We want to thank everyone who sent in cool photos of their Ugmonk stickers. It was a tough decision, but we have selected this photo as the winner. Congratulations to Roger for winning an Ugmonk tshirt!
Click here to view all of the entries.
Every Ugmonk order comes with a free screen-printed Ugmonk sticker, and we thought it would be fun to find out where they end up. Your spreading the word about Ugmonk is one of the main reasons we’ve been so successful thus far. At the same time we know everyone likes free stuff, so if you send us a photo of your Ugmonk sticker in a creative or interesting place, you’ll have a chance to win a free Ugmonk shirt.
Here’s how it works:
As you can tell, I have a slight obsession with ampersands. I’m not sure what it is about them, but I always find myself doodling ampersands in my sketchbook or any other papers laying around on my desk. There’s just something fun about drawing those mesmerizing curves.
2009 was a great year for Ugmonk thanks to all of you!
Bring on 2010! Happy New Year everyone!
I hope all of you had a very merry Christmas! Thanks to all who ordered shirts during our charity drive event which ended yesterday. With your help we met and surpassed our goal of helping give 560 hot meals to children in need. The final total for the drive was 420 items purchased which equals 588 meals!
Thanks also to those of you who helped spread the word and took part in the shirt giveaway. The three random winners have been contacted with instructions to claim their Ugmonk shirt.
Haven’t finished your Christmas shopping yet? Me either. With only 4 days left, you might be thinking it’s too late to get something Ugmonk for your friend or family member, or maybe you just couldn’t remember which shirt it was they wanted. Fortunately for you, we got our act together (at the last minute), and we’re now offering Ugmonk Gift Certificates!
You have the option of printing them off yourself or having them emailed directly to the recipient on the day of your choosing, which makes them a great last minute gift.
We’ve received an amazing response to the Ugmonk Holiday Sale & Charity Drive so far! We’ve already passed last’s years mark, and we’re just about half-way to our goal to provide 560 hot dinners (that’s 80 weeks worth) to children in need. To reach that goal we need to reach 400 items sold by December 25th. Join in and take 10% off your order by using the coupon code GIVEBACK09 at the Ugmonk Shop.
To help spread the word, we’re giving away 3 free Ugmonk shirts. To enter to win just do one of the following (or both for better chances):
1. Follow Ugmonk on twitter and tweet this message: “Help Ugmonk provide 560 hot meals for kids in need http://ugmonk.com + Ugmonk is giving away 3 free shirts! RT to enter”
2. Leave a comment on this blog post. (Be sure to specify your email address so we can contact you if you win.)
The winners will be chosen at random on December 26th. Thanks and good luck!
We’ve all heard it before (probably from our mothers) – “There’s more to life than …” And like everything else your mother told you, it’s true. You can finish that sentence with almost anything when you consider the poverty in which so many children live. Ugmonk Gives Back was a great success last year and we hope to donate even more this holiday season. As part of that effort we are releasing a new shirt: There’s More To Life.
(Check out the behind-the-scenes design process.)
This year we’ll be working with Samaritan’s Purse again to supply hot meals to needy children around the world. Each item that you purchase from Ugmonk between December 1 – December 25 will supply one hot dinner for a child. In addition, for every 5 items purchased by you and others, Ugmonk will add 2 more meals equaling a full week of hot dinners.
You’re also welcome to save a few dollars yourself by using the coupon code GIVEBACK09 to take 10% off your order.
That’s not all. Along with the brand new design, we’re re-releasing last year’s Ugmonk Gives Back shirt, Two Are Better Than One in a new color and fabric. The popular design is now available on a super-soft, “forest” (black-green), American Apparel poly-cotton blend tee.
We’re also releasing the favorite Lowercase design on lightweight pullover hoodies in both black and white versions.
All of these great new products as well as all the classics are a part of the charity drive and are available now in the Ugmonk Shop! Feel free to leave a comment below to let us know what you think.
I always enjoy reading about other designers’ processes so I thought I’d share a bit of the workflow of how I created the latest Ugmonk design “There’s More To Life.”
I’m usually hesitant to show the early sketches and rough concepts as they are not intended to be stand alone designs, but I do think it can be helpful to see how the design evolves and progresses throughout the creative process.
For this specific design I challenged myself to construct the typeface completely from scratch as opposed to just modifying an existing font. This forced me to really study each individual letterform and understand all of the subtle details that go into creating a typeface.
I normally start out by sketching my ideas with pen and paper. Many times I already have some initial ideas in my head and just need to see how they translate on paper. These early explorations are a critical part of the design process and should not be overlooked. The finished design may or may not resemble any of the initial sketches, but sketching is much less restrictive than going straight to the computer. Below are some of my early concepts:
After I have sketched out my ideas I will then either scan them or just use them for reference as I move to the computer. For this particular design, I went right into Adobe Illustrator and started constructing some of the concepts.
In these early stages I try not to get too bogged down with the exact details and proportions of the letters, but rather focus on how the letters are working together as a whole. This gives me a better idea of which direction to pursue and which concepts can be thrown out. Pictured below are few of the initial concepts that I was playing around with in Illustrator.
When designing tshirts it’s important to consider how the design will look when it is placed on the tshirt opposed to just a flat rectangle, so I will usually take a few of the concepts and do some quick comps of the design on a shirt. The easiest way to do this is to overlay the vector artwork on a photo of a blank shirt to see how the graphic relates to the tshirt format.
The next step is to eliminate the weaker concepts and begin to refine the stronger ones. As everything continues to come together, it’s important to start smoothing out any rough transitions and look at the overall spatial relationships. This involves zooming in and moving individual points around to unify the composition. As you can see below, the file is still pretty messy but the forms are starting to take shape. At this point I usually run my ideas by some friends and other designers to get some general feedback to help me decide on a final direction.
The final step is the most tedious part of the whole process: tweaking, tweaking and more tweaking. There’s really no secret to this step, it just requires a lot of patience and attention to detail. After all of the letters have been cleaned up, I will delete any stray points and extra shapes that may be floating off to the side. Below you see the finished vector file that is ready to be sent to the printer and be prepared for screen printing.
This is a just a brief glimpse into my design process, but I hope it’s been interesting and helpful to see how my ideas develop. If you have specific questions feel free to leave a comment below.
And don’t forget, this shirt is part of our Ugmonk Gives Back charity drive. Purchase it over at the Ugmonk shop.
I’m enjoying the Thanksgiving holiday with family this weekend, but we have some great stuff cued up for next week. Several new products will be released and we’ll be starting up our 2nd annual Ugmonk Gives Back holiday sale and charity drive. Here’s a sneak peek of our newest design. Stay tuned for all the details, and have a wonderful Thanksgiving (in the US) and great weekend!
