“Big dreams need big sleep” T-shirt
For the first product of my shop, I designed this cute “Big dreams need big sleep” lettering for when you’re feeling sleepy.
Behind the scene
The design started on small pieces of paper, with a broad marker. This setup prevented me from being caught up on the details too early. With a broad nib and not much space to use it, I could only focus first on the overall layout of the piece. Building details of the letters and other time consuming decorations would come later.
The chosen layout put the emphasis on “dream” and “sleep”, which I wanted to stand out from the other words of the quote. I didn’t want the other words to completely disapear, though. So when it came to building up the letters, I chose chunky shapes for them. It would help them stand their ground, as well as tie all the different styles around a “big bold” theme.
After I polished the sleep related decorations, the design was ready to be scaled up again for inking. Because of the overlapping shapes, it had to be split into two layers to make the processing in Photoshop easier: cleaning up the scanned parts and coloring them to make the final design as it is.