the art of Will Terrell

Last year I worked for a local company called Red Raider Outfitter designing Texas Tech game day shirts.  It was a fun job and I got to work with a great artist and I learned a lot about graphic design, adobe illustrator, and meeting deadlines.  I also had the fortune to work on a few of the big gameday shirts – one being the BLACK-OUT Texas shirt design that 10,000 plus people were wearing in the stadium when Tech pulled out that amazing 39 – 33 victory.  I was lucky to be at that game thanks to some free tickets from my friend Phillip.

Well, it’s football season again, and even though I am only occasionally doing freelance work for Outfitter, I got the chance to work on this years Gameday design.  I think it turned out pretty well.  The shirt is available for Pre-sell now on their site if you’re looking to gear up for the game.

It’s always crazy how much a design can evolve from its initial conception.  It always goes that way, through several different stages of revision.  You only have a certain number of colors to print with in screen-printing.  Plus your line-widths and colors have to be very deliberate.  It definitely teaches you to be more bold with your decisions.  This was my original illustrator version before the copy was added…

And the original pen and ink drawing…

I much prefer the detail you can get in pen and ink.  But it doesn’t screen very well.   But it is what it is.  I hope the shirt does well, and I really hope Tech does well too!

-Will

I have a new shirt out this week from Red Raider Outfitter . Here’s hoping he sticks around. I REALLY love how this shirt turned out. This is the first time we’ve been able to get that airbrush type of screen print to work. Not quite sure how we did it, just that we did. I’m much stronger at Photoshop, so its been frustrating not being able to use that skill. Here’s hoping we can do a lot more now. Here’s praying also that Leach sticks around.

-Will

BAYLOR vs. TTU gameday shirt

The line at the bottom of this shirt originally read “Another chapter in the Texas Tech 2008 STORYBOOK season.” We… decided to change that after the OH SO painful OU game this past weekend. Yeah, that one really hurt.

That aside, I think this is one of my favorite shirt designs so far. Its also the first shirt I came up with entirely myself. I hope I get the chance to do some more this season. (GO OSU!!! Beat the $@*! out of OU this weekend!) I’ve said it before, but I’m really enjoying drawing these characters I remember reading when I was a kid visiting my grandparents here in West Texas.

-Will

I designed a new shirt for Red Raider Outfitter. I am pretty happy with this one. I hope it does well. And I hope we kick ass in the game. All the way to the National Championships! You can order the shirts HERE if you’re interested.

On a side note… my girlfriend was telling me tonight that the t-shirt shop she works for keeps bringing her shirts I helped design, asking her to recreate them. Lol. Wait till they see whats next!

-Will

I only had a few days to work on it… and I’ve never used Flash before in my life… but I’m pretty happy with it. Its supposed to start airing locally next week on NBC and ABC leading up to the Texas Tech University VS. Texas football game November 1st.

Oh yeah… I also designed the T-shirt, with the help of the girl I work with. I am REALLy happy with how that turned out!

-Will

I started working as a graphic designer about 3 months ago for a local company called Red Raider Outfitter that does licensing stuff for Texas Tech University. I really like it. I get challenged a lot, and get to work with another really great artist, and really good people. One of the very first designs I did for them was a Pirate Hat for Mike Leach the Texas Tech football coach. He’s apparently really into pirates. The hat just came in last week and I’m really digging it. We put it online a couple nights ago too if any of you want to pick up your own Pirate HAT

-Will Terrell