Welcome Week T-Shirt
A fun, geometric t-shirt design that captures current streetwear trends and appeals to diverse student population!
Organization
The Wisconsin Union (Terrace Takeover & Sunburst Festival)
Objective
To create a 1-color, t-shirt design for Fall 2025 Welcome Week that, because it will be available for free to all students, appeals to a diverse student population while incorporating the Wisconsin Union Chairback and year.
Deliverables
T-shirt Graphic; 1-color (10” x 12”)
Mockup for production
Software
Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop
Year
2025
Apparel design continues to be some of my favorite type of design work, especially since you get to see your work walking around out in the world! When designing this t-shirt, I wanted to play into the streetwear vibe we are seeing trending right now, and a lot of times this consists of bold shapes, bright colors, and lots of texture. Since this design needed to stick to 1-color, I focused on adding visual interest with shapes and texture, while staying within a grid.
Starting with the concepting…
In Illustrator is where I focused on really refining the concept. I was not quite sure how I wanted the shapes to come together — if there would be gaps or if they would sit flush against one another. By first creating my grid, I could then draw out my 1x1 unit or 1x2 unit shapes and begin laying them out. It was super important that the shapes fit exactly into these dimensions or the grid would fall apart and look sloppy.
Moving it to Illustrator…
Then adding the COLOR!
The final part of this process is where the design really came to life — adding the color! I love grabbing inspiration from pop-culture and current fashion trends, especially when it comes to color combos. When designing this, I was noticing a lot of organic colors, along with pops of pink and green. I created a few different color variations for discussion and we ended up leaning towards to green design! The color combo stays close to the Wisconsin Union brand, while bringing a vintage energy to the very modern geometric layout.
