A thread on designing the Fall Tour shirt last year for @TheMidnightLA. Strap in! I’m a big fan so when they asked me to design a shirt, I wanted it to be superb. Now my usual colour palette consists of roughly around all the colours. Every colour ever. 1/

Due to printing methods, this shirt had to be around 3-4 colours max. That would be a challenge! Especially as the starting point reference, the gorgeous artwork from Kids and America Online (by @ecstaticpsd), have such beautiful and varied colours. But I like a challenge. 2/

The Midnight have a very strong creative vision. Very clear. So the brief was solid - a bedroom computer vibe. Classic style. I could see it instantly based on the description. I sketched a few. Some with role playing dice. Action figures. 3/

You’ll see there are variations here but the arrangement was pretty clear in my mind. So I was mostly playing with details, style extras and so on. I always had the colour limit in mind, knowing that black was a free colour. 4/

But even with a strong brief, I like to explore. I always like to present some surprises, building on the brief and the vibe but in different directions. So I also sketched some other ideas. A computer screen. A bedroom window. Even a view from outside. 5/

Sometimes the music inspires ideas that are even way off brief. Often I won’t show these if I know for sure it’s not what they want but, in this case, I ran a couple of different options by them too. 6/

Really though, one of my first sketches, one that was just me visualising what I felt the guys were asking for, was in fact exactly what they wanted. This was it. Everything was in the right place. I just had to draw it. 7/

I do most of my pixel drawing in Pixaki on the iPad. I work on copy after copy in case I ever need to go back a step. I stuck very close to the sketch, mostly working on top of it. The challenge was in sticking with the colour limit. 8/

Here’s a simple process gif. You’ll see I tried some extras and played with colours along the way. The extras were rarely needed and usually quickly discarded. I worked closely with The Midnight to land on the final colours. Getting it to pop on the shirt was crucial. 9/

And here’s how it ended up. I’m happy with it and @TheMidnightLA guys seemed to love it and it went down really well. It was amazing to see it out at gigs. I do hope you like it if you picked one up. That’s it! Thanks for reading! 10/done.

Epilogue: happy pixel guy hanging out with Tim and Tyler.