Photo credit: Daniel.Lam

Well even though I designed the shirt to go with the Retro Jordan 3′s a year ago. I still remember what brought me to the final design you now see on the soon-to-be-for-sale tees. I always say this, but in the sneaker culture there are so many variations of sneaker related tees that it’s difficult to find the balance of relevancy, creativity, consumer appeal, and current trends a shirts design. I think I speak for all of use sneaker type designers (customizers, web and graphic designers, and clothing and accessory designers) when I say that the best thing we can contribute to the sneaker biz is first being the person we sell to. A lot of us are able to  find the balance I spoke of and create great designs becuase we’re not just selling something to people who like sneakers. We’re selling you something we’d buy ourselves (and if no other brand is, I am).

So as a usual a part of my design process I began sketching out ideas as they came to me. As you would imagine, one of the first thoughts I had was something elephant related since the shoes feature elephant print [I won't go into the fact that the print is continuously called cement print when cement print is actually a whole other thing]. Elephants make me think of the circus so, that theme became a part of the brainstorming. This is a bad sketch (most of my sketches are), but I think the elephant was supposed to be on a ball or something circus-like. I honestly don’t remember the exact direction of this particular drawing or why he’s in a circle.

I was thinking “lets make an elephant Jordan-type figure.” Mr. Elephant (why does everything have to have a name?) was gonna be Mars Blackmon/Jumpman which would have fit in with the original Tecknicolor logo which is now Sheepy as Mars. I was dead set on having his trunk look similar to Jordans arm in the famous free-throw-line-dunk. However, after thinking this concept through I realized I’ve seen way too many characters mimic Jordan poses, including in my own brand. I also hadn’t totally abandoned the circus concept. His ears are unusually big for a reason and if you can read the words at the top, they’re from a related song to an elephant that has big ears.

I really loved that phrase, so I decided to try and work into the design somehow. I’m not the best and incorporating typography into designs. I want to be, but I’m just not. I was actually stuck on this particular style of the design for a really long time. However, in my usual design process I woke up in the middle of the night with what I felt like was a much better idea and spin on the same general theme.

I send and resend these pics to my team of people who are totally unaware that they’re working for me for free and get feedback until I finally get something that I think is a good balance of me and something other people can appreciate. So as I’m sure you’ve guessed this is the design I woke up in the middle of the night for. I sent it to the peeps and got the type of feedback I was looking for (actually one of them hates the circus, so they were ignored) and this, the first design of the 3 three’s tees package, was officially born.

I hope you enjoyed yourself on this Tecknicolor journey of design. Until next time, good night and good luck (sorry, I say things that don’t matter or make sense).