to design a shirt with Jill. I threw out my crappy unicorn design and started to talk to Jill about what she really wanted in a unicorn shirt. We sketched together at the dining room table. We talked about colors and style. She taught me all about “kawaii” style (which apparently is Japanese for cute). We drew different versions of kawaii unicorn eyes. And the end result — our “Team Rainbow Unicorn” shirt — is one of my favorite creations ever.
\n(One fun note, the horn has ten segments because she’s turning 10. That was my wife’s idea. This shirt is a complete team effort.)
\nI’ve always said that I don’t — that I can’t — design cute things. And yet, this unicorn is completely adorable. I could never design something like this on my own. I needed Jill’s help to break out of my rigid style. It’s just another reminder to me that I’m a better designer when I partner with other creative people.
\nThe “Team Rainbow Unicorn” shirt is available on Threadless in a variety of colors and styles. Hope you think it’s a cute as Jill and I do. And happy birthday, Jilly!
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-09-02T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/09/02/team-rainbow-unicorn.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/08/26/cursive.html", "title": "10/52: Cursive", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on August 26, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"10_cursive.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/8637556da6.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 10.
\nAfter I finished 2nd grade, we moved from North Carolina to Illinois. The move went smoothly, with one notable exception. In North Carolina, they taught cursive in 3rd grade. In Illinois, they taught cursive in 2nd grade. I didn’t know how to write in cursive, yet I was required to write everything in cursive in my new school.
\nMrs. Schmidt was nice and had a solution for this problem… I would learn cursive over the first two weeks of school. A couple times a day, I’d go over to a desk off to the side and do cursive worksheets. And it worked, kind of. I learned the basics of how to make the letterforms, but I never became comfortable. My cursive handwriting never became fluid or natural. It always looked like the writing of a 3rd grader.
\nEventually, I moved on from elementary school and my teachers no longer cared if I wrote in cursive. I settled on my current style — mostly block printing with some cursive connectors thrown in for speed. I became more comfortable, but I hated my handwriting.
\nWhen I was young, having to write handwritten notes to people always stressed me out because I thought people would judge my juvenile writing. I still don’t write long notes in greeting cards because it makes me anxious. In high school and college, I actively destroyed my signature and made it messier because I thought it looked “older.”
\n\n\n“I still don’t write long notes in greeting cards because it makes me anxious.”
\n
A few years ago, I discovered fountain pens — and better writing utensils. Writing with nice pens and pencils changed my writing. When I wrote with an extra fine nib, my handwriting became small and neat. And with a 1.1 mm stub nib, my handwriting was looser and more fluid. I still don’t love my handwriting, but I’m less embarrassed about writing notes to people.
\nThis week’s shirt is Cursive. And it’s my handwriting. I used a limited edition Blackwing Volume 73 pencil — one with a really soft lead. And I wrote the word cursive in my sketchbook several hundred times.* I eventually found one I liked to scan and convert.
\nCursive is available on my Threadless store in a range of lighter colors and several different styles and is discounted for the first week it’s on sale.
\n* Seriously… hundreds of times.
\n![\"A](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/8642360834.jpg\")
A couple of my cursive options.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-08-25T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/08/25/cursive.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/08/20/we-become-what-we-consume.html", "title": "9/52: We become what we consume", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on August 20, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"09_become_what_we_consume_thumbnail.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/a6faa8b47f.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the ninth design of fifty-two.
\nThe first reference to “You are what you eat” was in the 1860s. But today, I think it’s more accurate to say that in the age of the internet, we become what we consume. Our attitudes, our temperament and even our well-being is significantly influenced by what media we consume online.
\nI watched last weekend as the events in Charlottesville unfolded. And there were Nazis — Nazis! — marching with torches on a college campus. And then followed by more violence the next day and the death of a counter protester.
\nLook, I’m not going to blame the internet for Nazis. They existed long before the internet. But I think many of the young adults that showed up in Charlottesville were fueled and amplified by what they saw online. Or more precisely, what they chose to seek out online.
\nThe Nazis are an extreme example of this though. Today, I feel like all of us are shaped by the media we consume. If you only watch Fox News… CNN… conspiracy websites… Twitter… cat videos… hate-filled rhetoric… you slowly become what you consume.
\n\n\n“…having a well-rounded media diet makes us all better, happier and healthier people.”
