This is a project I completed while working for Central Connecticut State University's Student Activities / Leadership Development department. I was tasked with creating a shirt design for the Central Activities Network that represented a love and sense of nostalgia for the 90's. I worked closely with a representative from CAN over the course of a few weeks to get this design completed and printed for people to enjoy.
To begin this project, I needed to create a bright and eye-catching logo for the front of the shirt. I went with a very retro looking typeface design and using Illustrator created a full logo using a range of different pastel colors. I also added a retro themed "2021" to their existing logo, and used similar colors and line weight techniques to seamlessly integrate it into my design.
For the back of the shirt design, I went fully illustrative. I was very loose and free with my line structure, allowing things to be a little wavy and uneven, looking totally hand drawn. This adds to the sort of dreamlike nostalgia effect caused by the form making up the background, feeling like a thought bubble from a comic book and really appearing as a peak into someone's memories. I kept with the same color palette, adding only a darker blue for linework. I chose this over a black or charcoal color to keep it light and cheery, as anything darker would've been very distracting and definitely would have taken away from the overall look of the design.
I used popular 90's toys and symbols to fill up the space, with a big dense computer monitor, a lava lamp, a toy robot, a doll, a handheld game console, and a portable radio to keep the music going all around the house. These all in some way or another invoke a strong sense of nostalgia in many people, especially the target audience of 20-25 year old college students attending school at CCSU.
These shirts were given away at various events around campus through CAN's nostalgia/throwback themed campaign to kick off the beginning of the Spring 2021 semester. Below are a number of photographs taken of students wearing and enjoying the final printed shirt. This design meant a lot to me, as even while creating it I definitely dipped into my own inner nostalgia for simpler days, so to see the final design bring joy to so many people around campus really made all of the work that went into it totally worth it.
These designs were created using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Autodesk Sketchbook.
Photos courtesy of @can_ccsu on Instagram.