Hoodie
Wearable type
The Brief
Design a type-heavy hooded sweatshirt or similar garment
Trim Size
Tabloid/A3
Learning Points
Using the Outline Stroke command
Setting type on a path
Preparing for garment printing
Tools
Illustrator, Photoshop
Fonts Used
Brandon Grotesque Bold, League Gothic Bold
Inspiration
In the San Francisco Bay Area, support for civil liberties in the digital world is just about as common as having a tech job that involves undermining those liberties. One way people like to show they are part of the solution is by flashing the logo of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) — an organization devoted to protecting rights and promoting freedom in the digital world. (Full disclosure: Hugh is EFF’s Creative Director.)
We designed this hoodie as a sales and membership perk for EFF. The organization’s mission is rather difficult to depict with images — how do you draw the Internet, anyway? So we knew we were going to use a lot of type, and we knew we had to have that type look great — otherwise we’ll end up with an expensive item of clothing that no one wants to wear.
The best way to print on fabric is to use the time-honored technique of silkscreen printing. So this project required use of a limited color palette, and line art without any gradients or photographic elements. The trick is to keep it simple and make a bold statement.
On the front we ran the logo in two colors. On the sleeve, we ran type straight down, listing the three methods this organization uses to advance its cause: tech, activism, and law. This makes for a recognizable profile that makes supporters stand out at tech conferences or anywhere in the Bay Area, where support for digital rights can be an essential calling card.
On the back, there’s even more text: The organization’s mission statement runs along a frame. Inside the frame is an image of a lighthouse in a storm, intended to evoke the organization’s status as a beacon for rights and liberty during dark times.
Choose the type
We opted for Brandon Grotesque Bold. At first glance, this typeface looks like a neutral sans serif, but look closer, and you’ll see it has some distinctive details. It is a geometric sans serif, so it is analogous to something like Futura or Gotham. But notice the apexes of letters like A, M, and N — they are pointed, rather than capped, as most geometric sans serifs are — and at the same time, they are rounded. We think this gives it a rather dashing profile.
Brandon Grotesque has rounded apexes (the points at the top of letter where two strokes meet) on letters like A, M, and N.
EFF’s brand is bold, is forthright, and puts a high value on readability — from across the room, if possible. It uses three main colors: black, red, and white, and compositions are often symmetrical: the idea being to communicate stability, confidence, and reliability.
When the hoodie is worn by an ordinary person, they are instantly transformed into a superhero, devoted to the defense of civil liberties in the online world. Also, it just looks cool.
What we needed was something to complement League Gothic, which is used for the org name in most EFF branding. League Gothic is condensed, narrow, and bold. Brandon Bold has a similar level of blackness, but it is wider and not so tall. Putting the text of the mission statement around the arch in League Gothic would have meant either making the arch much bigger to accommodate the height of the condensed type or making the type fit into the existing size of the arch, which would have made it too small to read.
Create the arch
The image of the lighthouse inside of a curved arch is actually a motif one sees in older designs. We’re not sure what its exact derivation is, but like many classic designs, it just works. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. To build the arch, we started with a circle. Select one point of that circle with the Direct Selection tool, delete it, and you have an arch that can be extended with the addition of straight lines.
We planned to run type along that arch, but first we made a copy on a new layer and named the layers so we could keep track. One was Arch Original, and we named the layer on the bottom Arch Phat, because we were going to add a fat, 47 point stroke to it (and we like slang from the ’90s).
Outline that fat stroke (Object > Path > Outline Stroke), and you have a shape in the form of an arch. Give that new shape its own 5 point stroke, and you have a frame for type. Lock the stroked line and select the original line to make it active. With the Type on a Path tool, add your text.
But be careful! This can be tricky, because moving type up and down the path can easily go awry. Sliding the type up and down the path is easy enough, but it can sometimes flip over to the other side of your line, giving you an effect you don’t want. One solution: Insert your text cursor right at the start of the line so that it doesn’t need to slide back and forth too much.
Draw a circle (A).
Delete one point (B).
With the Pen tool add two vertical lines (C).
Copy the arch, and add a fat stroke to the copy — use a garish color to avoid confusion (D).
Outline the fat stroke to provide a frame for the type (E).
Use theType on a Path tool to run the type along the original stroke (F).
Using the Character panel, we nudged up the type size, bit by bit, and added a wee bit of tracking to space it out. (Important type should be all caps and slightly tracked, in our opinion.) We also adjusted the baseline with a negative baseline shift. Another way to do this is to use the Type on a Path Options, which you can access by double-clicking the Type on a Path tool. Here you can choose Center from the Align to Path menu.
Prepare for silkscreen printing
Next we had to set this up for silkscreen printing. Silkscreen is all about flat color and a limited color palette. We have type and an image, and between those things it needs to be reproduced with a maximum of four colors (a budget limitation, you know).
The lighthouse image was created in Procreate. To combine this with the type and line work created in Illustrator, we’re going to use Photoshop, as this is our home base for producing a print-ready file. This will enable us to keep things simple for the printer. We planned to send him just one Photoshop file, instead of an Illustrator file with placed artwork (and fonts).
We exported a PSD from Procreate by choosing Share from the Gallery. Opening that PSD file in Photoshop, we placed the Illustrator artwork as a linked file and scaled it as needed to line it up with the artwork. This way, the Illustrator artwork is a smart object, and we can edit if needed by double-clicking the layer.
Once we had everything looking correct, we simplified the artwork so that each layer contains only a single color. In this case, the artwork is defined as white, red, and charcoal gray, but we also have a fourth color — our glow-in-the-dark ink! This will be invisible during daylight conditions, but, as the name suggests, will be an eerie, glowing presence after dark. Highlighting some areas with glow is a great way to give some elements extra emphasis (for some projects, we hide messages and clues for puzzles using glow inks).
With garment printing, another element to consider is size. How the artwork appears on the body is obviously important. We like to get our main artwork as large as possible, but the size is limited by the smallest garment — something that looks great on an XL may not be printable on an XS. For the hoodie, we found that 11 inches wide looked good on all sizes. Be sure to consult with your printer. They have great suggestions, and they also know their own limitations, which you may not know about.
Adjust the size, tracking, and baseline shift of the type using the Character panel.
In Illustrator use simple shapes and reflect them to make a simple hoodie-shaped template that you can send to your printer to indicate size and placement.
Communicating placement to the printer is key. We made a mock-up of the hoodie design that shows the printer how we hope it will look. (The mock-up is also useful for getting approval from your client — or in this case, co-workers — and for advertising the product in your online shop.)
We set up our Photoshop file so that each color is on its own layer. In this case, the artwork is defined by four colors: white, red, charcoal gray, and an invisible glow-in-the-dark ink for certain elements.