In several of the jobs that I have held over the years, I have been put in a creative graphics design role. Not as my primary job, but as part of the "utility intern" I always seemed to become. I guess they saw some sort of creative eye (at least, as creative as engineers get).

Now that I am focusing more and more on music and engineering, I need to scratch my design itch now and again on my own time. Earlier this month, I created three designs for custom t-shirts I could wear out dancing. 

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Here, I've taken the toothpaste brand Colgate and turned it into Colgada, a tango move involving spinning both your partner and yourself on one axis. It looks a bit like a spinning V, with both dancers pivoting at roughly the same point on the floor.

{photo href=’http://www.flickr.com/photos/chancesend/431085074/’ src=’http://farm1.static.flickr.com/184/431085074_af100343a7_m.jpg’ title=’Absolut Fusion custom tango t-shirt’ caption=’Absolut Fusion custom tango t-shirt’}

I took the ubiquitous look of the Absolut Vodka advertisements, and turned it into Absolut Fusion. Dancing fusion is taking little bits of Tango, Swing and Blues and throwing them all in the same song. I hear there's actually a Fusion dance night in Portland OR – I'd love to go to that, if only I lived in the area!

{photo href=’http://www.flickr.com/photos/chancesend/431085140/’ src=’http://farm1.static.flickr.com/166/431085140_01648333ca_m.jpg’ title=’Neotango custom tango t-shirt’ caption=’Neotango custom tango t-shirt’}

This one was perhaps a bit too subtle. I took the Nintendo logo and substituted a few letters to get Neotango, which is a reference to a new style of tango music combining electronic productions with tango instrumentation. I'm actually working on a couple of neotango songs myself, for the next album.

This isn't the first time I have created custom dance-based t-shirts. Last year I created a set of three tango-influenced T-shirts.

{photo href=’http://www.flickr.com/photos/chancesend/431085325/’ src=’http://farm1.static.flickr.com/145/431085325_a77eae8f89_m.jpg’ title=’Nuevo Inside custom tango t-shirt’ caption=’Nuevo Inside custom tango t-shirt’}

This was my first t-shirt design I did. Again, another tango reference – this time, referring to a new style of tango dancing that is becoming popular, especially among younger dancers.

{photo href=’http://www.flickr.com/photos/chancesend/431085379/’ src=’http://farm1.static.flickr.com/154/431085379_6fc01d3f6b_m.jpg’ title=’Tango Barbara custom tango t-shirt’ caption=’Nuevo Inside custom tango t-shirt’}

Probably my least favorite of the collection. I tried to make a semi-cool logo for Santa Barbara Tango, but it ended up taking on a Black Panther context that I didn't quite catch while I was creating it. 

{photo href=’http://www.flickr.com/photos/chancesend/431085052/’ src=’http://farm1.static.flickr.com/175/431085052_38272ae14c_m.jpg’ title=’Swango custom tango t-shirt’ caption=’Swango custom tango t-shirt’}

Yet another fusion-style dance t-shirt. This one wasn't based off any existing logo – I just wanted to create a logo from scratch that highlighted the SWing in swango. Truth be told, I am starting to hate the word, but the term is fairly well-recognized within the dance community.

I think my favorite flow is to take a well-known icon, symbol or brand, and parody it to fit a niche market, such as tango dancers. Here are a couple other designs I plan on printing. 

{photo href=’http://www.flickr.com/photos/chancesend/431121763/’ src=’http://farm1.static.flickr.com/176/431121763_25feb70203_m.jpg’ title=’Gancho King t-shirt idea’ caption=’Gancho King t-shirt idea’}

I'm fairly excited about getting this one printed. The "Gancho" took me quite awhile to do, though it still needs some tweaking. For those not in-the-know, a gancho is another tango move. Look it up. 

{photo href=’http://www.flickr.com/photos/chancesend/431121798/’ src=’http://farm1.static.flickr.com/147/431121798_22e29d688a_m.jpg’ title=’Tango Police t-shirt idea’ caption=’Tango Police t-shirt idea’}

Thanks to some Santa Barbara dancers for help on this idea (Lora, Nathan, and Karen). It's pretty bland right now, but fairly true to the original Monopoly source.

 

I print all of my designs at Printfection , which has much better print quality than the more popular Cafepress. I have printed with other companies in the past, but Printfection's quality has convinced me to settle with them.

For those wondering how I make my designs, I create all my t-shirts as vector art in Illustrator. For logos, I either find vector sources on the internet (it helps to search for 'eps' when looking for vector logos – it's surprising all the odd places original source art can be found), or I use jpeg images as a template to re-construct the logo myself.

Fonts used in logos are also easy to find by searching for something like 'colgate font'. And if the font isn't available, I try to construct letters on my own. Finally, I take the finished image and save it as a high-resolution JPEG (as little compression as possible, and at least 300 DPI or larger). I upload the image to Spreadshirt, and make minor positioning adjustments.  Maybe sometime in the future I will write a detailed guide on how to reconstruct logos in vector format, or how to construct letters to match a logo's font.

If anyone is interested in purchasing a t-shirt, let me know at info@chancesend.com. I would publish the designs on my Printfection account, but I fear that if I do, they would get deleted as potential copyright infringements (though this falls under fair use as parody, I know companies like Printfection and Cafepress tend to be overly cautious).