Class of 2020 Graduation T-Shirt
DURATION: 6 months
OBJECTIVE: My task was to design a T-shirt logo for the 2020 Graduating Class at California State University, Chico.
BACKGROUND: Every year, the CSU, Chico commissions student Graphic Design Interns to create a logo for the graduating class. The hope is that each year the student interns will make a design that symbolically encapsulates their experience at CSU, Chico. The creek that runs through campus is one of the first things that I saw on my tour of CSU, Chico that made me want to attend the University. Something about the nature of the creek gave me a sense of calmness in an otherwise uncertain and anxious time. After a couple of years attending CSU, Chico, I realized that the creek was somewhat symbolic of life. A creek or river may take unexpected turns or branch off. One may also run into some blockages along the way, but the creek moves ever forward, just like someone walking the path of life.
RESEARCH: I first had to find something about CSU, Chico that I wanted to focus my design around. It did not take a long stroll around campus to decide that I wanted to do something with the creek. I then had to decide how to portray the creek in my design. After looking at several websites (dribbble, Behance, Instagram, etc.) and design books for inspiration,
I decided that a hand-lettered script logo seemed to be the best option for my portrayal of the creek. I then watched several tutorials on how to start the process of doing a custom hand-lettered logo. I also watched several tutorials about different ways to use the tools in Adobe Illustrator and how to apply different textures or “distress” to the logo in Photoshop.
STRATEGY: I began by drawing out what I envisioned as a creek flowing through or contouring to the letter forms of “Chico State”. It took me several cycles of drawing the logo out, converting it into a more “smooth” vector shape in Illustrator and then tracing over those vectors to add or change the logo with a pencil yet again. I used a light box to do the tracing and the pen tool in Illustrator to copy and modify the logo. In this process, I realized that swashes and ornamentations of the letter forms themselves could convey the idea of the twists and turns of a creek instead of blatant shapes around the letters. Once the shapes and letter forms in the logo were set to my liking, I decided to apply some distress to show the leaves and ruggedness that come with the creek and nature as a whole. I felt this approach fully encapsulated the beauty of nature in CSU, Chico while also alluding to the symbol of the path of life.
Rough Drafts
The Final Design
CHALLENGES: My first iterations were messy and the shapes I used to show the idea of a creek were too blatant. I feel that the biggest challenge was finding a way to symbolize the curves and fluidity of the creek or the path of life in a subtle manner. I also felt it quite hard to be accurate when hand drawing letters, because even a slight error in a letter form can make the typography look disastrous. I especially had trouble deciding how to connect “Class of 2020” with “Chico State”. Once I had the design put into Illustrator, I often struggled with using the Pen and Bézier tools when trying to get the swashes just right for my design, however, this was remedied after watching several tutorials. I feel that this project really built up my skills as a designer because it strengthened my ability to research topics, use software and create artistic designs with my own hand.
