Icebreaker T-shirt Contest

Hey Guys!

So as promised (I know you were sitting on the edge of your seats...) here's the reason for my recent endeavors in graphic design:

Icebreaker is an awesome New Zealand brand that brings the world quality adventure wear in the form of Merino wool apparel. And they are currently running a t-shirt design contest. Basically, create your own graphic for one of their summer t-shirts and if it is chosen, you win $1,500NZD worth of Icebreaker gear. A great chance to let some creativity flow, and who knows? Perhaps finally get recognized for your deeply buried artistic talents? Although you'll be slimming my chances for the win, I urge you to give it a try!

Just go to Icebreaker's T-shirt Challenge page. When you select "Submit a Design", you'll see this:

via Icebreaker

So I'll mention now, in case it wasn't obvious, I entered this contest. I thought- no problem! I have heaps of ideas for t-shirt designs. I'll just sketch a few out and...

Oh. Sketching with pen and paper is all good until you realize the medium is a digital t-shirt (above), none of which are white! So how to get this sketch of mine from my head, to paper, to digital shirt?

(Insider secret: I may have a blog, but that's as tech-savvy as I get. And I get several emails each month from people offering to help me "fix" my blog, because it's so basic and old fashioned. [Insider secret inside the insider secret: I will take you up on your offer to fix my blog when your offer is free.])

I realized keeping the design really simple would be part of the key. And I decided to go with something that's on my mind. 

There's this one jump in town that's been my nemesis for about 2 weeks. I've done it, but it scares me, and I crashed once. So I decided to draw myself high in the air, how I imagine it will go when I've done it 100 times.

Thats it. All the artistic skills I've got. You ready to hire me, Icebreaker?

Ok great. So I've put Sharpie to paper. Now how do I get it on to the computer with no scanner, and how do I turn the background blue or green or purple?

All of these things took a lot of learning about computers. I downloaded a free graphic design program called Pixlr. I spent hours playing around with it yesterday, as you saw with the mutilated wedding photos. Unfortunately, I don't think our sustainable, homegrown NZ apparel company in question is looking for artwork á la "Biker Grunge":

The rules to the contest are simple:
- The artwork must be your own
- There must not be more than 3 colors in the design.

At first I tried to color match the background by "eyeballing it" and made it a bit stylized.

I didn't think it was bad, but put it on the tshirt:

Hm, maybe not.

So I spent some more time playing around and did the best I could to color match the background. It's a long story and I won't bore you, but I ended up deciding my biker should't be so dark. So I went this direction:

Which I liked for about 30 minutes. Then the white outline drove me nuts, and I decided the Icebreaker logo in the corner was too much and if they actually liked my novice design, they could put a more flash logo anywhere they like.

Then I was inspired to make the whole thing white. A little more airy feel to the bike in the air (or something). In the end, the simplicity worked for me, and this is what I submitted:

Before you go complimenting me (oh, you weren't going to??) here's a look at the competition:

via Icebreaker

Sooo.... you know. But I had a lot of fun with creative process, and I urge you to give it a try too. I know one of you out there will have the proper computer skills to make something great. And my finder's fee for this contest is you only give me half of your $1500 winnings! (This is a bad joke. Please go! Win!) The contest closes on October 8.

Lastly, if you haven't got the time to design an awesome t-shirt of your own, you can at least vote for your favorite here below. You won't find my design because these are the finalists (I believe) from the last contest. But hey, once again, you could win free stuff!

Click me to VOTE.