A "pop" of inspiration

My bag hit the floor with a dull thud. Soft patters of footsteps filled the empty house as I made my way to my bed. The covers were thrown back. The glow of an LED screen filled the dim room. The covers were pulled back on.

Being cornered and demanding inspirational ideas is my least favorite way to spark creativity. It's one of the reasons why I am struggling with my college essays. Knowing this, I decided to spend my time scrolling through Instagram and listening to some smooth jams.

A tiny voice in the back of my mind, resembling my professor's uncannily enough, eventually urged me to move out of my cozy cocoon and head to the drawing board.

The time for T-shirt designing began.

There were many sketches I made. I began first with what I was familiar with. Though the assignment was to create shirts for fictional organizations and personal enjoyment, I decided to do a tangible organization to see what direction my creativity was leaning towards.

Logistics and how difficult an idea is to execute were left out of the picture for the moment. These technical details could always be solved or adjusted later on -- a good idea, once lost, is much harder to recover from.

I made sketches for the Indian Student Association, a group I am fond of and dance frequently with. This allowed me to test out a more delicate and detail oriented style.

The next was in a closer direction to the assignment. The shirt "salutations friends" comes from my trademark greeting. If there's a "salutations" in the distance, there's a me not far behind. The "friends" portion comes out my habit of calling anyone and everyone friends, no matter where I go.

Another two rough drafts were made for an inferior shirt. The design stemmed from a satire of the well known street-brand Supreme's simplistic clothing designs. The logo and color scheme were made to be the opposite of the successful brand's iconic style.

The other design was for a fictional K-pop dance team at Rice University, a school I wish to attend in the near future. Asian oriented fonts were selected to reflect the style of dance. I kept in mind that there would be different generations of members within the fictional dance team. To signify this, I labeled various types of rice (since the school's name is Rice after all) to differentiate the years. Some examples include the Jasmine Rice era, Sticky Rice era, Fried Rice era, etc.

Lastly, a shirt design inspired by current political pushes for stories to be heard and ignorance to be overcome inspired a "pop" design shirt. The overall theme of this shirt is based off of comic books due to an iconic work from Lichtenstein. This piece features a woman crying and being washed over by waves of sadness in comic book style. I wanted to spin this and make a more powerful message, thus taking a comic book approach and producing a shirt for a fictional feminist rally.

The most successful two ideas were the "pop" feminist rally shirt and the iconic "salutations friends." I selected "pop" because it was inspired by something I never thought could be inspiring in my designs: politics. "Salutations friends" was an easy choice because the phrase is an identifying mark for myself and I wanted to produce a more light hearted work in comparison to pop.

"Salutations friends"

"Pop"

Overall, the color schemes on both shirts are meant to be bright and eye catching. For the "pop" design, this signified the voice of feminists standing apart from tradition and the shadows. Their voices are loud, and their purpose is strong. Thus, their shirts should reflect these characteristics.

"Salutations friends" is meant to maintain a bright color scheme and the images were specifically selected to imply the message that rain or shine, I will always say salutations. Plus, dull colors are easy to miss and I, as a person who identifies with being "individualistic," found the color yellow to be particularly suitable. It's a happy color.

It also happens to be the color of bananas.