For my series of 10 illustrations I created designs intended for printing on t-shirts to promote the Alpine Club at CU and the climbing areas we visit. The Alpine Club is a a student run organization dedicated to bringing together climbers of all experiences and abilities to explore new areas and cultivate a sense of community. We run weekend climbing trips to areas all over Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico, with occasional trips throughout the country. I am currently the vice president of the Alpine Club, and we’re facing a serious problem: we’ve run out of t-shirts. I created designs for shirts that promote both the Club generally, as well as the places the Club travels to. The destinations I’ve included are Indian Creek: a desert crack climbing paradise, Shelf Road: incredible limestone sport climbing, Devil’s Tower: a volcanic monolith in the middle of Wyoming nowhere, Ouray: the largest ice climbing park in North America, Vedauwoo: a sharp suffer-fest of granite off-widths, Wild Iris: Wyoming limestone pockets as far as the eye can see, and Lake Powell: the Club’s end-of-year houseboat trip filled with dancing and cliff-jumping. For each of these places I created a line drawing of a classic climb or formation in the area, and used color schemes that reflect the local rock composition. For the general Alpine Club shirts I used illustrator’s trace function to generate line art of various pieces of climbing gear, and I used starkly contrasting colors to create eye catching designs. One last shirt I designed is for a new program we’ve started at Alpine Club: Alpine Fit. It involves following a training program designed by legendary alpinist Steve House. A photo of him doing a one arm pull up on ice tools inspired the sketch on the Alpine Fit shirt.
My original sketches for the ideation portion of this assignment were not adequate for scanning and using as a design for a t-shirt, but they did inform my final sketches. I’ve posted both on this documentation site. I’ve tried to limit the number of colors used in designs, as it’s typically more expensive to print multiple colors on a shirt. But I want these designs to look good, so some shirts use more where I feel the cost is justified. I’ve also posted the variations assignment from lab 3/4, but I didn’t want to fill the outlines of my sketches, I wanted them to stand out on a solid color. I also used a repeating motif of a sheared rectangle and a bar of color behind the text in many of the designs, in an effort to create a sense that the designs are part of a series. Below are my designs, enjoy!
Final Sketches
Original Sketches
Mind Map
Lab 3/4 Variants
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