Anatomy of a T-shirt

Ok, so I may have my priorities all screwed up, but when you've been working so hard for so long and waiting so patiently for what seems like forever, I tend to go overboard on unimportant things.  So when I bumped the idea off my wife about doing some boat t-shirts I was a little nervous.  Its not that she didn't want "crew" t-shirts, she just hates spending money on nonessential items. But when you think about it, everybody needs t-shirts and I go through them very quickly - mine get dirty and messed up very quickly because its all I wear.  Of course when it came right down to it, I couldn't just order different sizes of white t-shirts, my wife insisted on pink ones for herself.

Perfect location

So when it came time to designing t-shirts with our boat name and logo on it, I couldn't wait to get started.  First of all I needed something to go on the front pocket area.  I at least needed the name of the boat and probably the word "crew" in that area.  I figured every shirt can be labeled "crew" because that's what we all are - and plus, it just keeps the cost down.  But when it came to a picture of our boat, I really wanted something simple, but not necessarily two dimensional.  I've seen some t-shirts that use a simple profile with lines that gives the impression of a sailboat, and those look cool.  But I wanted something that was a little different and that showed the double hulls of a catamaran.  I began by running through all of my pictures of sailing Venezia's  that I had saved on my computer (since ours is still on hard ground next to a building.)   I decided on one I thought would look good for the purpose, and began cropping and modifying.  

The picture I began with

After cropping

Final rendering after tracing it, removing the original imagery, and adding my hardtop and solar rack - simple but effective.  I also use this image for my blog's favicon

From here, you just add in your text and save the file.  But for the back-side, I wanted our logo and our web address.  The only question is whether or not we'd go with black and white or color.  This sounds like a no-brainer, but when the t-shirt company charges for each color in the picture, charges can start adding up quick.  In the end, we decided on b/w, but after receiving the t-shirts, the end product didn't come out enough like what was approved.  After notifying the company (we used the guys over at www.Rushordertees.com - awesome to work with) they quickly offered us a great price to re-do the t-shirts in color with only a modest increase in cost - basically giving us the first order for free.  The final t-shirts done in color are awesome and we couldn't be happier.

Tami assumes the position and displays the back-side