\n
The internet is full of content. Funny and serious. Factual and false. Some articles and videos are thoughtful and well reasoned. Some content is shallow and inflammatory. I’m not saying you need to only watch serious, long form content from reputable sources. But I am saying that having a well-rounded media diet makes us all better, happier and healthier people.
\nThis week’s shirt is “We become what we consume.” And yes, the lettering is reversed and upside down on purpose. Our eye flips everything it sees.The brain then corrects it for us.
\n“We become what we consume” is available at Threadless in a variety of colors and styles.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-08-19T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/08/19/we-become-what-we-consume.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/08/13/rogue-teacher.html", "title": "08/52: Rogue Teacher", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on August 13, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"08_rogue_teacher.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/e5223588c5.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the eighth design of fifty-two.
\nSchool is starting back.
\nI’ve been lucky to have some amazing teachers through the years in a wide range of subjects and at pretty much every level from elementary school through college. Without exception, every impactful teacher I’ve had was a little unconventional in their teaching methods. They looked for the most powerful way to reach their students, even it meant pouring an absurd amount of time and energy into kids who — let’s be honest — probably didn’t appreciate it at that time.
\nThat was a simpler time. Before constant testing and obsessive parents.* It occurs to me that those great teachers — the ones who were just a little unconventional when I was in school — would be downright renegades in today’s education world.
\nSo to salute those great teachers, this week’s shirt is all about being a renegade in the classroom. A pirate flag for teachers that aren’t afraid to do whatever it takes to teach their students.
\nYou can purchase “Rogue Teacher” from my Threadless store in a wide variety of colors and styles. (You can even buy some Rogue Teacher lounge pants if you want them.)
\n* Yes, I know parents have always been obsessive, but today’s parents seem worse by historic standards.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-08-12T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/08/12/rogue-teacher.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/08/06/paper-airplane.html", "title": "07/52: Paper Airplane", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on August 6, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"07_paper_airplane.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/9640541aa5.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the seventh design of fifty-two.
\nSometime in late elementary school, browsing through a Waldenbooks* at the Fox Valley Mall, I stumbled upon a book about paper airplane design. 30 Designs for the Paper Pilot taught you how to build some (absurdly) complex paper airplanes.
\nThe author, Peter Vollheim, was a pilot and created airplanes using regular paper, card stock, index cards, business cards, straws and other common materials. He tested his designs with wind tunnels and then provided detailed instructions for how to build them at home. He got the most out of his materials and the paper airplanes he designed flew far and straight. I eventually purchased Vollheim’s two other books, 30 More Planes for the Paper Pilot and The Paper Ace.
\nAnd while these books helped me build some wicked paper airplanes, I think they heavily influenced my design style, too. Most people who are interested in paper folding start with origami — the art of paper folding. But while I played around with some simple origami, I was much more intrigued by the functionally of paper airplanes.
\nEarly in my design career, many of my creations contained interesting paper folding. Looking back, I can see the influence that Vollheim’s books had on my thought process. Even though they didn’t fly, my folded paper designs were absolutely intended to get the most possible out of a sheet of paper, just like Vollheim’s airplanes. ( I don’t fold paper as much as I used to… maybe it’s time to get back to my roots.)
\nI was disappointed — but not surprised — to find that Vollheim’s three books were out of print. And while you can still get used copies of the books on Amazon, I was delighted to discover Vollheim has a web site were you can still purchase all three books as a PDF. If you are interested in the aerodynamics of paper airplanes, you’ll love these books.
\nThis week’s shirt, Paper Airplane, is a symbol of my love for paper airplanes and a salute to the books that influenced me at a young age. You can purchase the shirt in a wide range of colors and styles from my Threadless shop.**
\n* Or maybe it was a B. Daltons. I miss mall book stores.
\n** Pretty much every color but white and orange.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-08-05T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/08/05/paper-airplane.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/07/30/copyright.html", "title": "06/52: Copyright 1975", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on July 30, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"06_copyright.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/deed2fe23e.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the sixth design of fifty-two.
\nThis week, in 1975, I was born. My birthday isn’t a momentous one this year. I’m just another year older and a little more gray.
\nI love when I was born — I got to see the advent of the personal computer, the growth of the internet, comic book movies that don’t suck, iPhones and digital cameras. But I also remember typewriters, card catalogs, Superfriends, rotary phones and working in a darkroom.
\nWhen I was younger, it was significant work and investment to share a creation. And copyright was one way that an artist protected that investment. Today, it’s simple for a creator to publish their own writing online, share thoughts on social media, sell music and even offer t-shirts that are printed on demand. And it’s easier than ever for others to steal your creations and profit off of them.
