This is our first Inside the Design post where we will explain how Kafkacotton takes ideas and turns them into (hopefully great) shirts. Let me know what you think!
Background
In late September 2009, I had just finished rereading Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22″ and wanted to pull it into my social life. Reading is normally a private pleasure but I wanted to talk and laugh about the book with other people. Instead of randomly asking everyone, “Do you like Catch 22?” I realized a shirt would do the job much better. So began Kafkacotton.
I started brainstorming ideas and quickly settled on “Yossarian!!!(?)!” which is what Colonel Cathcart frantically scribbles on his memo pad after realizing Yossarians were “multiplying like hobgoblins.” I liked it because it was simple, mentions the main character, and funny which matches the overall tone of the novel.
I had some initial thoughts about including a hand holding a pen or the lines of the memo pad. Once I got into the design, though, it became clear less was more.
Step 1 – Write
I was in Madison, Wisconsin at the time and working out of the University of Wisconsin’s College Library. This place was open 24 hours a day and the staff had given me a week-long wifi guest pass. Perfect place to work.
For the foundation of the design, I wanted to use actual handwriting instead of a handwriting font. This was a natural decision for me – I had done the same thing in high school for my band’s album cover.
I used a notepad from the Savannah College of Art and Design’s 2008 Game Development Conference in Atlanta. It had good thick, white, unlined paper. For a pen, I used heavy black fountain pen I picked up while working at IBM Singapore.
The writing had to capture Colonel Cathcart’s fear and paranoia, so I got into character and started heavily, loudly scribbling.
Over and over.
People started to stare.
Step 2 – Scan
The library also had some high-quality photocopiers that scanned to email. So scan to email I did.
Step 3 – Select, Isolate, and Combine
I wanted to combine the best elements to create a final, composite design so I hunted though the scans and picked out my favorite characters.
Lots and lots of tweaking ensued. I spent a long time selecting the right “Y” and resizing and rotating it into position. Notice how the left parentheses has been swapped out and the right one has been rotated counter-clockwise a bit.
More trial, error, and tweaking for the double underlines.
Here’s the final image in Paint.net. It took 20 or so layers to get there.
Step 4 – Vectorize
At this point, the design wasn’t nearly detailed enough to print. It needed to be turned from a raster into a vector or, in other words, from pixels into shapes.
Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard for vectorizing. Into Illustrator it went.
I tweaked the Live Trace setting to get the look and feel just right.
Finally, the design was colored white and…
Step 5 – Printed!
After three weeks, we’ve mailed our “Yossarian!!!(?)!” shirts all over the US and Canada and as far as the UK, Australia, Belgium, India, Poland, and the Czech Republic.
Yossarian Lives!
