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:

1. Get your Ugmonk sticker. If you’ve placed an order you should have one already, but they are also for sale in the Ugmonk Shop 3 for $2 with free shipping within the US.
2. Stick your sticker someplace creative or interesting.*
3. Take a cool photo of your sticker.
4. Send your photo to stickers@ugmonk.com with the title of your photo in the subject line.

• 8 new shirts
• 3 hoodies
• 1st anniversary
• A brand new site design
• 588 hot meals to children in need
• and lots of happy customers

Bring on 2010! Happy New Year everyone!

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.

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.

Purchase $10, $25, or $50 denominations here.

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!

(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’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.

]]> http://www.ugmonk.com/index.php/2009/12/01/ugmonk-behind-the-scenes/feed/ 18 http://www.ugmonk.com/index.php/2009/11/26/sneak-peek-4/ http://www.ugmonk.com/index.php/2009/11/26/sneak-peek-4/#comments Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:58:51 +0000 jeff http://www.ugmonk.com/index.php/?p=1458 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!

Thanks for all of the recent orders and support! You guys are keeping us busy and that’s a good thing.