\nCopyright was relatively straightforward when I was born, but the changes in technology are forcing an evolution in how we look at intellectual property rights. Maybe copyright is like the technology of my youth — obsolete like a rotary phone? Or maybe it just needs to evolve to better protect artists in a digital age while preserving the freedom to create. Forty years from now, I imagine copyright law with be radically different.
\nThis week’s shirt is Copyright 1975 and you can buy one from Threadless. Of course, it only makes sense to purchase one if you were born in 1975.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-07-29T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/07/29/copyright.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/07/23/campfire.html", "title": "05/52: Campfire", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on July 23, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"05_campfire.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/7242f59a1d.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the fifth design of fifty-two.
\nSome of my happiest memories are at one, very specific place: Lutheridge, a camp in Arden, North Carolina.
\nAs a young child, I attended as a camper. I made lifelong friendships as a high school camper. And then, after my freshman year of college, I was beyond excited to be a counselor.
\nAnd promptly blew my knee out.*
\nMy summer ended very quickly. One week to be exact. I had to have reconstructive surgery on my right knee. I was devastated and heartbroken.
\nI returned the next summer and this time, made it through the summer unscathed. I had a great summer — a challenging summer — but an amazing time working with kids. But that was my last summer at Lutheridge. The following year, I worked as an orientation leader at the University of South Carolina and then, I graduated and entered the work world.
\nA couple of years ago, my girls started to attend Lutheridge as campers. And they fell in love with camp, just like I did when I was young. It was fun to see the camp experience through their eyes. To hear them talk and share their experiences.
\nThis summer, our entire family is headed to camp. My wife had never spent time at any summer camp and our youngest is too young for regular camp, so the three of us are heading to a program for families. The girls are doing their usual camp activities, but we’ll all be there at camp for an entire week. The whole crew is excited and I’m really looking forward to being a “camper” again.
\nI wanted to design a shirt for camp. Something that captured my love of Lutheridge and my history with the place. When I was young, I remember Lutheridge’s logo was a campfire.** It was emblazoned on more than one shirt I had growing up. So this week’s shirt is a stylized campfire, in honor of the camp that I love.
\nIf you have a memorable camp experience, at Lutheridge or anywhere else, Campfire is the shirt for you. You can get one at my Threadless store. My wife recommends the baseball t-shirt with green sleeves. It’s her favorite.
\n* It’s a little more complicated than that. I injured my knee during orientation during a game of elbow tag. Then finished off my ACL during the first week of camp with a musical, noncompetitive version of duck-duck-goose… on wet grass.
\n** The logo is actually still a campfire, but different than the one I remember…
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-07-22T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/07/22/campfire.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/07/16/instant.html", "title": "04/52: Instant", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on July 16, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"04_instant.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/883adcb85d.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the fourth design of fifty-two.
\nMy daughters got Fuji Instax cameras for Christmas. The idea of an instant print was a novelty to them.* We’ve documented their lives with digital cameras. We bought our first DSLR the month our oldest child was born so our kids have always been able to see pictures immediately after they are taken. But an instant print is different and they fell in love with taking pictures, trading shots and labeling them.** Photos have largely become digital things for this younger generation of kids. They didn’t grow up with shoeboxes full of prints and negatives. It was fun to see them interact with photos as physical objects.***
\nAs I looked at the stack of pictures they took, I noticed the familiar white frame of an instant print. There are a wide range of sizes and proportions of instant prints, but almost all of them share a similar, logical structure. A white frame around the top, outside edges and a wide bottom containing a packet of chemicals that develop the image. (The wide bottom also doubles as a place to caption your image.)
\nI guarantee you that the engineer that created the shape of the print had no idea that he was creating such an iconic shape. He was simply solving a problem. Yet, the iconic shape became so valuable, that when Polaroid declared bankruptcy, the shape, proportions and size of the most famous instant film print size — the Polaroid 600 — was part of the intellectual property that was sold to a holding company for licensing agreements.**** The design of the frame had more perceived value than the business they were in.
\nThis week’s shirt is an instant print frame. Just the frame and nothing in it. For me, the instant print frame serves as a reminder that in today’s digital world, tangible things still have magic.
\nYou can buy “Instant” on my Threadless store. It’s available is virtually every color they offer.
