04/52: Instant

7/15/17 • 3 min read

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.

The power of a tangible object

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.

My 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.***

As 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.)

I 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.

This 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.

You can buy “Instant” on my Threadless store. It’s available is virtually every color they offer.

Buy “Instant” at Threadless

* 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.

** They were less enamored with having a limited number of shots and the cost of the film.

*** 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.

**** Which is why everyone who uses the instant print shape — including me — avoids using the exact proportions and size of an actual Polaroid print.

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.

03/52: Corona

7/8/17 • 2 min read

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.

Celebrating a total solar eclipse this August

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.

This 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.*

I 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.

My 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.

I 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.

You can purchase “Corona” over at my Threadless store.

Purchase “Corona” on Threadless

* If you want to learn more about the solar eclipse, listen to episode 47 of Liftoff, a Relay FM podcast about space.

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.

02/52: America the Minimal

7/1/17 • 5 min read

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.

A simple twist on the stars and stripes

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.

In 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?

How minimalist can you make the American flag and still evoke the feeling of the stars and stripes?

And 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.

First 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.*

The 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.)

As 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.

The 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.

And 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.

As I wrapped up the shirt design, a couple of lessons resonated with me.

First, 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…

Why 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!

No 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.)

But 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.

Get 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.

Buy “America the Minimal” on Threadless

One 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.

* That’s what you get for doing spec work, I guess… even in the 1790s.

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.

Fifty-two shirts

6/24/17 • 5 min read

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.

One shirt a week for an entire year

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?

I 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.

So 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…

I’m going to design a new shirt every week for a year.

I’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.

Every 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.

So why shirts?

The 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.

I 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.

I 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.

One 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.

I’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.

I’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.

The 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.

If 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.

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.

01/52: Designasaur

6/24/17 • 4 min read

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.

A new side project to postpone creative extinction.

01/52: Designasaur

Each 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.

Almost 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…

Bob Wages introduced me to the concept of the “designasaur.”

A 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.”

Since 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.

Almost 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.

I 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.

If 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.)

If 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.

Buy “Designasuar” on Threadless

* My 9-year-old says I should name him Bob. Or Inky.
** 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.