\n\n* I pondered the future of the instant print in a smartphone world in a post in 2008. Funny to see me describe how awful the first iPhone camera was. My iPhone 7+ camera is completely amazing.
\n** They were less enamored with having a limited number of shots and the cost of the film.
\n*** Now I desperately want an instant camera. Either the new Fujiflim Instax SQ10 or the Leica Sofort, which is a glorified Instax Mini 90, but with Leica style. And I’ve always wanted a Leica.
\n**** Which is why everyone who uses the instant print shape — including me — avoids using the exact proportions and size of an actual Polaroid print.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-07-15T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/07/15/instant.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/07/09/corona.html", "title": "03/52: Corona", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on July 9, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"03_corona.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/aa252ee83a.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the third design of fifty-two.
\nThis week’s shirt is pretty straightforward. On August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will move across the United States. It’s the first transcontinental solar eclipse since 1918. My hometown of Columbia, South Carolina is in the path of totality and will experience a total solar eclipse for 2:30 minutes. It’s the first time Columbia has experienced a total solar eclipse since 1970.*
\nI wanted to design a shirt to commemorate the occasion. I looked at a couple of different approaches, but settled pretty quickly on an abstract visual representation of the sun’s corona. During a total solar eclipse, you can directly observe the corona around the moon’s shadow. As an added bonus, the 21st is also our wedding anniversary, and I felt like the shape of the corona was slightly evocative of a wedding ring.
\nMy sketches and my first draft had more text in and around the corona, but I fell in love with just having the date positioned off to the side.
\nI originally planned to release this design the week of the eclipse, but I wanted to give people plenty of time to purchase it and have it in time for August 21. It’s available in a range of dark colors, including a really sweet looking black and gray baseball shirt.
\nYou can purchase “Corona” over at my Threadless store.
\nPurchase “Corona” on Threadless
\n* If you want to learn more about the solar eclipse, listen to episode 47 of Liftoff, a Relay FM podcast about space.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-07-08T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/07/08/corona.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/07/02/america-the-minimal.html", "title": "02/52: America the Minimal", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on July 2, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"02_america_minimal.png\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/66cf1370b7.jpg\")
Each week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the second design of fifty-two.
\nIn honor of the Fourth of July, I wanted to design a shirt that’s a little patriotic… with a twist. I wondered what the stars and stripes would look like if it had designed with modern design sensibilities and restrictions. Is it refined and simple? Can it be easily reproduced in small sizes? Will it work as a social media icon?
\nHow minimalist can you make the American flag and still evoke the feeling of the stars and stripes?
\nAnd so my second design is America the Minimal, a simple take on the stars and stripes. But what started as a funny little speculative redesign triggered some thoughts about redesigns, minimalism and more.
\nFirst some history about the American flag. I knew that the Betsy Ross origin story was widely considered a myth, but I didn’t know much about who was credited with designing the original U.S. flag. Turns out a guy named Francis Hopkinson is credited with the design of the flag and many other American symbols. He actually requested payment from the Congress in the form of a “quarter cask of wine” in exchange for designing the American flag, the Great Seal of the United States and other symbols. Long story short, he never got paid.*
\nThe current flag has been in use since 1960 and is actually the 27th version. The number of stars have changed as states have been added. In early years, there was no prescribed structure for the stars so it varied based on who was sewing the flag. Only the number of stars was mandated. (The original stars had six points, but it turns out five-pointed stars are easier to produce.)
\nAs I sought to create a minimalist version of the U.S. Flag, I started with the stripes. My first drafts had four stripes, but that didn’t look quite right. The regular American flag has an odd number of stripes and the top and bottom stripes are both red. Three stripes were too few. And while both five and seven stripes worked nicely, I eventually settled on five stripes for my design.
\nThe stars were a challenge because they don’t work well at small sizes. My first thought was to use one big star in the blue field, but a single star was too prominent. (Plus, it looks like the Liberian flag.) As I was driving home one afternoon, I noticed that when you look at a flag flying at a distance, the stars almost disappear into the blue field. And after experimenting for a little bit, I came to the conclusion that maybe the best solution to keep things minimal was to eliminate the stars and go with a plain blue field.
\nAnd what I ended up with is a minimalist version of the American flag with five stripes and a plain blue field. I think it successfully feels like a more simple version of the American flag and not the flag for another country.
\nAs I wrapped up the shirt design, a couple of lessons resonated with me.
\nFirst, it would be impossible to redesign the American flag in today’s environment. As I focused on designing a “new” flag, it occurred to me how frustrating this process would be. Every single item I removed or changed had meaning. And as I changed those things, every alternation would be scrutinized. I can hear the comments now…
\nWhy aren’t there 13 stripes? You know, the ones that stood for the 13 original colonies. Do you no longer care about history? And where are the stars? Removing the stars is a sign that you care more about the federal government than the states. This is clearly the work of socialism! This is clearly the work of facism!
\nNo one would be happy. And as I thought about it, redesigning the American flag, or any U.S. political symbol, has to rank as one of the worst, most impossible jobs in the design world. Which is why the flag won’t ever change. (I might argue that one reason Puerto Rico won’t become a state is that there are people who would be uncomfortable adding a 51st star.)
\nBut here’s the bigger takeaway for me… Sometimes, minimalist solutions are unnecessarily limiting. In this case, it was a fun exercise, but every revision took away meaning. The 13 stripes do stand for the 13 original colonies. The 50 stars stand for each of the states in the union. Slavishly removing those things in an effort to make it more simple destroys the meaning of the symbol. And the quest to be minimal adds an additional challenge: with every detail you remove, the design becomes less unique. The “new” flag looks more like other country and state flags. One benefit of more complex designs is that they often seem more original than simpler ones.
\nGet your America the Minimal shirt over at my Threadless store. I’ve included kids shirts for this week and a long sleeve “baseball” tee. Remember that for the first week a new design is on sale, the price is discounted, so get your shirt this week and save some money.
\nBuy “America the Minimal” on Threadless
\nOne additional note. I realize that it’s too late to order shirts for the 4th of July this year. For future seasonal shirts, I’ll release them earlier so you’ll be able to get them in time.
\n* That’s what you get for doing spec work, I guess… even in the 1790s.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-07-01T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/07/01/america-the-minimal.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/06/25/designasaur.html", "title": "01/52: Designasaur", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on June 25, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"01/52:](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/96e2afdc83.jpg\")
01/52: Designasaur
\nEach week for a year, I’m going to be designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the first design of fifty-two.
\nAlmost 20 years ago, I attended a lecture at the University of South Carolina School of Art hosted by the Columbia Communicating Arts Society. I was a young designer and trying hard to network with other designers and CCAS was the hub of the Columbia creative community at the time. The speaker was a designer from Atlanta, Bob Wages from Wages Design. Like most designers who came to speak at events like this, Bob showed his work and talked about his creative process. I distinctly remember him mixing in a fair amount of career and business advice, giving tips about how small the design world was and how important it was to be fair to everyone you worked with. But one offhand comment has stuck with me since that lecture…
\nBob Wages introduced me to the concept of the “designasaur.”
\nA designasaur is a designer that never evolved. Someone who wouldn’t or couldn’t adopt new technologies or new styles. A creative who hasn’t embraced the changing world and risks “extinction.”
\nSince the advent of desktop publishing and the creation of the internet, the design industry has grown and changed in amazing and unbelievable ways. Technology continues to evolve at an absurdly rapid pace. It’s hard — maybe impossible — to keep up with it all. The struggle to figure out and incorporate new tools and trends is constant. And it feels sometimes like extinction is just around the corner.
\nAlmost two decades later, I realize that all my side projects have been about continuing to grow as a designer and to avoid becoming a designasaur. Trying out new challenges and delaying creative extinction as long as I can. I figured the perfect shirt to kick off my new project was a designasaur shirt.
\nI sketched out my designsaur* over the course of a couple of days in pencil. Once I’d refined the sketch, I took a photograph of it with my iPhone and then reconstructed it in Illustrator on my Mac. This is a pretty normal workflow for me and that familiarity actually bothered me a little. For this new side project, should I put more restrictions on the production process? Should I only use non-Adobe apps like Affinity Designer? Should I actually use the sketch instead of rebuilding it in a vector format? In the end, I decided that the challenges of production mattered less to me than the process of creation. I’m okay relying on more comfortable production processes, especially at the beginning of this project. I hope to extend a little more out of my comfort level on the production process as the project continues.
\nIf you want a Designasaur t-shirt of your own, head over to my Threadless store and order one. It’s available in a bunch of colors and in three different styles: a unisex classic t-shirt, a men’s tri-blend shirt and a women’s tri-blend shirt**. (And as a bonus, for the first week a new shirt design is available, the price will be discounted.)
\nIf you are interested in the project and like the shirts, please follow along and share on social media. Let me know what you think. You can reach out on Twitter and Micro.Blog.
\nBuy “Designasuar” on Threadless
\n* My 9-year-old says I should name him Bob. Or Inky.
\n** It’s my wife’s favorite kind of t-shirt.
Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-06-24T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/06/24/designasaur.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] }, { "id": "http://bobwertz.micro.blog/2017/06/25/fiftytwo-shirts.html", "title": "Fifty-two shirts", "content_html": "This post was originally posted on June 25, 2017 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.
\n![\"\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/67587/2026/71bd3b5b38.jpg\")
I was sitting in a coffee shop, hyped up on way too much caffeine. I’d taken the day off to spend some time thinking about what I wanted to do with Sketchbook B for the next year. What side projects did I want to tackle?
\nI pulled out my new sketchbook, a massive Leuchtturm 1917 Master Slim that I purchased at the Atlanta Pen Show. I’ve been working on a new typeface for the last year or so and I intended to make some progress. But as started to sketch, I realized that most of my recent sketchbooks are filled with notes and smaller, less ambitious doodles. I struggled to fill the (admittedly massive) pages and this bothered me. As I sat there sketching, trying to clear the cobwebs off my creativity, I drew a simple little doodle of a coffee cup and thought, that’d look good on a shirt. And for whatever reason, that opened the floodgates.
\nSo there, in the middle of the Wired Goat in Chapin, I decided on my next project. I quickly started working out the details. Researching production options. Sketching ideas. I continued to work on the concept for the next couple months. And now, I’m finally ready to launch my new side project…
\nI’m going to design a new shirt every week for a year.
\nI’ll post a new shirt for purchase on Sundays with different design styles and content each week. One week, it might be something silly. Another week, it could be an invented restaurant or coffee shop. A fake band. Something seasonal. Each week will be different, but every Sunday, there will be a new shirt inspired by the world around me.
\nEvery design will be accompanied by a blog post explaining the story behind the design. The post is a major part of the project. I’m looking forward to writing about my creations as much as I am designing them. My hope is that these will be more personal than my usual posts. I want to focus on the thoughts behind the design, my creative process and reflect about my experiences as a designer.
\nThe shirt sketch that sparked this project was completely random, but the more I thought about it, designing shirts was the perfect challenge. I wanted to create something tangible. I didn’t want to just build an image for sharing on social media. I needed a challenge that would give me a defined canvas and a set of restrictions.
\nI briefly considered designing coffee mugs instead of shirts. I love coffee and hot tea. And the idea came to me in a coffee shop. But what would I do with 52 mugs? My kitchen cabinets aren’t big enough. And while 52 shirts are a lot, too, I don’t have to order all the shirts for me. I can order shirts for my wife and my kids. Everyone loves shirts.
\nI decided to use an on-demand service for printing my shirts. All the shirts will be available on my new Sketchbook B Threadless store. There are numerous on-demand shirt printing services and they are all very similar. After (way too much) research, Threadless seemed like the best storefront for the project I wanted to create.
\nOne of the benefits of on-demand, direct-to-garmet printing is that each shirt design can be available in a range of colors and shirt types. Every design will come in three styles: a lower cost classic t-shirt, a super soft men’s tri-blend shirt, and a women’s tri-blend shirt. I’ll also offer other versions when they make sense… long sleeves, kids shirts, sweatshirts and more.
\nI’ll be honest, I don’t expect to sell a lot of shirts. Some of my designs may have broad appeal, but a couple will probably just appeal to me. And that’s okay. I’m not doing this to make a ton of money. It’s more about the creative process.
\nI’m excited about the project. I’m sketching more than I have in years. I’ve already got a rough schedule for the next couple months and literally hundreds of concepts in my sketchbook waiting to be refined. And in addition to the shirts themselves, I’ve got some ideas with what to do at the end of the project with my collection of 52 shirts. I’m looking forward to where the project takes me.
\nThe first shirt in the series, Designasaur, is available at my Threadless store. The design was inspired by a lecture I attended almost 20 years ago… a lecture I now realize still influences my outlook on things today.
\nIf you are interested in the project and like the shirts, please follow along and share on social media. Let me know what you think. You can reach out on Twitter or Micro.Blog.
\nBob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.
\n", "date_published": "2017-06-24T20:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://bobwertz.com/2017/06/24/fiftytwo-shirts.html", "tags": ["Long Posts","Reposted","52 Shirts"] } ] }